skywatcher250

This looks fantastic. Worth a chilly night hey

Wow that is breathtaking

Nice mate !!! Really nice

Good lord I last wrote here in 2012 🥳 a car is essential but to be honest if you can find an area with no street lights away from east London, Colchester and other town areas were the cameras don’t do tooooo bad. I’m in Ig10 area and I’ve gotten some good star trails and such from my garden. Margaret Roding as knobby said is next on my list (with knobby) all welcome

That’s if the skies ever clear !!!

Haha co-founder and noob

Happy 2019 knobby 🤣

Suppose we have to meet up now hey knobby !!! Fellow Essex cloud dodgers ..... sorry I’ve been awol but I’m back

hey far side - yeh i totally agree - its still raining even now- 2 months of rain !!! o well - i have a neodymium filter which helps a lot for the moon and a little for saturn - useless with are though !

here is how it all began earlier tonight it has been a real juggling mission ensuring the wife sleeps as its her turn, the baby feeds, changes etc and also sleeps and i get outside, still at the time not knowing if i could get this "broken" mount to work - turns out i was broken Attempt 1 - in sheer excitement (i had a great feeling it would work) i carted it all outside, got everything set up (or so i thought) set the scope to north and to zero digs and then fired it up - i chose vega as 1st star of the 2 star alignment, looked through the finderscope got it dead centre and hit enter, found Spica as star 2 in my finder - immediately realised that it HAD worked and i needed to make a tiny adjustment. so excited at that point, i then looked through my 25mm lens and saw NOTHING at all, couldn't focus on anything at all.. tried the 10mm - nothing panic set in - i assumed the second mirror has dissolved or something far worse, fallen and cracked the primary mirror - it took me about 2 full minutes to realise that the CAP was on still and the tube was not extended !!!!!! in other words i took the cap off the end, but thats it... idiot boy. Attempt 2 - even more excited now i knew it worked i followed the same star aligns.... i then put Saturn in and off it slewed... nothing - i worked this 1 out quickly. I had simply knocked the finder scope miles away so i lined it up and went for attempt 3. Baby starts to cry, ran in fed at a million miles an hour praying for no clouds or worse wet equipment from the non existent rain. 20 mins later attempt 3 Attempt 3 - finally there was Saturn, looking great - I'm still not sure about the collimation but it shouldn't matter when i get the replacement scope. now id seen saturn before - but it somehow looked better - knowing that it wouldn't shoot out of view i sat and marvelled. finally i punched in the ring nebula - until this point i had never ever seen any messieurs (in fact anything more than our moon and a few planets) wow - ok not really clear - had to use averted vision, no real colour to it just an averted ring - i hope that collimation on the new scope will resolve it better. i must have put in 15 different messiers, double closers etc in about 1 minute after that and impatiently waited... then m92 ! it looked as good as the pictures you can see online - just smaller as it was just my eye picking it up and not a camera - m92 - wow !!!!!! and thats the end of my night - i am going to sleep happy now. i know now that once the new scope arrives undented i can put it on my mount and just go for it - but collimated - i still need help please anyone local feeling generous for a pint or 2 haha clear skies all