Pixies

Was threatening to clear up here - but now it's raining. Will keep an eye out though, as it might still improve. The clouds are coming from the west, so @laudropbmight have advanced notice of what's coming my way!

For a suitable stool. A drum stool is a good option. you can often find them secondhand. As a drummer, I have a few old ones kicking about.

Apparently another train went by at 2am - just after I had gone in! 🤦‍♂️

Stayed clear in that direction until 2am. No more Starlink trains, but lots of satellites visible with the naked eye. Also - hit the globulars with the binos M5, M3, M13, M92, M53, M12, M10 M10 and M12 were firsts for me tonight.

I got a clear spell around 1am and managed to get an observation using 10x50 bins. Fainter than HD220819 and slightly brighter than HD220770, it looked very similar to HD220057. I'd say 7.0

I was out just now, hoping for a view of the nova in Cassiopeia, but clouds to the north. The only clear part of the sky was around Bootes and Arcturus. I thought I'd try and find M5 in my 10x50 bins. I've never seen it with binoculars before. As I was scanning the sky, an ISS pass caught my eye. VERY bright. But then I noticed a train of Starlink satellites following it. About 10 degrees behind it and a little further south. The train was 10 degrees long and the satellites appeared to be in pairs when I viewed them in the bins. Then I saw another train following on behind, in the same configuration as the first train. I followed them in the bins, right past M5!

Now - I can't remember where it was, but earlier today I saw a post (Facebook, I think) about something similar. The poster removed the black plastic cover on the bottom of the base and found a spring had come unsprung. Reattaching it correctly meant all the gears were then held correctly and the tracking worked fine. Worth a quick look?

Yep - I agree with @John. The nova's brightness is very similar to HIP 115691 (HD 220819) and also HR 8881 (in the 'trapezium). The 2 stars are listed at mags 6.6 and 6.4 in SkySafari. So I'll put my estimation at 6.5 So the poor weather has meant I missed the brightest few days!

And that's Mebsuta back out again. 23 minutes by my reckoning. It just skimmed behind the Northern edge of the moon. Disappearing behind the unlit side and then popping back into view just under the Northern tip of the lit crescent. That's the first time I've observed the Moon occulting a star, and it was surprisingly interesting to see.

The Moon and Mars are in the same field of view in my 10x50 binoculars. The Moon is about to occult the star Mebsuta (Epsilon Geminorium) in a few minutes, too.

Clear here, apart from some high hazy cloud. Sky is still a little too bright too. Feeling hopeful for later now.

She seemed pretty impressed. We've just ben looking at it again - using binos through an upstairs window. In about 30 minutes, the moon will occult the bright star Mebsuta in Gemini.

yeah, dad!

My 13 yo daughter announced this evening that they were covering the Moon in her science lessons. So around 9:30 I set up the little ST80 and let her observe it. I explained how the waxing crescent was in the evening and the waning crescent in the morning. Then I went a bit "Magnus Pike" and started explaining the ecliptic (waving my arms around) and the plane of the solar system and how all the bodies roughly follow the same arc across the sky. Then when she looked back into the eyepiece, the moon had obviously moved on, but it had been replaced by Mars, sitting centrally in the view. Now that's a demonstration (albeit accidental)!

Yep - same here. Hoping for a few quick views tonight - even if only with the bins. We haven't had clear skies for weeks now. April was fantastic, but May has been pretty disappointing.

Followed this vid, but with the flock (backing paper removed) wrapped around a pencil. Then sort of 'unrolled' it by rolling the pencil around the inside of the tube.

And midges!

Have you seen the animation of the changes to Hubble's Variable Nebula - taken over just 24 weeks: https://pbase.com/polakis/image/168667228

Sounds great. I've only had one proper dark-sky session this last year, due to covid, and it's addictive. I could happily spend hours just using the naked-eye at these places. So much you can see that normally requires binoculars. Oh - that's what Cancer looks like! Roll on August... And another fan of the Actual Astronomy podcast. Fuh' sure!

The forecast from earlier today: <crying face>

That looks like an internal reflection in the baffle tube. I flocked the one in my old Skymax 90 and it got rid of those 'arcs'.

have a look at the diagrams on page 2 of this thread, esp @Waddensky's:

@John Do you find that colours are more obvious with smaller aperture? I see colours more clearly in the ST80 compared to the dob - but that might be magnification rather then aperture, though?

I started out this time last year - although I had been using binoculars for several years and was reasonable familiar with the winter sky (the summer one, less so). It's good to learn the constellations in the east, as they rise and become more southerly later in the coming months. You'll be seeing them for 6 months or so before they vanish. And (surprise surprise) they are constantly being replenished with the next batch. My first night, it took me 20 minutes or so to find M13. Now it's 20 seconds. It all becomes second nature after a while. A pair of 10x50 bins will find it on a good clear night.

Occasionally I've been using a 4mm ortho in an F6 8" (x300 magnification). It's not very often the seeing is good enough - but I've found it useful when trying to split something very tight. I must admit, it's not relaxing.