Tiny Clanger

If you are thinking of spending £200- £300 now, and maybe upgrading in the future, and want a 150mm aperture Newtonian, It would be uncharacteristic for me not to suggest a heritage dob https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/sky-watcher-heritage-150p-flextube-dobsonian-telescope.html £250, 150mm , same mirror as the Explorer 150. Easy to store, quick to deploy , it has a standard dovetail rail on the side which means you can transfer it to an alt/az mount on a tripod (an az4 or az5 would work fine ) if you prefer to try that in the future . Like any bargain package it has some less good points ( the focuser is not lovely) but for the price it is a (literally) wonderful 'scope. I bought mine as my first proper instrument a little over a year ago, sinve then I've bought a maksotov and a couple of refractors, but the hetitage dob is still my favourite and best . Heather

Shh ! Now you've told everyone that, I shall have far more competitors keen to buy when a 10mm comes up second hand

😞 Cloud a constant here unfortunately 😞 I'd seen that around 10pm the cloud was patchy and fast moving, so parked my speedy set-up 102 frac just inside the back door ready to deploy at a moment's notice, and went out every 10 minutes to see if there might be a gap in the right area, but the gaps closed up, and not a thing to see. Ah well, next time, eh ? Heather

I just read the binocular sky email and came here to start a thread if none had already appeared, I add my good wishes for a speedy recovery, Heather

Good to know,thanks both, I thought someone would have suitable experience . If I didn't already have a few first-upgrade type plossls making a very light and compact little portable kit (to go with my cheap 'fracs,) I'd be sorely tempted by the Baader ortho set as a bargain travel option. Unless it has changed since I last looked, 3 orthos , a 32mm plossl and a 2x barlow ( plus a turret thing I'd probably never use )for under £200 . Heather

I was thinking the same , I've both and they work well in my 127 mak. If you are specifically wanting a 10mm though , and not bothered by narrow FOV and short eye relief , rather than replace the lost plossl ( there's a tongue twister waiting there 🙂 ) with another the same, you could maybe investigate a Baader ortho ? I bought a 6mm second hand on here , didn't want to spend a lot on a 6mm as it was an experiment to see f it would push me into 'unbearably intrusive eye floater ' territory (answer , it's right on the edge ...) It's a good, tiny, light EP and on the odd occasion when conditions allow 250x mag views of the Moon in the mak it gives clear sharp views. They do a 10mm ortho too , it's about £50 new , I've never used that specific one, but it may be worth checking it out ,I'm sure someone will have experience of it . Heather

Looks like the cloud cover over the east Mid.s will not be budging any time soon 😞 , so I doubt I'll get a chance to see this, but thanks for the heads-up anyway ,I'll be prepared just in case. Heather

Assuming I'm looking at the correct refractor : Skymax 127 £319, Skywatcher 120ED pro £1399 The second image is better, but is it £1000 better ? Heather

Probably just some Gaussians celebrating 🙂 "1796-07-10 Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers" Other possibilities https://www.onthisday.com/events/july/10

Just a couple of days shy of a whole month since I bought my 102mm Bresser 'frac (the 'S' version) and at last it actually got pointed at the night sky 🙂 . First use of my even newer TS AZT6 too. Proved to be a fun combo, and a worthwhile upgrade from the ST80 as a grab & go setup. Got a decent (if tiny) view of the Ring Nebula with it . It did a really nice job on the double cluster, but CA made Jupiter less than lovely. Heather

Definitions of 'budget' eyepiece differ widely 🙂 , if you specify what your budget is , it would be easier for answers to be relevant . The range of prices , makes and models is dizzying, basic plossls from reputable brands come in at around £20-£30 each, and would be a step up from the K (Kellner) ones in your bundle . Apparently there can be difficulties with the short eye relief on higher magnification (low mm ) plossls though for spectacle wearers , no idea if that affects anyone using your 'scope. This is a good thread packed with information

Ah, sorry Stu, my mistake, I conflated Phillip's answer with the reply which seemed to suggest somehow using a large filter sheet around an RDF . An abundance of caution is what I feel , as a beginner in solar observing on a budget. Heather

Loads on offer on the big river, here's the search results

Those are photographic filter wrenches 🙂 Heather

Don't think it was Stu who said that, and it certainly wasn't me either 🙂 Heather

Would that work for an RDF ? That is the finder the OP says they have ... I don't think it would be possible to use safely.

I suspect that's a red dot finder, while it won't magnify , it would still need you to look at the Sun to line it up , which wouldn't be wise. I roughly align my 'scope by using the shadow as you describe, but take a bit of white card out to do that with, because I observe from the grass, where the shadow is not sharp ( my lawn being more 'rough pasture' than 'bowling green' ) . It would be easy to make a solar finder , many work on the pinhole camera principle, so a tube or box (I'd go for smarties, purely to have the excuse to eat the contents) or even an open structure , all you need is a pinhole at the centre of the front end , and a screen at the rear. Foil with a pin hole and a tracing paper screen would be fine. You get a tiny (inverted) image of the Sun as a dot on the screen when you are lined up. The length of the tube will affect the precision of the finder, a short tube will have a wider angle of view, so it might be necessary to fiddle around to find the optimum length. If there's no tracing paper handy, an open top side tube projecting the Sun image onto the inside back end, like a projector screen, ought to work too . The aperture of a pinhole is so small there shouldn't be a worry about the Sun's image on the tracing paper getting hot, but I'd probably take the thing off the 'scope once the Sun was located .... just in case 🙂 Heather

I'll echo all of the above. I'm in a suburban area, with a 150 dob , and am keen on seeing the faint fuzzies , but have learned that quite apart from any limitations of my kit, there are many factors out of my control which affect my chances. I've managed a good few of the easier targets when the conditions are right though, so here's what works best for me: I'd assume you are, like me, in a light polluted area, as (I'm told ) such things are far easier to see from dark sites . But all my observing so far has been done during lockdown from my garden ! A dark night . Not many of those right now, the best, darkest time in summer is an hour or so each side of 1am ( it would be midnight except for BST) Round here every other street light is turned off at midnight to save electricity, and by then the neighbours have stopped illuminating their conservatories like lighthouses too., so I aim to observe in the early hours. No Moon in the sky. If the Moon is up, it or any bright planets are what I observe, not faint challenging DSOs I also ensure any of my house lights which illuminate the garden even slightly, are off. A towel or similar, draped over head & eyepiece can help in a light polluted area. A target fairly high in the sky. The lower you look, the more thickness of atmosphere you are peering through. Fully light adapted eyes. I'll spend some time faffing with the 'scope, looking at the sky with the naked eye, or observing easy targets for half an hour, it takes at least that long for my eyes to properly adapt. Averted vision: looking to the side of the target really works. As for equipment, I've both a rigel quickfinder (with circles like the telrad) and a 9x50 optical finder , and use those to star jump when I can. When that proves difficult, I've quite often used a combination of a £13 electronic level (little thing that runs off one AAA cell, and has a magnetic base , so sticks on my dob) and stellarium set to show me the current alt and az of a target, With the little box showing me the alt angle with very good accuracy I just have to use it to set the tilt of the 'scope, then pan slowly across the correct area to hunt a object out. For finding faint stuff I usually use a 32mm plossl or an 18mm BST starguider initially, only swapping to something with higher mag if and when I get to see my target. 18mm is the 'sweet spot' for my setup, local conditions and eyesight, apparently. It gives me the greatest contrast between sky and fuzzy thing. Our eyes are better at spotting and recognising edges of shapes than gentle gradients of brightness, so you want to have as contrasty an image as possible to distinguish faint fuzzies from a fairly bright sky. There's plenty of info to read on here about exit pupil, which is an important factor in this. Final thought : M31, Andromeda, sounds as if it ought to be an easy target , right ? I thought so, I mean, it's huge ! So I thought when I got my dob this time last year. I spent a few frustrating evenings not seeing it , despite being bloomin' sure I was pointing the 'scope straight at it .Then one warm summer night I went out with a camping mat, pillow and binoculars to just lie on the grass and watch for a meteor shower , the Perseids in August. About an hour after settling down I saw something out of the corner of my eye , a vague grey fuzz in the sky ... no ! It can't be ... but , it's in the right area ... Yep, after several evenings of annoyingly fruitless effort trying to see M31, I'd seen it entirely by accident with the naked eye. Got it in the binoculars , then went in and fetched the dob (without turning any light on indoors so as to preserve my night vision) and managed to see a very underwhelming slightly brighter, thin cotton-wool ball, the bright centre of Andromeda. It looked better in the binos. to be honest. After that, I could see Andromeda with the naked eye on subsequent nights, no problem, my brain knew what to expect. It's one of the fascinating things about astro observing, quite apart from all the kit and technology, the correct aiming etc, you actually have to teach your eyes and mind what to look for. It's frustrating to start with, but stick with it, persistence pays off eventually. I'd suggest you have a shot at M81 & M82, Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, small , but high in the sky and easy to navigate to from the Plough, not to mention 2 for the price of 1 🙂 Heather

I just did some idle searching on the big river site, it seems some advertisers there are calling their dreadful eyepiece 'Sun' filters 'nebula' and 'not to be used for the Sun', despite the word 'Sun' apparently being printed on the filter ring ... This particular specimen has a very appropriate brand name though, if it wasn't such a hazard to eyesight it would be funny :

I had very similar concerns, after absorbing a lifetime's worth of 'never look directly at the Sun ' warnings. So, I started by making a small aperture mask for my little ST80, which has a similar hole in the lens cap arrangement . That worked fine, after observing for several minutes I could still see ! Reassured , I made a full aperture filter for the ST80. Again , the 'scope and my eyes survived unscathed, so I got really bold and made a full aperture (just enough film left, I'd been careful to use the area as sensibly as I could) for my 127 mak. They all work fine, but as you'd expect there's more detail when using the higher aperture instruments . Before each use I hold the filter up and check it for tears or holes, then fit the little solar finder I bought in place of whatever optical night time finder I had on the 'scope before removing the cap and putting the solar filter on in its place. The eyepiece goes in last. I feel having a set routine makes it less likely I'll be distracted and do something daft one day ! Heather

WD40 is really great for getting sticky labels off things though

For anyone interested in how Voyager1 & 2 are doing : https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Thanks for that, I have a huge backlog of downloaded beeb programs I'm working through, including '100 objects', Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics, Inside Science, Material World, Mastertapes , Ramblings, and others ... Have you come across the World service production , '13 minutes to the Moon' ? I just finished listening to series 1, an ideal topic for the radio, a documentary on the first Moon landing using not only interviews with NASA folk , but a very good and knowledgeable presenter in Kevin Fong who explains what we hear in the original comm.s , and what lay behind what they said. Fascinating stuff online listening https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p083t547 or downloadable mp3s https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads Series 2 concerns Apollo 13, That's next on my list 🙂 Heather

If there's no problem ...

Can't not think of Carl Sagan's famous words on the image of Earth taken by Voyager1 as it left our little Solar System 30 years ago "We succeeded in taking that picture , and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."