Tiny Clanger

I use something similar, mostly because I'm thrifty (or possibly just mean) and had a lovely little maglite solitaire (bulb version, I imagine the newer ones are LED ?) which had become redundant through acquiring brighter more efficient white light torches for non astro use.. Rather than just buy something new, I cut a circle of red acetate and stuck it to the lens with PVA glue (which is white, but dries to transparency) .One layer of acetate gave a nice bright red light ... too bright in fact, so a second disc went on top of the first. Now the light is dim, very dim, but it does not affect my eyes adjustment at all, and is just sufficient to see things when the torch is held a couple of cm away. I also use a turn of glow in the dark tape around the bottom of my tripods legs and to mark the top of my kit boxes, and glow in the dark cord on the zip pulls of bags etc : I originally got the glow in the dark cord to make easy to find tent door zip pulls, it is great stuff . Heather

When comparing the two remember that one is a planet where you are seeing a rocky surface with dark markings through a very thin atmosphere, whilst on the other we see the top of a reflective atmosphere of hydrogen & helium. Also, whilst the sizes shown are no doubt accurate mathematical comparisons, don't forget the solar system s dynamic, and the apparent size to us of a planet depends on where it is on its orbit compared to ours. Mars was close enough to Earth in the summer for even my beginner telescope and cheap eyepieces to show me several surface features, including what turned out to be a dust storm in progress . It took hours of persistence, and a lucky few minutes' burst of good seeing, and I didn't actually know what I had seen until I came indoors to write up my observing notes, logged in here, and found the marking I'd observed ( and which did not match what Mars Mapper had suggested I should be seeing) being talked about as a dust storm . I'm still quite excited about that, months later ! The equipment I had at that time was not particularly ideal for planetary use the dust storm was seen with a £200 heritage 150 dob , a £20 17mm skywatcher plossl and cheap far eastern orange filter from a suburban back garden. It was part of what persuaded me to buy a longer focal length 'scope specifically for use viewing the planets (and the Moon) I've found I need to be patient : there are parts of the sky from my garden which have too much skyglow to be worth looking at things when they are in that part of the sky. Any object lower than around 20 degrees altitude minimum will not be worth spending much time on. A planet too low or too distant because of its orbit is not worth spending too much time on. Wait until objects are in favourable places and distances : that's the beauty of this game : most stuff comes round again (OK, so comets, you may wait a while ...) Heather

I think there's a bit of confusion creeping in here between the collimation screws (big , primary) , the lock screws (smaller, primary) and what Jasonb refers to as the tilt screws, which I think are the ones connecting the secondary to the spider ? Ha, beaten to it by Pixies 🙂 ! I find Gary Seronik's guide https://garyseronik.com/a-beginners-guide-to-collimation/ clearer than the astrobaby one.

And another freebie : https://www.deepskywatch.com/deepsky-atlas-release1.html or the 'serious' version for A3 printing https://www.deepskywatch.com/deep-sky-hunter-atlas.html which the creator says is " for serious deep sky observers." .

I was just searching out the link I knew I had for the mag7 star charts (free printable PDF,s whole sky, so some are not useful in the UK ) , not sure if it is the same as the above, https://ia802605.us.archive.org/25/items/Mag_7_Star_Atlas/Mag_7_Star_Atlas.pdf an explanation by the maker http://www.siaris.net/astro/atlas/

Those two eyepieces are the standard modified achromat (MA) ones supplied with many skywatcher 'scopes, the 25mm is OK, the 10mm not. You woud want to upgrade the 10mm to something better at the very least

A good 'scope, but do be aware of the size and weight of the thing before making a decision !

OK, found my guide to aligning a finder , yours might be an RDF (red dot finder) or an optical finder like a tiny telescope) , whichever it is, the procedure is the same: you are simply matching the view between finder and telecope as accurately as possible.

I agree with all the above, and add it is not easy to find your way around the sky to start off with, a bit like arriving in London without any sort of map and no idea of the scale of the place ! Were you using a printed map, or some sort of app or online program to track down your targets? If it was a small printed map, only the brightest starts can be shown, and the view through the eyepiece (fabulously full of stars as it may be) may be difficult to reconcile with the map, especially as the view in a reflector is upside down ! A few things to check through to get you pointing the right way : first, ensure you have accurately aligned your finder , whatever type it is. Do this in the daylight. I typed out a long 'how to'post on this a while back, I'll see if I can find it and provide a link later. Second, get yourself a good app or desktop sky map which you can pan and zoom, and add an overlay of a grid which will allow you to judge the angle between onjects. A good one will even allow you to show exactly what you should see in the eyepiece of your specific kit (I like stellarium, which has an ocular view plugin, but there are plenty of others) Third, to roughly approximate angles in the sky, your closed fist at arms length from knuckle to knuckle is about 10 degrees, Orion's Belt is about 3 degrees across. There's a 'handy guide' (groan) here https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/measuring-the-sky-by-hand.html I've a sneaky suspicion that the orange thing you found might just have been the bright reddish coloured star Aldebaran, which last night was around 15 degrees east of Mars and at about the same elevation above the horizon ( altitude to use the proper term) Don't get frustrated, don't give up, you will get this sorted , and the rewards are worth the effort, honest ! Heather

Happy Birthday ! It was my nice neighbour's birthday today too, she has had more than twice as many as you ! Heather

I fail to see any distinction between a choice and an option ? You do, or you don't do, opt in or out. Your money, your choice (or option) out of the options (or choices) available. 'Just in time' as I understand it is manufacturers not keeping stock of raw materials or components to feed their processes, but getting precisely scheduled deliveries of them to keep their processes rolling, not consumers demanding instant gratification.

Entirely up to the consumer to decide if they want to reserve the item by paying before it is delivered or not . No one is forced to do so.

Welcome ! Eyepieces run from £25 ish each to ... good grief , how much ?! If you have an idea how much seems reasonable to you to spend , it would be easier for us to be more specific, it would also be helpful if you mention what came with your 'scope ? I've no experience of the zoom eyepieces. A lot of people like them for the convenience they give, but I prefer to add specific single eyepieces to my kit one at a time to do what I want as my interest develops. A good zoom eyepiece is an expensive thing. If you are thinking of spending under £50, a couple of the plossls linked to above would be good choices, altho' if any of the ;scope users wears glasses, a plossl with mm below about 10mm might be awkward to use. As ScouseSpaceCadet says, personal preferences play a big part. A Moon filter is the astro equivalent of sunglasses, if you find the view too dazzling as it is, get one. If you can look at the Moon comfortably without , don't bother . I got the basic celestron one off Amazon for about £10 , I need it with my 150mm reflector , but not at allwith my smaller 'scopes. Heather

Spot on. J.M. Keynes (not to be confused with the place of the same name, featuring many roundabouts 🙂 ) explained it, demand and supply. If the demand persists at the current price, that price will stay (or be increased) . If demand falls at this level of supply, factories will not shift their stock, and either supply will be reduced, or prices will fall to get stock moving. An idle factory and workers being paid to make stuff which won't sell will lose money. I was obliged to study economics for a short time way back when, due to a timetabling peculiarity, Most of it seemed pretty daft by the standards I'd been inculcated with from studying science (one of the first things an economics lecturer said was that consumers are assumed to make sensible spending decisions . Even at the age of 19 i thought that was a poor foundation to build on !) , but a few things seemed logical, and elasticity of demand was one of them . https://penpoin.com/elasticity-of-demand/

Ah, reminds me of the epic tale of the great duck flotilla of 1992 ! https://www.iflscience.com/environment/28000-rubber-ducks-accidentally-embarked-on-an-epic-ocean-current-study-in-1992/

Welcome. The 'H' means Huygens, which is a type of lens arrangement ,' SR; is Symmetric Ramsden another one. Both are old designs, simple and cheap to make. I'd suggest you make a first , bargain upgrade to a more modern plossl design , these are easiest to use when in mm of about 12 or over, and can be had for around £25 . Something like a 15mm woild sit nicely between the ones you already have and show you what an improvement can be made . Like one of these https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-eyepieces/astro-essentials-super-plossl-eyepiece.html Some further reading on eyepieces for you here and here

Nice report ! Shows what can be done with a modest 'scope on a photo tripod. Are you using the ST80 on top of the head, or with it rocked 90 degrees (as if taking a portrait rather than landscape photo with a camera ) ? I've found the on the side orientation lowers the centre of gravity enough to make the little 'scope much more easily shifted in alt on my pan tilt head (an old 029 with the big hexagonal QR plate) . I went out early, and managed almost an hour of observing before the Moon rose . I'd taken the dob out, planning amongst other things, to revisit Messier 37, 36 and 38 in Auriga , which I did, then thought ... wonder if I could see them and what would they look like in the ST80, ? Popped indoors, carried it out with just the 17mm plossl I've left in it as a more or less permanent fixture, looked up ... and saw all three , tiny , a bit indistinct compared with the view in the 150 dob, with a 15mm BST , but not at all bad. I'm really quite impressed with the ST80 🙂 Heather

It's a matter of the rigidity and height of the tripod legs, and the smoothness of movement of the head part (the bit that turns) , expensive tripods are better in both respects, but any tripod will hold the little ST80. It's just that some cheap ones may be unstable or jerky to use

Sorry, I have no current knowledge of photo tripod prices in Europe .

If you have a photo tripod, or can buy a second hand one, the st80 will work well on it. I recently bought one, and have just explained about he tripod on another thread, look it up ! I know Orion st80 'scopes are in stock in the EU, I had a discussion over this last week with someone !

Ah, if you know photo triopds, it may be relevant to mention that my 7kg + maksotov telescope and mount combo is very comfortable on my manfrotto 55 tripod . Many astro mounts (but by no means all) use the 3/8" photo tripod base to photo head standard screw fitting. Eyepieces : personaly I'd decide on the telescopes first, some 'scopes are more forgiving to eyepieces than others. If you go down the little 'frac for the little 'un route, it will probably come with a couple of eyepieces which will do fine in it . Heather

OK, so the 2 scope idea seems more popular than I anticipated ...😀 I'm not qualified to speak on the suitability of expensive refractors or go to mounts, I'm strictly a low budget , simple 'scope fan. But, last week I bought a second hand Orion ST80 , which is effectively the same as the skywatcher one (they all come out of the same factory) to dabble my toes cheaply in the small, lightweight , packable, fast set up refractor world. And it is a lot of fun. Wide field rather than high magnification, so the Moon doesn't fill the view , but the low magnification makes it easy to aim at a target , and very forgiving of the mount. The short 80 is also very light weight . I have mine on a manfrotto 190 tripod , which is very sturdy and can go to adult eye height, no problem, and the combination works well. I have tried the 'scope on my manfrotto travel tripod, which is comparatively very light weight and flimsy, with a weight carrying capacity of 3kg max , It trembles a bit when the 'scope is moved, but settles after a few seconds . Remember this is a weedy lightweight tripod used fully extended for adult use. I bet if I closed the lowest thinnest leg section(s) , lowered the centre column , and tried kneeling at 5/6/7 year old height (which I'm not going to try , the grass is too muddy and my patio is gravel ... )it would be plenty solid enough. A photo tripod will pack away small, and the st80 is about 40cm long and 12 cm diameter, f you pull the dew shield and diagonal off, it all fits easily in a 9l 'really useful' box (altho' I'd want to add some sort of cap on the front to keep the lens from getting scratched ) As far as I know, the short tube 80s commonly have photo tripod sockets as well as dovetails fro astro mounts. So, I reckon a little refractor on a middling sort of photo tripod would be great for your little one, make it special with a few stickers on the dew shield at the front of whatever the current rage is and they will think it superior to the ;big kid's toy; one ! Don't forget to stress the 'don't EVER point the 'scope at the Sun message though, or maybe keep the eyepieces/diagonal out of reach in the daytime unless supervised ... Heather

Amen.

OK, so are both grandkids likely to be around at the same time ? I'm thinking about the age difference, the height difference, and the squabbles I'd have has with my sister (7 years my junior) if we had been obliged to share a 'scope ... sometimes sharing a house was bad enough ... A bit of a left field suggestion ... two 'scopes ! For the little 'un, a relatively cheap, small, lightweight short tube wide field refractor on a tripod which can be adjusted down to a suitable height , possibly a photo tripod rather than an astro one, many photo tripods close down shorter. Such a 'scope may come with a prism not a star diagonal, not ideal for astronomy, but would extend the use into bird watching, laughing at windsurfers falling over etc in the daytime You wouldn't feel it a total disaster if jammy fingers got on the front lens or the trippod got used to build a tent for the teddy bears ... For the older child (and the younger one when they grow into it, and the adults who will need to be involved at least at the start to set it up, because t will be more complicated ) a more expensive , substantial and precision instrument . I love my heritage dob, and my 127 mak, but for under 14's left to their own devices I don't think either would be a good option, for similar reasons to those already ably given above. Heather

I suspect the lack of replies is down to you asking about something you can leave outside permanently ... in (I assume) the English Midlands ? There is no telescope you could safely leave set up outside through the great British Summer short of something like this . I'm not being unnecessarily negative here, honest. I've gone geocaching (finding hidden boxes) around Rutland water, Graffham Water Pitsford Water, Welford Reservoir Thornton Reservoir , the lakes of Newstead Abbey, and plenty more bodies of water around the Midlands, those are just the ones I can think of offhand . It is very common to find the wildlife has made a mess of the geocache containers, even good, theoretically well sealed 'lock and lock' branded boxes can get damp inside when left outdoors for a few weeks , and it is commonplace to find such containers with holes which rodents have chewed in the corners or edges, or where they have gnawed the lid tabs off entirely . Less well sealed , cheap boxes get all manner of creepy crawlies squeezing in through tiny gaps, you evict whole colonies of spiders woodlice or earwigs sometimes .... Anyway, a telescope is a precision instrument, and leaving it outdoors , even with a rain cover over it, is really not a good idea. Carbon Brush has given you a good start on some practicalities to consider, I hope you manage to narrow down what will work for you and come back with more questions ! Heather