Pixies

It says 'telescope' on the side. 👍

Glad you're OK. With my old job, I've had my fair share of time out there. Harris, Lewis, Uist, Rum. But this was before my time even with binoculars. I do remember the skies though, when they were clear (which wasn't too often).

It was suggested not to bother requesting a shield before now, as the lamps are scheduled to be replaced. However, I have heard (anecdotally) that if you complain immediately after the new lamps are installed, the lighting team will be available in the area to fix any issues and install shields immediately. Edinburgh's street lights started being upgraded several years ago and they are slowly working their way around the city. Of course, my neighborhood is literally the last to be done! It was supposed to have been done by now, but it was delayed by Covid. The occasional times I have driven through upgraded areas in the dark, I have noticed a real difference and it does appear much darker. People are complaining about the new lights being too dim! 🙄 The council are saying that once the upgrade is complete, they will be able to control the timing and brightness of the streetlights remotely. Hopefully that doesn't mean they turn them up! I'm hoping they start turning them off late at night. I do see that my westerly view towards the city centre now has white light pollution instead of yellow!

Some new targets for me tonight, plus some old faves, in Coma Berenices and Canes Venatici. The sky promised to be very transparent, although some clouds came through later to spoil the party. Temperature was just below freezing, and the wind chill made it feel like -5 deg C. Started out with the M52 open cluster and the Nova. Cold and breezy. Local light pollution M51 (Whirlpool) - Hints of structure with averted vision. M101 - Very faint, needed averted vision and some dob-wobbling to find it. NGC 4490 (Cocoon galaxy) - Clear and shape obvious but smaller companion not visible NGC 4449 - Some structure observable with averted vision NGC 5005 - Clear with direct vision. Much brighter than neighbour: NGC 5033 - Faint, observed with averted vision M63 (Sunflower) - Clear with direct vision. Hints of outer shape with averted vision M94 - Very bright, star-like core M106 - core visible directly. Averted vision reveals its shape NGC 4244 (Silver Needle Galaxy) - Very faint. Just visible with averted vision and wobbling. NGC 4214 - Very faint. Just visible with averted vision and wobbling. NGC 4631 (Whale Galaxy) - Some haze / high cloud building. Very faint. Just visible with averted vision and wobbling. Neighbour NGC 4646 not found M53. Faint and oval-shaped globular, no resolution of stars. NGC 5053 neighbour not found Paused to let clouds pass and to warm up M64 (Black Eye Galaxy) - Bright core directly visible. NGC 4725 - some very faint structure visible with averted vision NGC 4546 (Needle Galaxy) - Core bright but averted vision need to see hints of the long fine shape. NGC 4559 - Very faint. Just visible with averted vision and wobbling. Paused to let clouds pass Melotte 111 - observed in the finder. NGC 4494 - Small and compact with averted vision. Now very cold and more clouds appearing, so called it a night after a quick visit to M13 I'm fed up with the street light in the lane at the end of the garden. Once the trees are in leaf, it'll be hidden to a certain extent. But the real pain is the way it illuminates the rear of all the houses in our street. It makes it impossible to get dark adaption. I'll need to investigate a hood/cover of some kind. Luckily, the local street lights are being replaced with LEDs in the Autumn. I'll take that opportunity to make sure a decent shield is installed.

The US chap that used to supply the high quality red filter plastic for such purposes has 'retired' now, too. I'm in the market for something suitable. Is there anything to be aware of regarding the type of plastic, so that the touch screen continues to work?

I love it after a good night, when suddenly there's half a dozen new threads in the Observing - Reports section!

Doh! Sorry - said Translucency not Transparency. I've been watching "The Boys" on those cloudy nights!

Congrats. The sky was nice and transparent last night and I could see the same of M51 as you - some actual structure even between the 2 cores. As for the hamburger, it helps to locate it if you look between two mag 11(ish) stars north of M66: PS - I think you might have M65 and M66 mixed up? It's a reflector you're using, isn't it?

If you can find those targets in the 70mm, you'll have a ball with the larger dob. Whereabouts are you / what sort of skies do you have there? It must be quite dark. These faint fuzzies don't require s stable atmosphere to be seen, they require translucency. Seeing and translucence are different and often conflicting conditions.

I'm inside warming up and because some high clouds rolled in. I'll give it 30 minutes and if it's not cleared, call it a night. Saw some new galaxies tonight. In Canes Venatici: M63 (Sunflower), NGC 5005 and NGC 5033. Some of the old faves too.

There is a free version of SkySafari. The Plus and Pro versions cost, though. They are often on special offer - so don't pay full price for them.

https://www.netweather.tv/charts-and-data/jetstream The VentuSky app is good, too.

This thread develops into a bit of a discussion about SkySafari:

The scopes outside, cooling down. Indeed - it's got a lot of cooling-down to do! It's back on with the winter observing gear!

Found another feature I haven't used before: "Observation Planning" Choose: 'Planner' from the Observations menu Select: 'Open Clusters', 'Globular Clusters', 'bright nebulae', 'planetary nebulae', 'galaxies'. magnitude 0-10 Constellation: Coma Berenices Do Search Make into Observation List and voila:

Yep, forget the seeing conditions tonight:

Note about the Manfrotto 055. If you are only going to be using it for a telescope mount, you won't need the 'Pro' version. As this only provides a way to have the extension bar mounted horizontally. The plain old non-Pro version is a little cheaper.

The rules in Scotland are a little different still. We are still not supposed to go more than 5 miles beyond the local authority boundary. My garden is supposedly 19.28 but it's a lot better looking North and East, as that's over the sea. There's a site used by local astro groups that is within the above limits, and that's 20.6 (using the light pollution map website). However, 25 miles away is a 21.75 site - but that should wait until the restrictions are lifted in 3 weeks (although that's full-moon time 🙄)

This is what I'm worried about when I get to start observing under properly dark skies. I'll need to up my game where it to paper charts.

Hi. What's the name of the filter app you are using? I think I'll try it out.

The Pro offers a lot of fainter objects over the Plus version. I've never felt the requirement to upgrade from Plus yet, though. But above the custom eyepiece/scope displays, the best feature worth the upgrade from basic to plus/pro is the observing lists feature. You can download ones (some from here) or create you own. Have them displayed on screen or just go through them manually. Add your own observing notes. For example, I created the list of Leo doubles one my tablet. It synced over to my phone (using their 'Live Sky service) and used that to organise my evening. I went through the list one by one, making notes of each observation. If I observed something that wasn't on the list, like a galaxy that was nearby, I can still make an observation, as the night's session is stored separately from the observing list. Later on, if I'm looking at an object, I can list all the times I've ever noted an observation of this object, and look back on the notes I made. All of this is synced across devices and on their web portal, too. Plus and Pro have scope control too, if that's your thing.

Blimey! I never knew that! I have the plus version for the observing lists functionality. I've got the app running on Android. It lacks the useful screen colour customization function of an iPhone, though.

I've worked out a way of finding targets that works pretty well for me. I'm using SkySafari at the eyepiece, though. I use the Telrad to get to the nearest naked-eye star (which is limited in my back garden skies) and then use my 60mm RACI finder with the SkySafari app. The finder's FOV is a bit bigger than the outer Telrad circle on the app display, which makes it pretty easy to compare the 2 views. Sometimes I wonder if I should have one eye on the finder and the other on the app! My finder shows just the right magnitude of stars when compared to the app, so I have little trouble matching the two views. It's slightly bigger aperture means I don't have to move to the eyepiece until the last minute, since I can often see the target in the finder (unless it's very faint). Once I'm at the eyepiece, I find star-hopping a little trickier and it's easy to get lost. I must admit to my high-tech way of changing the app display to match the reflector view - I turn the phone upside-down in my hand! 😳 It's easy to get lost with the Virgo galaxies, though - as they are in quite a featureless area of the sky I gave up with the charts in Turn Left at Orion as I find the app much easier. Have you seen the book "Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders" by Thompson and Thompson? It's pretty good and a bit of a 'next-step up' from TLAO. But (and it's a big BUT) this is all very well in my light-polluted back garden, but I know one thing: when I get to a proper dark sky, I'm going to be lost! For one, I doubt I will be able to use the app without restricting my dark adaption. I've got it at the lowest brightness and in 'night mode' (red), but little things aren't always red and I doubt the lowest brightness is low enough. I've been hacking an old Kindle Fire to get it working with SkySafari, and might even get some red acetate to cover the screen. But if I need to start using paper charts properly, it'll be a steep learning curve. Also, the big RACI finder might be a little too large. Some people have warned that it might just show too much in a dark site, and be hard to locate star-hopping pointers. In which case I'll have to either make an aperture mask to stop it down a bit, or just swap in the smaller 6x30 from the ST80.

I've never really gotten my head around the angular positions, esp in a reflector. So today was a school day and I did some research on it, mainly from a few websites on measuring double-stars. So now I get it and as you said: Kappa Leonis' secondary is SSW of the primary (211 deg). I later had a look in Turn Left at Orion and they have a diagram in there! Anyway, what I thought might have been the secondary flitting in and out of visibility was in the correct position, after all.