HutchStar

1 hour ago, Mr Thingy said:

The local council for my area switched ours to LED a few years back. It made a massive improvement. 

They also get turned off at 11pm.

The way it should be in my opinion. At the very least they should turn off say, 50% of them at 11 and have all off by midnight.

Round by me they don't turn off until 20 past 1 (or 20 past 2 in the summer) and they're back on again a few hours later. 

So like most places in the UK my local council is slowly changing all of the old sodium street lights into the dazzling bright white LED lights. I'd been pretty annoyed about this because I have a street light directly outside my bedroom window and (more importantly) a couple visible from my back garden which I was worried would ruin astronomy.

However, few nights ago I happened to be walking through an area which had been completely switched over to the new street lights and I was pleasantly surprised. The lights themselves were very bright and would kill your night vision if you looked directly at them, but the area between the lights was lovely and dark. The light seemed to be very carefully directed with very little spillover into the sky or across the road.

I'm now starting to wonder if this switchover isn't so bad after all. My back garden is bathed in orange light all night at the moment, maybe it'll actually be dark once the LED street lights are put in. 

Anyone else noticed an improvement with LED streetlights?

Tonight I saw the black eye galaxy and the needle galaxy for the first time. The needle galaxy was actually very difficult to make out, seemed to drift in and out of view. Not sure if its always like that or as you say the transparency isn't good?

Either way, pleased with my nights observing. Although it was shorter than I hoped for because the cold got to me. Now sat up against the radiator waiting to get feeling back in my toes 😆

17 minutes ago, Andy ES said:

This one is pretty toe curling ! 😬

 

Watched this last night. Had me in stitches, he's a very funny guy with a dry sense of humour.

You'd think given the sudden interest in astronomy now would be the perfect time to make some decent shows about stargazing.

23 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Looks like the bits to camera of the Jan episode were filmed last autumn given some leaves still on trees and lots of freshly fallen leaves on the ground.

Pity they couldn’t hand the missing Feb and March episodes over to Pete L for some decent observational astronomy.

"On tonights Episode of the Sky at Night I'll be showing you how to get some really good images of clouds"

13 minutes ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

Do you own some binos or has your 8" scope got a 50mm finderscope? If so place alpha Tri (Mothallah) in the centre of your FOV. About 5 degrees looking towards Andromeda you will pick up a 6 mag star. Extend your line a further 5 degrees and you will see this hazy glow (M33). I often sit in a reclining chair and view M33 with binos. 

On a good clear night with good transparency you should pick up NGC 604.

I do have a finder scope. I'll try this out, thanks!

39 minutes ago, John said:

M33 is another where the stated magnitude is very misleading as a guide to potential visibility because it is an extended object and the actual surface brightness of the galaxy is much lower than the integrated magnitude figure of 5.7. As a face on spiral it does have a core but the brightness of that area is not much greater than that of the spiral arms that surround it.

I have never seen M33 naked eye but I have seen it with 7x35 binoculars on a dark night here. Through scopes quite often and it is worth finding because it is one of the very few galaxies that contain deep sky objects (nebulae in this case) that can be seen fairly readily with amateur scopes, the star forming HII region NGC 604 in particular. The trick is to find M33 in the first place though !

 

I'm trying with an 8 inch reflector. 48 times magnification. Do I need more magnification or less?

Diplomat when explaining to the wife why I need to spend more money.

I found M1 relatively easily but I can see why people struggle. Think it was a fluke I found it because calling it a smudge would be overstating it. It was a whisp of a smudge which I just happened to catch a glimpse of in the corner of my eye.

The messier object thats driving me nuts at the moment is M33, pinwheel galaxy. I feel like it should be easy-ish to see but I've tried for hours without luck.

On 05/01/2021 at 14:26, maw lod qan said:

I watch every program I can find about our exploration of the solar system.

I am just amazed at the dedication the scientists and engineers have with these missions.

With everything they have discovered,  I can't believe there is still so many who look at it as a waste of money.

 

 

I do get exasperated when I see people say we shouldn't invest in space exploration because of XYZ problem on Earth which needs the money. 

I fully understand the sentiment but wish they could see investing in space, science and technology will help improve our lives on Earth. Both in the short term and for generations to come.

I watched this last week. Absurdly superb, may rewatch soon.

Highlight for me was this part;

Q: "What would you say to Galileo if he walked in the room right now?"

A: "How are you still alive?".

😆

On 26/11/2020 at 01:30, malc-c said:

A few years ago I had an issue with my 200P, and there was several members positive that the issue (additional diffraction spikes) was down to poor collimation.) was down to poor collimation  The thread ran for almost a year, and in that time I must have stripped the mirrors out, reassembled them and collomated the optics fifty times.  In the end it was proven that the issue was a manufacturing defect in how the stock secondary was coated, and the close tolerances in the focal path that was the cause not poor collimation, but all that collimation practice was good to learn.  Not to say that I'm an expert, there are guys on here with scopes that require fine tuning and the collimation has to be within a really tight margin of error, and are thus far more experienced in the subject than I am.

What telescope have you got?

Where abouts in the world are you?

It maybe that someone is local to you and could pop along with a collimator and set you up, and thus teach you the process. 

It's a skywatcher 200p. 

I'm in the South West. Was thinking I'll probably look at joining a club once lockdowns are over. In the meantime I'm just relying on online guides and this forum for all my questions.

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

In my opinion its better, but you are still not there yet.

Ignore the spider web on the mirror, I was in the process of cleaning the scope, and was documenting collimation before i removed the mirrors.  This is what you are trying to achieve (this is on a 200P Explorer, your scope might look a little different).  It wasn't great getting the image, and the camera was slightly off centre, but you can see how everything forms nice circles within a circle

If you then centre a bright star in the eyepiece or camera, and rack the focus all the way in both directions you should see concentric circles form

 

Thank you, I appreciate the pictures. I'll use them as a comparison in future.

Took the scope out tonight and its significantly better than it was. Still not perfect but I can get a clear focus again which is nice. Was able to find M81 and M82 for the first time which has really made my night.

All in all I feel like I'm just about getting the hang of this now. Will try to get the collimation even better tomorrow. 👍

Does this look any better? Apologies for the poor picture quality,  can try again if it's not clear.

4 hours ago, barkingsteve said:

Both your primary and secondary look off to me. Firstly concentrate on centering the secondary before tackling the primary. a laser collimator will not help with the secondary, i use a camera live view and mire de collimation over the top to help centre the secondary.

Ok thanks. I'll have another go tonight and see how I get on.

2 minutes ago, Ships and Stars said:

It doesn't look too bad in my humble opinion, a wee bit off in the centre, but I don't get too fussy if the stars will focus down to decent points of light. They can look like fuzzy, almost boiling blobs if the seeing conditions (not transparency) are poor. For example, nights when the stars really twinkle - that's actually a sign the jetstream is overhead or the atmosphere is unsteady. Also the mirror might not be cooled down or there are heat thermals rising off a roof or area you are viewing over, etc. Just thinking of other things that might affect this. 

I can see one of the primary holders in the bottom of the pic but not the other two, most guides call for all three showing equally, but I recall reading somewhere about secondary mirror offset and that some reflector telescopes may never have all three clamps showing in the Cheshire. But I am not 100% sure on that!

I'm a 'lazy collimator' and just use a cheap, non-barlowed laser to make sure the secondary is properly aligned so that the laser hits the centre of the primary mirror's white circle, then collimate the primary with the three screws on the bottom to get the laser into the bullseye on the collimator tool.

I then sometimes check it with a Cheshire, but don't think it was ever out enough to bother me. I'm a nebula and galaxy observer, no photography, so not too fixated on tight star points, but I do want things reasonably sharp. I tell a bit of a lie, I did stack some photos from an f4 dob which requires good collimation, and the stars were nice and tight on those, so can't be too far off to notice visually!

I'm sure others will weigh in here on this, it's a common topic that has a lot of different answers and opinions!

Thanks very much! It did cross my mind that the fuzziness was down to the atmosphere (or my scope still cooling) but I just couldn't shake the paranoia that I'd completely screwed up the collimation.

I've got a laser collimater coming this week which I hope will help.

Having read a few more guides I think my primary mirror is off?

Hi all. 

I'm really struggling with collimation. I've read multiple guides and watched videos but I just cant seem to get it right.

Pic attached is as good as I've managed. I know it's not perfect but is this at least usable? I've gone out with it and everything is a little fuzzy so I guess not? Unless I'm just imagining it?

Any tips would be much appreciated

Thanks all, lots of good advice here 

Hoping to get outside and have another go tonight. Kids go to bed at 8ish and its supposed to be clear until 10 so fingers crossed!

Hi all, so my telescope finally arrived this week. It's the skywatcher 200p dob, so far everything's going smoothly. Set it up ok, checked collimation which looked fine to me, got the finder scope lined up. Perfect.

Just 2 issues so far, was hoping for some advice.

1. I'm struggling to find any objects in the sky. I managed to find mars and the moon, but I've failed at finding specific stars/m31. I know the best way to find things is to star hop but when I look through the eye piece I struggle to work out which star is which. Any beginner tips?

2. When I was out tonight I got dew on both my eye pieces. I know I can get a dew shield for the telescope but is there anything I can do to stop it happening to my eye pieces? Or is there a way to dry them while I'm out? The scope was fine.

Thanks as always!

My guess is they've discovered a planet similar to our own.

Similar atmosphere composition, maybe oceans like ours. 

On 05/09/2020 at 00:57, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Hmm. It may be something to do with black holes and gravitational waves. Not quite as exciting to the masses as life existing somewhere.

14th September is the 5th anniversary of the first direct observation of gravitational waves... Coincidence?

 

 There was a journalist on twitter saying it was to do with "astrobiology" but theres an embargo on reporting until Monday.

6 hours ago, sporu said:

I'm new to astronomy and I don't really know what a good telescope would be, my max budget is 480€, does anyone know a good telescope that I could use to look at the planets, moon and take pictures with my phone? Or should I just get a dob? I really want to be able to take photographs but I'm unshure if I should just sacrifice it for a better visual experience.

And if so, is this a good option to get?

• skywatcher dobson telescope n 200/1200 skyliner classic dob
  • https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/skywatcher-dobson-telescope-n-200-1200-skyliner-classic-dob/p,4440

I may be missing something but first light optics has that exact telescope for £289 I believe.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-200p-dobsonian.html

Thanks all