Pixies

The benefit of my ST80 over my 8" dob is its "grab-an-go-ness". There have been lots of late evenings recently where a surprise clear sky appeared and the ST80 meant I could be out in 5 minutes. I agree with Heather's analogy regarding binoculars. I've also taken it away on holiday a couple of times. The Moon is good; planets not so. Big clusters are it's forte, as even the brighter but smaller open clusters, like the ones in Auriga, are still grey blotches. I can't wait until I get it to a dark sky for M33, though. I had a similar experience with my old Mak 90 - "is that it?" The view was dark and unimpressive. Only the moon looked good and it lacked the resolution of the dob. The ST80 gets a lot more use. Now - imagine if you had the ST80 when comet Neowise was about!

Had the 8" dob out cooling, waiting for Jupiter to come round past the chimney pots from a house 2 doors down. Eventually got a clear view around 21:15. Ganymede's shadow was central, just North of the SEB. Callisto's shadow was further to Jupiter's East and South of the SEB, clearly within the South Tropical Zone. Of course Ganymede's shadow was much larger, but the smaller moon's shadow was still clear. Seeing was average, but the shadows were still obvious, the boiling view gave the impression that the shadows were slightly above the planet's surface. I could take the magnification down to x60 and still make out the smaller shadow. x150 was the best view for my scope and the conditions. I watched until Callisto's shadow got close to the limb and vanished in the turbulence. Some high clouds are coming over, so I'll let them pass hopefully, and see if things remain clear.

Oh - the times in the subject line for the duration that both shadows are visible.

Callisto's shadow transit starts at around 6pm BST (17:00 UT) Ganymede's shadow transit starts at around 8pm (19:00 UT) Callisto's shadow transit ends at around 10:15pm (21:15 UT) Ganymede's shadow transit ends at around 11:15pm (22:15 UT) Rough times. It will vary on your location. See link below Looking possible to catch the latter half here: the Met Office has been the most reliable cloud forecast for me in recent months. Looking forward to seeing the difference in shadow sizes. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/jupiter-moons-how-see/

I can occasionally see a green hint in my 8" dob, but never sure whether this is just suggested imagination. My kids see it clearly green, though.

The website can show odd dates, depending on when you view it and how you have it set up - centred on current time, midday or midnight. In your pic, it says Friday 1st, but the 'clock' marker is at 7am the following morning. Basically, you are seeing the previous night. I find it best to set it centred on midday, when it's the morning Then centre it on midnight when PM.

Just be aware that it's a GTe, not a GTi. It lacks the 'Freedom Find' feature, which is quite a big part of the AZ GTi The 102 OTA is now down to a 15-20 day wait: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/skywatcher-startravel-120t-ota.html

I managed to squeeze mine between focuser and finder: But I have been known to fog up the Telrad window with my breath when using the RACI finder!

My first ever ES box! And in it was: Thanks to @fwm891!

There's a double-transit coming up on 4 October - early evening. Ganymede and Callisto. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/jupiter-moons-how-see/

I've just discovered the pronunciation button in Sky Safari, too! It's a female voice, though. Next to the audio tour option on the info page of an object is a speech bubble icon. Assuming that the designers have made some effort to make sure it is correct. Bootes Formalhaut Rasalhague At last I have an idea of how to sound like I know what I’m talking about! Betelgeuse is pronounced Beetle Juice – which I approve of! Uranus, though. Not impressed

All forecasts were showing cloud except the Met Office, but the latter was correct. I set up the dob to observe the shadow transit of Io, but the seeing was very poor and I couldn't clearly see the shadow as the sharp inky dot we had a few weeks ago. Typically though, the seeing improved just as the shadow reached the western limb of the planet. So, with the scope at the wrong end of the garden, I thought I'd have a shot at a few different targets and see what I found. The transparency wasn't great but seeing improving all the time. I started on Almach to align the finder. It's double nature not visible in the finder but even at just 50x in the scope, its gorgeous colours and split were clear. I think I prefer this over Albireo with it's tighter split. M31 and M32 - check! Still there. M110 not visible NGC 891 - Edge-on galaxy. Nope, not visible either with the poor transparency. This looks like a good target for darker nights, but I wonder how well it'll appear in my backyard. At least it's in the darkest direction. NGC 956 - A sparse open cluster. Not that impressive, really. Perhaps not the best view tonight. NGC 772 - Spiral galaxy. Another wash-out, unsurprisingly. Again, I wonder if this is possible from the garden or requires a dark sky trip NGC 752 - More like it! A large open cluster. Filling the view in the 30mm Aero ED, about 1.5deg. I need to try this in the binos Uranus - easily found forming an arrow between 2 mag 6-ish stars including omicron Ari. Pale cyan disk from 100x upwards. High cloud was now rolling in and it was getting a little chilly, so I called it a night. I think Almach was the highlight. Not sure I've ever observed it with a scope before.

Really poor seeing (Jetstream and local rooftops) for a while and I could barely make out the shadow. And just as the shadow reaches the limb, the seeing improves! Typical! Anyway, it's a surprise clear sky (for now) so the dob is out and even with poor seeing and transparency, I'll see what happens.

I'll give the usual shout-out for "Turn Left at Orion" which covers a lot of ground regarding star-hopping and the different views in different scopes. If you are using any of the apps, like Stu shows above, the display can be adjusted to show the eyepiece view (in your case left<->right and up<->down). Before I knew how to do this, I would actually rotate the phone in my hand 180 degrees!

I've bailed-out, too! Meetings tomorrow morning.

Yep - saw it this evening, while waiting for the scopes to cool down. There were actually 2 fan-shaped patterns - a fainter one preceding it. Very ghostly looking. At first I thought it was a plane coming in on approach to the airport with its lights showing through fog. But then I could see stars next to it. The various Facebook astro groups and Twitter lit up afterwards with pics and videos.

Io shadow transit around 01:30 if you're up for a late night!

Here's the ES version: https://explorescientificusa.com/products/firstlight-10-dobsonian

With 'AD' you will have a red fringe on the side towards the horizon and a blue fringe of the other (when planet is centred in view).

Here's the Binocular Sky review of the Helios (double the price of the Celestrons): https://binocularsky.com/reviews/LightQuest_25x100.pdf Stephen Tonkin frequents this forum. Perhaps have a look at the Binocular section (under 'Equipment')

Availability might be a determining factor. Both are showing as out-of-stock on FLO just now. Bresser 60-90 working days and StellaLyra 90-120 working days.

An even quicker way of turning it off. Click on this 'button', and selct "unhighlight list":

Here's a four-page discussion of such from last winter:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/celestron-maksutov-t-adapter.html

Fantastic! I think I brought these up in the "what started your interest in astronomy" thread. Lost years (and several house moves) ago. I also remember getting books from the library about travel to the moon. Obviously written long before Apollo was planned, so everything was a little more like Space-X's planned vertical landers, believe it or not!