Tiny Clanger

If it's not obviously misaligned, I'd leave it as it is. This quote explains the role of the secondary : "It’s important to remember though that even though adjusting the secondary is the most involved part of the process, it’s also the least important. So long as you can see the whole primary reflected in the secondary, you’ll be fine. And you won’t have to mess with it very often either. Indeed, I’ve gone years without having to touch the secondary mirror in some of my telescopes. Just remember it’s just a flat piece of glass with no optical power — all it does is divert light from the primary mirror out the side of the tube." That's from this page https://garyseronik.com/a-beginners-guide-to-collimation/ which I found was, for me, the clearest explanation out there on the subject. Heather

That was what I guessed I've absolutely no idea about the merits of glass vs film in terms of quality, Baader reckon film is better, but they would say that , wouldn't they 🙂 I'll be interested to see the results of your investigations Heather

I'd check out the recipes for humble (or umble) pie first , they sound ... offal Heather

That would be my assumption on the thickness factor & refraction. The Baader instructions say to drop the film vertically on to the prepared half of your cardboard frame sandwich , if I recall correctly they even specify a height to release if from 🙂 . I've spent some time trying to find the 'ripples are a good thing' statement, and was beginning to think I'd imagined it, but tracked it down at last, here it is : "Baader Solar Filters provide a professional and secure solution to observe and image the Sun using AstroSolar® Safety Film. Many ready made filters do stretch the filter material like a drumhead in order to make it look like a piece of glass – this absolutely does destroy the image quality, rendering the film useless for high magnification work. AstroSolar® must be mounted entirely stress free in order to perform like a high precision planeoptical window. It sounds like a contradiction with traditional perception of quality, but AstroSolar must show slight ripples! Only when the film is being put under stress by an improper cell mount it performs just like any single side coated glass-filter made of untreated floatglass. " It's from this page , which is actually for their filter frames : https://astrosolar.com/en/information/news-en/baader-solar-filter/

In the instruction sheet on how to make your own Baader film filter they explicitly say it should be wrinkled, not flat. I'd guess this is to avoid any mechanical damage done to the carrier layer by stretching it. Heather

Maybe ask on the cloudy nights forum, which is US based and might have observers in your area ? The vast majority of contributors on here are UK and EU based.

I agree entirely with this. Buy from a reputable source. FLO sent mine out in a card sleeve which handily provided enough corrugated card for most of my filter frames 🙂 While doing some speculative amazon searching for astro oddments a short time ago,, I tripped over a whole slew of Far East solar filter material which was definitely not Baader film, it included the words 'baader film' in the description, note the lower case 'b' . I'd have given the seller the benefit of the doubt, and accepted they might think 'baader film' was a name for a class of thing, like 'hoover' , and not a trade name, except for them naming their stuff something like Bayder solar film . Hmm. Doubting Amazon would do anything if I complained to them, I sent a link to Baader UK, and had an email back thanking me for bringing it to their attention, they have taken it up with amazon. Don't take risks, the proper stuff is only about £20. Heather

Today this arrived, all the way from Telescop-Express in Germany in just 3 working days , an AZT6 mount for my recently acquired (brand new, possibly the last one in the UK, and accidentally noticed on the website of a dealer I'd never heard of ) Bresser 102s 'frac . Keeping the set up German 🙂 well, except for the tripod, which is Italian ... Heather

Most remiss of me to have not thanked him publicly before now,but a pristine Baader finder shoe from @AndyThilo arrived in my post last Wednesday

Hello Northant.s , from me, a bit further north up the A6 🙂 Heather

+1 for the Baader solar film, unlike the filters which come with Bresser 'scopes, it does not give the Sun a yellow cast. One sheet (they are slightly less than A4) made filters for my 127 mak, my ST80 (full aperture) and two small filters suitable for the aperture mask built in to an ST80 dust cap. The Baader film has been used by many for years, so I trust it to keep my eyes safe, and I feel it is an advantage that it is relatively cheap, as I'd never be tempted to keep using a damaged one , replacing it would be financially painless. Heather

E for entice the cat in with treats, or my feline despot will either sit on the fence or shed or pergola, basically anywhere high I might want to point the 'scope. Or she will nip three doors down and trip their zillion watt outdoor light, blinding me for several minutes. Or she will trip me up in the dark. "What do you mean, I'm in the way ?"

I don't think anyone has mentioned the need to let the telescope adjust to the ambient temperature yet ? We generally think of this as 'cooling' in the UK , but OP does not mention where they are, so who knows, it could be warming from aircon that's required ... My mak needs at least 20 minutes , ideally more, to equalise its temperature with the night air, and not have internal air currents make the view poor. Low angle of view means you are looking through a greater thickness of atmosphere, which obviously impacts the view, as does any cloud. Plenty of information out there on the subject of weather, transparency and seeing, e.g. https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-equipment/beating-the-seeing/ https://www.accuweather.com/en/space-news/the-best-weather-for-stargazing/693840 https://www.handprint.com/ASTRO/seeing3.html#evaluation

Magnification is, once you have a theoretical limit set by your telescope, limited by the atmospheric conditions. I've not yet found a need to go beyond 200x , and my highest useable combo (127 mak with a focal length of 1500mm and 8mm BST eyepiece) gives 187.5x . I have a 6mm ep too, but with that 'scope it shows my eye floaters so much I'd not want to use it much. I've used the 187.5x to view Mars when it was well placed, and the Moon too, but on most nights the conditions are just not good enough to push the magnification that high, so I'll try a 12mm or 15mm instead,which will give a better, if less magnified, view. That's why people buy several eyepieces (or a zoom eyepiece) , magnification is not everything. Wait until you have the chance to use the kit you already have to view the planet, , only you , viewing from where you are, with your 'scope on your mount will be able to decide for sure what you need or don't need. Heather

I really like the clear straightforward and well illustrated 'Sky Notes' put up by Whitby & District astro soc, here http://www.whitby-astronomers.com/sky-notes/sky-notes-july-2021 well worth searching out the binocular sky newsletter too , you can find out about it in, you guessed it, the binocular section on here. Heather

^^^ what they said ! 🙂 Heather

It's never easy to explain such things accurately and simply in words, but ... Imagine the planets going around the Sun in a series of tracks, the inner track planets (like us) have a shorter way to go, so out year / orbit/ circuit is far shorter than the further out planets . What happens is that we lap those further out planets. Probably still not clear, so here's a lovely animation to play with, set the speed to one second = a month or faster, tick animate and watch what happens https://theskylive.com/3dsolarsystem?objs=15p|c2019l3|7p|c2020t2&date=2021-07-01&h=20&m=41& Heather

I'm not saying the excited scampering didn't have any impact on your view 🙂 , just probably not as much as the brightening sky ! I use Stellarium as a down loaded, offline program on a windows laptop, and a windows tablet, https://stellarium.org/ it also has a slightly lower featured online version https://stellarium-web.org/ There's an app version too, but I'm not keen on tiny screen phone views, so no idea if it's good or not. There are many other apps available, , a lot of folk on here like Sky Safari, there's a fairly recent thread about apps here

Yep, I had a similar unexpected bonus view at 3 am on the 22nd of June (which happened to be exactly one year since I bought my heritage dob and had my first view of Jupiter's * rings when I got it home 🙂 Happy Birthday , little dob ! ) I'd been DSO spotting, but as I packed away because the sky was getting light, there was a bright 'star' . Jupiter was pretty low , and just over a neighbour's roof, not great seeing, I tried an 8mm BST which was a bit doubtful and a 12mm BST , which worked better , only 63x but decent views. Unfortunately Saturn was coyly hiding behind a ruddy great tree 😞 Certainly whetted my appetite for views to come of the gas giants ! Heather * Ha ha, you knew I meant Saturn, I knew I meant Saturn, my fingers typed Jupiter. I've given them a good telling off.

Told you you'd be impressed with the little dob 🙂 First step on a long, exciting , involving journey, plenty to learn, so much to explore. Here's a portion of a screenshot from Stellarium showing Jupiter at 4.30 am today , pretty much due south, and it was only about 20 degrees from the Moon, so not only the sky brightening from the sunrise, but also moonlight, which probably together swamped Saturn to a difficult to make out with the naked eye target . It also explains why the background sky in the image shows so light and blue ! Heather

I bought one last winter. I needed something to go in the ST80 OTA I bought second hand , and having tried the flimsy horrid stock skywatcher one I'd got handy (which came with my mak ,but was very speedily replaced) I reckoned hardly anything could be worse. This one you linked to was sold by so many Chinese companies via Amazon that you can see completely identical photos on dozens of listings going for anything from £9 to £35. Mine is pretty good, sturdier and brighter than the skywatcher stock one, (which is, in turn, better than the Bresser stock one !) I'd go for it ... as long as you buy one which is being delivered by Amazon rather than coming by post from China, you'll have no problems sending it back if it doesn't work as you wish. One caution : I've bought a few things where the vendor sent something not quite as per the photo, sometimes they seem to just rip off an existing ad.s illustrations even if their item is different in a detail you particularly wanted, I doubt the middlemen who source the stuff appreciate the importance of some details , like which side the eyepiece locking screw is on ... Heather

Thank you for that, I do have printed maps, in dob and 'true' orientation, but gave up on them as I generally use the mak when looking at the Moon, I now use Virtual Moon Atlas on a windows tablet computer, it removes all (well, most ) of my Lunar confusion because I can set it to whichever orientation I need to match the 'scope, also it shows the terminator as it is at the date/time, a great help ! I also find the photographic view easier to reconcile with what I see than a map illustration, a year of observing at every opportunity, and I'm still very much a beginner ! Still, I do really like a nice paper map, so if I can track down a mirror image version of the field map, I may just buy one 🙂 Heather

Thank you, I record the sunspots I see with a very simple pencil sketch, which is as seen at the eyepiece of my refractor or mak (so E/W reversed) , I'm after simplicity there, but routinely note the image orientation along with the date and time. I've seen photos which match my sketches, and 'proper way round' views too, and my liking for order and complete information made me a bit disappointed that there was no note of the orientation. I'd like to assume an image with no such note was always simply the 'correct' view, but evidently it isn't ! With so few sunspots at the moment it's not really causing me much confusion, but who knows what the future may bring 🙂 At least I don't use my heritage dob for solar, the open front and non-circular outer shape wouldn't be good, so it's not as confusing an orientation problem as I have when switching from dob to mak and getting lost on the Moon ... Heather

Nice. I only have clouds, clouds, and clouds here 😞 but good to see what is beyond them ... I have a beginner's question , is there a convention for solar image orientation ? I'm pretty sure in the past I've seen on here both images which replicate my visual , frac + diagonal view, i.e right way up, E-W flipped, and also 'all correct' images . Heather

I do hope you & Riktenstein will be coming up with a BAT theme song ... perhaps something along the lines of: 'Like a BAT imaging the heavens, I'll be gone when morning comes ... ' Seriously, love the vids, and even tho' astro photog. is not my thing, I'll enjoy watching the outcome of the project Heather