Tiny Clanger

Welcome ! That certainly is a long first post 🙂 I only have time to make a few short responses though ... I think you have made a really good start by beginning with binoculars and finding your way around the sky. Your telescope is not a fabulous , expensive refractor , but as long as you don't expect too much from it , it will show you plenty. I'd suggest you search out the threads on here which talk about 'st80' telescopes, which are 80mm aperture, 400mm focal length cheap ones, very similar to yours, which will give you an idea of what may be possible, and how to get the best out of yours. If you have , or can borrow, a photo tripod with a pan tilt head , and if your telescope has a suitable socket for a standard photo tripod screw , you could try your 'scope on that. It might be a steadier, easier to adjust mount for your telescope than the one which comes with it. I use my st80 on a photo tripod, and it works very well. If you can't use a photo tripod, try improving the one you have by adding a weight of some kind , a bag with some stones, or a plastic bottle of water , hanging off the centre of the tripod. This adds some mass and steadies the thing. The reflector 'wrong way up' effect is only really a confusion for me when I am looking at the Moon or Mars , and using maps to identify features, so I don't think it is a worry ! Heather

Like everyone else I can only comment on my immediate , back garden area during lockdown (and it isn't over yet ... ) but in my bit of suburban/rural transition , neighbours lockdown spending on cheap garden lighting last summer has significantly raised the light pollution, and with a sickly blue glow at that 😞 Heather

Here's a report from someone who actually owned and used that 'scope a few years ago:

Nice report, I suspect clusters are the way to go in polluted skies, they certainly seem to be the things I can manage to see ! Like you, I've looked straight at the Rosette Nebula for sometime hoping to perceive it , had a suspicion of a hint of a vague redness, but not confident it was anything but wishful thinking on my part ! I'm not saying anything about the Leo Triplet either,it's a sore point ... I we all need to get to darker skies ! Heather

I have a skymax 127, and use it on an az5 mount. I have no intention of using it for astrophotography, so see little point in an eq mount. Be aware that maks do need time to cool down if taken outside from a warm room , I usually leave mine outside for 30 minutes before using it. I've said on other threads in the past, that I think I'd have found it difficult to find objects in the narrow field of view of the mak if I'd bought it as a first telescope, and hadn't spent time with a 150 heritage dobsonian first, but the mak is a very good, compact 'scope for viewing the Moon and planets.

Taking words in common use and using them with a precise meaning in a scientific context is fraught with difficulties : force for instance ... is it a deliberate , intention to make someone or something do whatever ? Or a collective noun for police or soldiers, or the physics definition, which is neither, but subtly similar to the first definition in some ways, which provides problems when talking about forces when teaching science. In the context of the study of ecologies, food pyramids etc, predation is eating. I've no idea about harvesting vs. slaughter as subtle distinctions in energy relationships , I've tried in the past to get my head around the relatively simple stuff, which includes a whole extra set of relationships for the decay and consumption of carrion , and that is complex enough. Symbiotic relationships (which come in varying degrees of mutual benefit, from the 'we need both of us to live', to the 'parasite kills host' , it's a whole other, fascinating subject on its own, I recommend you look it up ) are no doubt accounted for somewhere in the ecologist's understanding, but as I said, I'm no expert and don't claim more than an interested amateurs knowledge. I do know that plants which produce fruit don't do it for no reason, again it takes energy and if it were not a useful survival trait it simply would not evolve naturally . Flowers are adverts to pollinating insects : they say 'land here, nectar available' and arrange it so pollen is brushed off on the bug and transferred to the next flower, enabling sexual reproduction. Fruit and berries are just tempting wrapping for seeds, to encourage animals to carry them elsewhere to grow away from the parent plant. As the old joke goes, when you eat your bacon & eggs for breakfast , the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed .

Energy is plentiful, but the trick is converting that energy efficiently to something you can use . I've no time to check this (things to do, people to annoy) but I seem to recall the conversion rate for sunlight to energy in green plants is below 10%.

I'm not saying life on Earth is the only template for life, far from it, as a fan of SF I'm very happy to accept the possibilities suggested by writers whose imaginations far outstrip mine. It's the processes though : if the laws of thermodynamics hold true across the universe, then life, whatever and wherever it might be , will be constantly fighting to acquire energy and combat entropy. On Earth, our 'producers' ( there are exceptions, but the vast majority of our producers) i.e the life forms which start the food chains , are green plants which get their energy from the Sun. Other 'higher' levels on the food chain (trophic levels is the term if you fancy doing some research) form what ecologists call an energy pyramid, with the top predator at the peak . That's the creature which eats but does not get eaten . That's us. First step in any food chain, producer sources of food/energy across the universe , I'd guess will be stars too. Maybe some life might use chemical or thermal energy (like the weird bacteria which occur deep in the ocean in hydrothermal vents and 'eat' hydrogen sulphide) Is one , straightforward, competition free , low energy pyramid life form possible ? Yes, I think it is. But I also suspect that where one life form appears, and thrives, you won't get a static , single type of life. Or if you do it won't last long : environments change , the waste products of that life accumulate, etc etc, and if the life form does not randomly mutate or vary in any way, it will not be able to continue as the environment changes around it. If it does change, and some successful changes happen to accommodate it (quite by accident) to the new conditions, it is evolving ... and off we go . I'm by no means an expert in this stuff, just an interested amateur with some geological um, grounding , the scientific advances made in evolutionary biology since they have been able to sequence DNA have been amazing, and ecology has become a huge complex web of knowledge from many disciplines , life is a complex thing ...

I read that.and thought the film would be about The Leakey's exploits in uncovering fossils ! It seems not 😉 There is a line given to a character in Babylon 5 by J.M Straczynski ( a perhaps surprisingly philosophical show considering the general shallowness of TV SF) which makes perfect sense to me : 'We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.'

Just a whistle away 🙂

A few years back the magazine 'Trail' tested waterproofing liquids for jackets etc, and found that fabric conditioner was almost as good a waterproofer as the expensive purpose made stuff. Why on earth anyone would use the stuff on towels etc defeats me . Rohan specifically says 'do not use fabric conditioner' on many clothing labels too, as the stuff reduces the fabric's breathability. Oh, and I just wanted my avatar near yours 🙂

Interesting. Predation (which in biology simply means the consumption of one life form by another, the energy moving up the food chain, so applies just as much to 'grass is eaten by cow' as it does to 'antelope is eaten by lion') is a driver of evolution though. A life form which is well suited to its environment (because natural selection stopped the individuals who couldn't cope with the temperature or other straightforward environmental factor from breeding ) can succeed in that environment. Success in this case is living and producing offspring . Predation complicates this. An apparently evolutionarily well fitted organism can fall prey to a predator * and further random genetic variations can throw up a variation more capable of survival in the face of that risk of predation. A classic example is the Peppered Moth. Would an environment without predation have organisms evolve the ability to see , smell, hear, run, hide, collaborate in a hunt ( and develop language to do that well ) , hide from a hunter, employ tools (chimps using twigs to get bugs out of crevices, thrushes using rocks as anvils to crack snail shells ) teach the offspring how to hunt and / or hide, imagine making tools which do not easily exist, flake bits off a flint nodule to form a new shape which is an ideal hand axe, note that fire has a remarkable effect on some specific rocks ... ? When I was an undergrad, one of our geology prof .s Sylvester-Bradley had quite a lot to say on the subject of evolution of life (when he wasn't enthusing about Ostracods) and he rather seemed to enjoy telling the students that it was all about sex. ( as teenagers, we didn't think an old bloke should be talking like that ... what did he know ?! He was as old as our parents ...) That it is all about sexual reproduction is at least partly true. More complex life on Earth mostly, (altho' parthenogenesis is common in simpler life forms) uses the combined chromosomes from two parents to produce a zygote which has the genetic 'blueprints' to build the offspring .That combination causes variation, that variation may be a good thing, a bad thing or an unimportant thing in evolutionary fitness terms. Sexual reproduction must be an important survival trait for the species though, because the process is not cost free to the creatures involved. So, for genetic variations which result in physical changes, evolution can sift for fitness to the environment, but then we need to combine chromosomes, and to drive evolution towards what we think of as intelligence , we need predation (as predator, prey or both). And then there's the concentration of energy as you go up the food chain, the effect which means many grazing creatures, one level up on the food chain from the producer (usually a green plant) at the bottom, have to eat all day, whilst the top predator (a lion or a human) can laze around for much of the day, surviving for some time on the energy tied up in the meat of a single successful hunt. With sexual reproduction, evolution, predation , and the concentration of energy high in food chains, it seems to me the likelihood of a delightful, peaceable Co-operative Socialist Collective of Intelligent Alien Life is quite low, if we are thinking of the sort of life which may be able to start to understand the universe in a scientific or mathematical way, and communicate with us. * examples of this abound, where animals like cats, rats, cane toads , grey squirrels etc have been introduced on to islands either on purpose or by accident , and had a terrible effect on the wildlife which evolved to live without those alien species predating on them.

I thought the chart was a homage (an homage ? Depends if you voice the 'h' or not when saying it ! ) to the Dad's Army opening titles , I'd like a TV weather forecast where those arrows were animated and advance and retreat ... A very good friend from uni. had their first job after their astrophysics degree at the Met office. Now,decades , several jobs in other areas, and a PhD later, they can still be instantly triggered to a spirited defence of weather forecasters just by a casual reference to inaccuracy ... Of course I never do such a thing to tease them .... Predictions have improved enormously since the met office got their own Cray in the 1990s (no I've no idea what that is, but I heard a lot about it over many dinners ... , ) for example look at the percentage likelihood of precipitation , it is a very good guide for the next day , and not bad for up to 5 days into the future. And I believe they are actually getting a shiny new super dooper computer soon 🙂 Heather

Got a good view at 250x with my mak, at around 00:30 to 1am Dorsa Harker was very clear, as were the two bright points that form the quadrangles north corners, the rest was less distinct but definitely visible. I really appreciate the heads up advance notice and helpful notes / illustrations for such things, thanks to all who post them 🙂 Heather

Welcome, Loughboro' dweller ! I'm just down the road ... If you specifically want a long focal length 'scope for planets and lunar work, a 102 or 127 mak would be a good compact choice , I use a 127 mak on an az5 head and a decades old manfrotto 55 tripod, and find the combination works really well . Personally I'd not want to try and use the 'scope at high magnification on planets without it being on a mount with slo mo controls (or, I suppose tracking, but I have no experience of that !) The 127 mak has a focal length of 1500mm , the 102 is a bit smaller, a bit lighter , and has a slightly shorter focal length of 1300mm . I don't think the difference in aperture between the two maks would be a worry for the bright objects you are considering as your main targets, and the 102, being lighter, could be used on a less expensive mount , for instance it is bundled with the az pronto mount and a tripod for £260 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/sky-watcher-skymax-102s-az-pronto.html or with an az gti mount if you fancy that, for £450 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/sky-watcher-skymax-102-az-gti.html On the other hand, the larger 127 on an az5 with tripod is a bit over your budget at£520 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/sky-watcher-skymax-102-az-gti.html but if you can use your own tripod, a 127 OTA is £330 and an az5 £170, which just squeaks in at £500. However, be aware that the dovetail is in a different place on the 127 mak tube if you buy the OTA on its own compared with the package version, and that may make it awkward to use . Probably better to buy the whole kit for the sake of £20. There are some good comparisons of the 102 and 127 maks here http://www.waloszek.de/astro_sw_mak102_e.php and several relevant videos by this guy

Our weather in the UK is inherently unpredictable, from the forecaster's point of view we are probably in the worst possible location for stable and hour to hour predictable weather. It's because we are on a small island, with the Atlantic Ocean to our west , and huge landmass to our east , so we get a lot of frontal systems zipping across and swirling around us in an erratic way . Add in the jet streams writhing away high in the atmosphere bringing us whatever air conditions they have, plus the ocean currents doing similar in the Atlantic . My planning involves looking at clear outside the met office and the BBC weather site to get a general idea, but not trusting all or any of them entirely, and sticking my head out of the back door for a look. Planning what to look at I check stellarium to see what is going to be visible from my garden (which has a good view south, but none nth and some dubious additional light pollution to the west ) then look at various lists to see what might be a good target. Unless the Moon is up. Then I look at the Moon.

Reminds me of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone Ironically I heard a radio program about it ...

If you search in the box (top right ) for 'nikon d3200' , well over 400 results come up, I'm sure one of those could lead you to an answer, or at worst to an individual who uses a d3200 and can answer from personal knowledge. Live view (LV , a simple button on the back of a d3300) locks the mirror up, but that button may not be on a 3200 .It might be accessed as a menu option though.

It might be worth mentioning that all the expired/sold/withdrawn for sale items are still here to view, just click on the 'Sold / Expired Classified Ads' link at the top of the 'for sale/swap' page.

The day I worry about the effect on my activities of changing the clocks to/from GMT will be the one after I find out where and how to reset the cat's internal breakfast timer . Until then it is pointless .

The general suggestion is a top asking price of 75% of the cost new. Obviously there is a major complication if you bought kit pre- price rise , do you go for 75% of current price, or 75% of what you paid ? That entirely depends on your personal ethics. If you put an ad. in the sell/swap area, and set a price no-one thinks is reasonable, people will simply pass over it. It is always possible to reduce the asking price after a week or two . The whole aim of the sell/swap on here (as I understand it) is a free service for members to make it easy to move on unwanted kit to other enthusiasts , an entirely different aim to the various money oriented, online general marketplaces, none of which to be honest I'd touch with a bargepole as either a buyer or seller. There's a degree of trust on here, with visible post history and reputation, which can give some extra assurance against scammers. But ... you've only owned the set up for a few months, a few cold and cloudy months at that ... are you absolutely sure you want to sell it ? I doubt a month or two more on its age would reduce the worth of the 'scope second hand , and you just know the day you part with it will be followed by a string of warm, steady, clear nights , and you'll wish you still had the 'scope ... Go on, give it a reprieve, even a strictly limited temporary one, believe me , I only bought my first 'proper''scope back in the summer of last year, and it took me at least a dozen nights of using it before I felt comfortable and able to aim/steer it reasonably efficiently and choose the least wrong eyepiece, and actually see stuff through it ... All the expensive astro kit in the world is no use without time , practice, and persistence. Oh, and ... patience .Lots of patience . If you still feel the same in, say a months time, put up an ad. Heather

The Drake Equation has been round for , what, sixty years ? It has been the subject of much discussion , academic and popular (I have a book by the SF writer Asimov on the topic, written in 1979) and the original equation includes in addition to the parameters mentioned above "L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space" It's all guesswork, and has a perhaps dubious skewed viewpoint simply because we are humans, and make unwarranted assumptions about our own importance and the single , life evolving and supporting planet we know of. Recent interesting debate around the Drake Equation has included the mediocrity principle which essentially adds the attitude 'why not ?' rather than the more strict approaches which seem to me to have echoes of , um, human exceptionalism* , rather than, say, evolution building us to fit the conditions on Earth . My training is in geology , and my view on this topic is influenced by having learned about the Cambrian explosion and read about the incredible range of fascinating and bizarre life forms discovered in the Burgess Shale . An interesting very recent publication : https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2004/2004.03968.pdf Heather * I'm carefully stepping around religion here ... philosophy is quite bad enough ...

Random thought ... I went shopping in tesco earlier this week, and noticed they had folding car windscreen shades of aluminium type material very simlilar to the reflectix (I think that's the trade name) insulating stuff but with smaller 'cells' , and a sort of bound edge. Might be an alternative to buying a roll of rad. insulation, and the bound edge might make for a neat shield if you cut it to size leaving that existing edge on one side. Unless of course you want to insulate a radiator or something too ... 🙂 Heather

Clouds, showers and blustery wind forecast for my area , so no comparative viewing likely for me either ...

There is a comprehensive guide to UK consumer rights law on this on the website, originally set up by St Martin Lewis, patron saint of thrifty folk : https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange/ It has given me ammunition to get refunds, demand the refund of postage for returns etc many times . as it says, mention of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in an exchange of emails can really encourage complaints dept.s to play nicely ... Heather