crowlord

Coming home from work it seemed like it would be a clear night and i set up the big scope, only to have heavy clouds roll in. As the EQ5 takes a greater effort then the goto to set up I decided to wait it out, cover was broen enough to polar align so that was a bonus and was quickly and easily achieved I plant to place markers on my lawn (little slabs or something). To act as a hardstanding for the tripod and a ref point for orientation. With this in place polar will rarely be needed at all. One difference between thunderchild and suki is the collimation. Suki barely needs touching but Thunderchild has needed a tiny tweak every session. I say needed. I'm sure that to anyone but a perfectionist its collimation drift would be wholly undetectable. I decided to have a bit of a play with my P and S camera on the piggyback taking some largely unsuccessful 8 second shots. Had i waited longer i could probably have had a better result... next time i should get some before i pack up. With the skies suddenly becoming gloriously clear I decide to have a stroll through the heavens, after taking a look at Mizar and splitting it again i swung around to vega. It was obvious just how much the sky washes out in summer. However i managed to just make out Lyra and was sure i had a glimmering of the milky way to the left of it (stellarium confirms this, its the first time ive actively noticed this!). For the first time i consulted a book as i knew the double double was in lyra, but wasnt sure where. Pinning it down to episilon lyr, i then struggled to spot the target, with the finderscope view significantly more detailed then the sky I struggle to determine that i am viewing the right thing. After a while i settled on what i thought was the target and was clearly a binary split under 50x mag. Taking the mag up the double double was brilliantly clear with both binaries in different orientations. I should really have more confidence in my pointing skills! stellarium confirmed the target this morning. My book indicated that Hercules was a close neighbour to lyra so my next task was to locate this massive constellation. I finally made out the keystone asterism and began casting about for M13 which i am sure i saw in the early days with suki and was a diffuse smear of light. Scanning scanning, OMG. It leaped from the eyepiece at me! The great globular cluster in Hercules was truly great. With a massive number of specks of light in view I must have watched it for a good 30 mins, with each second seeming to note more and more in its densely packed field. I really cannot wait for darker skies if this is what washed out DSOs look like. M13 ticked off my list. The question was do i now look for another target while i wait for Jupiter or pack up and get some sleep. A quick check on stellarium cleared that one up for me. It wasn't due to appear over my house for a good hr at least. I decided to try for the Dumbell Nebula as i could set my circles on m13. As the coordinates neared however the control knobs on the mount clashed and i still haven't worked out how to read RA on the opposite side. As I had no other target in mind I decided to pack up rather then ruin the night with fustration. A great unexpected session given the truly dire recent weather and very enjoyable.

Clear night at last and finally a chance to get the new scope out. My clock drive arrived yesterday morning so i was even set up for tracking. My first task was to check the collimation which had drifted slightly but was still good. A little tweak. I then used Venus to align my finderscope. Rather frustratedly I couldn't get it in sight in the scope and the finder was out of focus. A quick search on the grail of knowledge SGL revealed how to focus the finder ...wow. I then continued my mission for finder alignment. After casting around a bit i finally spoted venus and managed to get then aligned. Just as i was starting to worry too. Again WOW. I dont know if it was a good night for it or if the optics made a difference the the phase was absolutely obvios and the view was my bet of venues ever. Considering how low to the horizen it was (i was actually looking THROUGH leaves) this was a great surprise and very welcome. My one concern was that the focus is quite high. Perhaps i will drop the primary a bit but it only really affected my 10mm ep with the 2X barlow on and this was solved by pulling it from the focuser a bit. I was then kicking my heels for the next task which was to polar align ( not truly necessary I expect but I think a very important skill to have). Once polaris was visible it took some tweaking to get the polar scope in the right direction (including some tripod shifting (and its heavy)) but once the elevation and azimuth had been tweaked it was bang in the reticle. I had heard mention that a RA spin should keep it on the line. This was done and it was spot on so I was well pleased :D Onto task 2 which was setting circles. ARRRGGGGH. I finally sussed the declination setting after some very odd slews but i really couldnt get the hang of RA what particulary threw me was how to read it when the scope was on the other side of the mount looking back? Any tips? It was then playtime and i strolled through a sea full of stars with a stupid grin on my face. Tube rotation was a pain but i dealt with i and ditto the need for a step as I am rather short. the zenith was a real stretch. So it was time to see what it could do.... Then i realized i really did need to learn the sky. S at N mage helped me to locate a few things i knew and I also used stellarium to find some more. The benefits of patio doors and a sleepy wife are great for night vision! Using some hunting, lots of hunting I finally found M57 in lyra. The difference between 5 and 8" apertures then was obvious as the ring was a stunning sight, like a donut hanging in the air! I too the mag up and tested the tracking which was admirably great compensating perfectly for the drift. My second target of the night was M51 which i had always failed to see with the goto. I worked out that it was on the same (nearly) RA as Mizar so a declination from that target should bag it. Mizar! Mizar was a surpise with my scope splitting the mizar / alcor binary in the finderscope. I was surprised to notice that mizar itself was also a double so lost some time watching that before I remembered my mission. The declination plan didn't work so I tried the circles again and was surprised when the worked. M51 was faint but undeniably there with its little buddy. Chalk up another M of the list. By then it was 130. As in a few days i have to be up at 5 for work and i need to swing the body clock around (yeah right) I decided to call it a night...after another stroll on the star studded carpet. My next job i guess is a nice astro book. Perhaps it is time for "Turn left at Orion"?

So, as i think I mentioned, I have been selling a slew of Doctor Who books on eBay (and making then a fortune in fees). This has resulted in my wonderful new 200P EQ5 setup. First impressions...its heavy. Second impressions. Assembled it is nigh on immovable...good. So i've been feeling the motions of it, blancing tubes and weights. Practicing slewing. Collimating (the secondary was awfully out, the primary not too bad). Setting up, breaking down. Checking out the polar scope. Mavelling at the silky smooth feel of a crayford over my R and P in the 130. Reading how to use setting circles, reading how to polar align. Reading it again. Printing it then reading it at the scope. Fiddling, thinking I understand it. Having a doubt, reading it again, fiddling some more. Being fairly sure i have it sussed. Setting up, waiting for clouds to clear so that I can at least get ONE LITTLE STAR to test my collimation and align the (huge) finderscope. Breaking it down. Swearing at the wife about the blooming country I live in! Then starting a run of 0000 - 0600 shifts with the distinct possibilty of lovely skies taunting me on my cctv cams, Then facing the chance of clear skies when i have my 6am starts and need to go to bed when it is still light. My poor thunderchild needs first light.... I never thought I would be wishing the summer away but PLEASE can we have some nice clear skies...as dark as you can make them. Roll on a nice clear and especially DARK winter... :mad: I can sort of assuage my frustration with the RA drive I have coming tomorrow... hang on...I'LL BE ASLEEP. DOH :iamwithstupid:

I have long been a lover of Doctor Who, in the 90s I collected the Virgin New adventures and the BBC books and its time to say goodbye. You see I now have a new passion. I want another telescope :D. If you have an interest in Doctor Who then it may be worth taking a look at my auctions. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/psonger/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Ok so I am in here typing, how odd. Really i am waiting for Jupiter to raise its head an am ill prepared for hunting. I have however caught: M31, its a kick to see Andromeda for some reason. Maybe its the name? It was a lovely clear fuzzie though (is that an oxymoron?) and was wonderful to behold. NGC 869 The Double Cluster looked gorgeous in my clear NE skies i could make out a myriad of pinpricks all trhough the clusters and centered on the ...well...centre! I then took a look at Almach, this was a wonderful binary which i split at 65mag but had an indication of its nature at 43mag. Taken to 130mag the split was clear but it was obvious my scope was reaching its limit and the seeing became poor (almach was quite low) seeing stars of wildly differing colours like this is breathtaking. I am now really just catching my breath and waiting for the big Jupes. I have a feeling my house will scupper i though so I may just go and stroll the skies...then off to bed.

An unexpected but welcome session greeted my shift swing night, with no work till 4pm tomorrow it was a great opportunity to get out and work on those messiers. I was firstly chuffed to discover that Venus could help me get early alignment! Using that as a 1st reference I could make the 130 slew to Arcturus which was still not visible to (my) the naked eye. Ditto Capella. I then had the sightly epic feeling of viewing saturn in near daylight! Very odd. TECH PROBLEMS Throughout the start of the session I had the oft quoted tech difficuties with my synscan resetting. I tracked this down to a battery that had popped from the holder. Very annoying and a design flaw (like the lack of a caddy to hold the pouch) After some tests of my IR filter on the toucam using my x2 barlow which i think showed some improvement but its hard to tell, I went on to DSOs as we were in full dark. I will give the IR a go on my x5 Barlow (if and when SnS send me the new one (old one had some poor optical coating)). If I still am not getting what I want its sell on time... LIGHT The bete noir of the street lamp has been dealt with today with a replacement SOX fitted and a light shield now in place. The difference is stunning! I am very pleased. I also noticed for the first time how poor the western sky is at this time of year (or it may be the LP from Peterborough I am seeing) Wheras the Eastern skies are studded with detail the west is very washed out. Winter well tell me if it is LP or just summer skies. As an additional annoyance my best aspect is the west with the east blocked by my gaff. I made a point tonight of locating Polaris. Making the eventual purchase of an EQ mount easier! DSOs Then i went onto my DSO hunting. I have now started logging these in excel so I am almost a proper astro nerd now! I even have a journal (which my daughter is jealous of (its just a lined notebook ( easy birthday pressie for her!))) M39 was an easy spot of a loose open cluster, I did suffer from FOV and perhaps I could do with a wider view EP...astro purchase is on the back burner. M5 was a nice capture and easy to get again. It was nice to confirm for my list. M13 in hercules was well resolved and I was pleased to see (imagine) some granularity in the cluster. M81 was a tricky one, i still am not sure but I think i had it and was swayed by the central brighter spot. I WANT MORE APERTURE! I then took in M3 which also showed some granularity M92 was a nice big fuzzy I then tried for M53 which was a dodgy one again. I think I had it. I finished with teh faint blur of M27 and decided to head for bed...where i failed to sleep. Mixed feelings about the goto today. I rushed through these sights...but can go back. Perhaps my next scope WILL be that big dob. Early days still and lots of sky learning to do...but it is coming. Clear Skies oh here is that lamppost

Quick update. My moon work last night was very satisfying and got me a 9 tile mosaic. On the flip side i underexposed saturn so badly that on 2 of the three clips you wouldn't know he is there at all! If at first and all that.

Last night really was just a play. A slow careful take your time, play. After some very dim footage of saturn and the moon were recorded it went off to bed and have just finished processing. By jove I think I have cracked it! Certainly the advice of underexposing by eye and enhancing after seems to work and with that in mind i present my best saturn yet and a (almost complete (doh)) lunar mosaic! [ATTACH]24[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]25[/ATTACH]

As a sufferer of depression yesterday was a bad day. Feeling frustrated and angry with no good reason at all. I had a nasty moment of doubt over the scope. had I done te right thing, did i buy the best scope, have i wasted my money etc. It occurrs to me that one way to dea with this is analyse it. It helps. My scope cost £240 and is one of these 130P Goto and after a month of ownership small niggles are getting to me... The focusser isnt at all accurate and quite tricky to get perfect, the mount isnt as sturdy as it could be, its altaz and i should have eq, is the aperture big enough, should i have got a refracter or a Maksutov? The only way to deal with these doubts is to look at them. 1) the focusser is cheap..its a cheap scope. A silky smooth one would cost as much as the scope did. My pockets are not that big. Live with it. 2) Ditto mount 3) yes i could have got eq but for the cost of the goto. I am a total nove and an EQ at this stage would probably result in extreme frustration. I am pretty sure that for the budget available i made the right choice. I still dont know if I want to sketch, Image or visual or a combo of all of them. I think imaging will never reach my expectations on my budget but all in all there is one final point that makes me feel better. WALK BEFORE YOU RUN Looking at my invoice I was amazed to notice I had only had the scope since 12th April. Thats only just over a month! I still have a lot to learn and to find out what I want. Of course once I do the resell value of a well kept scope should be quite high and I can have a far better idea of what suits ME. lastly though, after checking out the prices, barring a dobsy with a larger aperture (and no goto) i still have the best bang for my buck. One day I will have the knowledge to ditch the goto but until then it is essential to get me comfortable in what i do. After all i am not learning from anyone but myself out there and I am not the most patient of studants. Ramble over

The first chance of a clear night on a day when my offspring could enjoy it obviously had them excited. I was excited for different reasons. I could check my Collimation after moving the primary up the tube. This seemed to work for focusing the toucam without the barlow so result. First off we started to look at saturn...and waited for the clouds to [removed word] off again. I used the time to introduce Jessica to Arcturus, Vega, Pollux and Castor and Ursa Major. Emily got rather bored and after an almighty bang I discovered she hadnt expected the patio doors to be closed. I consoled her by ramping up the mag on saturn and had a satisfying "THATS AMAZING!!!" Jessica was logging what she learnt which was a very satisfying thing to see. I think she will make me very proud in the future. Once teh kids sloped off to bed i was left alone with clouds and the laptop trying to get some images of Saturn. I eventually got some which i will work on. I am coming to the conclusion though that imaging with my scope to a standard that i want is nigh on impossible. Maybe a more powerful barlow will give me the results i want but i doubt it. By this time the sky was totally clear. I took in beehive again as I love how easy it is to get. Just looking seemed to yeild more stars by the second so i drunk that in for a while. Then onto the random What can I find Game. I was pleased to resolve M5 as a lovely fuzzy glob. I tried for a few galaxies gain bu still with no joy. I am really missing a trick on those i think! Then i took a try at the ring nebula and was very pleased to get a clear resolution on it. Besides my very cold feet (better boots needed), cold nose (nothing can be done about THAT one) and my total inability to find a galaxy a very enjoyable night under the stars. Now I have to decide if a 3 or 4x or even a 5x barlow is actually worth it or do i just play with the moon. I am pretty sure i will never be satisfied with what i can achieve so its probably best to stop trying. Clear Skies people.

I set out determined to get a good image of Saturn tonight. I was using the Fuji s1000fd point and shoot bridge camera (Not quite a DSLR but not quite a compact) and was mounted afocally on a 25mm lens. The Skywatcher 25mm super cheapy lens seems to give me the best results but i do get some nasty chromatic aberrations, whetehr this is a collimation issue or the lense alignment or something else i dont know. I used the AVI mode to get some films that were hgely dissapointing, afocally the image is too small on my 640x480 mode to do anything with. I then decided to try for an afocal shot of the panet itself and remember in something idread a super overexposed shot to try for the moons. Success! Four moons i thought. It turns out to be three i don't know what the other spot is? The sky was quite clear bar some drifting higher level clouds so i knocked it on the head and went for some touring with the goto. After fruitlessly looking for some time my eyes simply were not seeing, probably due to... :mad::mad::mad::mad: But in the end i found my first fuzzy. The globular cluster M3. It wasn't spectacular in my EP but boy it felt good. So did my nice warm bed though as well! ADDED The forum shows its value yet again with assistance in labelling. Here is the correctly oriented and hopefully now correctly labelled saturn pic

I have just been working the most evil hellspawned shift pattern ever created. (5am wake up) and have actually been rather glad of the rubbish weather in the last few days. I managed to pop out a few days ago and just have a play with my newly collimated scope and was satisfied that it was performing better. I also wanted to use Venus (about the only target up there at 9pm for me) to checkif i had improved the stability. By the time the clouds had moved, so had Venus...behind the hedge:/ Packed up annoyed and cold and totally failed to sleep, swearing loudly at the clock when it told me to get up. Last night was better but not much. Again I was very tired but had the advantage of a minor lie in as I could stay in bed until 8am! The clouds where up but clearing nicely scope set up and... Bonsoir monseur cumulus. ARRRGH. So I sat on my cold slightly wet chair and waited...and waited...the Arcturus peeped up joining Vega in the sky. I quickly aligned and tried for Saturn, just visible through the clouds even though my eye couldn't see it i decided to try for some piccies and go for my bed as exhaustion was setting in. On the plus side this means the tripod stability WAS improved as it was very close on the goto slew. I tried with the afocal rig this time and managed to get my first (to me) acceptable afocal shots of saturn. I suspect i also got titan though it may have been a hot pixel! I have a couple of shots, ive tried registacking with little improvement and my best results so far have been with Lightroom. 1st is raw second is tweaked. Any suggestions on the best way to improve them? On the minus side my interest in planetary work is peaking rather then abating at the moment. Maybe its stil the first flush of success but its nice to be able to see so vividly the target rather then the nebulous DSOs, especially as my new friend is pretty much floodlighting (or so it feels) my yard right now. http://stargazerslounge.com/astro-lounge/103053-my-new-friend.html comparison with webcammed image (MS VX-1000 Lifecam)

I think it has shown me at the least what sort of mag i can expect with core scope and x2 barlow. I think if i did go for planetary imaging i would end up with the celestron (i really dont like fudging although im always looking out for the ds900 or toucam) At the moments my pockets are not deep enough and I am already getting those raised eyebrows whenever i mention "a bit of kit"! Thanks for the comments, oddly enough the cloud helped. The clear skys one was totally burnt out (light bleeding as if out of focus) and i had no way of putting a filter on, kludged as it was.

I was determined to get out last night. I sat at my PC checking out my VX1000 cheapo webcam and decided to have a play. I bit of fiddling got the case apart and the lens seen followed. The cam inself fist to the focal tube almost perfectly, just had to wait for night. The clouds moved swiftly in causing me huge alignment headaches. after a while i managed to get clear views of Capella and Acturus so we were go. I wanted the alignment for tracking (which i don't think works if not aligned). I had real problems until the cloud cleared to a beautifully clear night. The webcam was impressive and, considering it blatantly ISNT of the toucam etc standard caused me some mind wrangling (I recently decided that if i couldnt do it in my budget i wouldn't do it....looking is fun enough in itself.) As a technical study it was interesting and let me play with registax as well. I also got some moon footage but as it is near full really struggled to make out any details under the general wash of light. Here is Saturn anyway as the can really isn't up to it it has been put back where it belongs. interesting experiment nonetheless. I then went onto some Lunar 100 searching with little success. As i was getting cold by then and my back was becoming rather unhappy i had one last look around and another gaze at the moon, nearly filling my pants when a jest flew right across the moon! Packed up and got warm using the trusty bed based wife method.