Tiny Clanger

Hi Gerald, and welcome. The way I read your requirements, I think the simplicity of a big Dobsonian would fit your style of 'back to basics' living . You can get a really big, light gathering mirror for your budget, the downside is that it obviously comes in a similarly big diameter tube, and therefore also a big weighty base. If you have suitable storage , and can deploy the dob from it to where you want to view from . Combine that with some decent eyepieces and dark skies, and you will be one lucky stargazer. One small worry though : I have friends in the US who have lived in houses (in Massachusetts ) with decks which are essentially elevated platforms of wood: substantial things, but you might find vibrations a problem if your 'scope is sited on one . Heather

Greetings from east of middle-ish Old England ! 😀

As far as star patterns go, as in my example of confirming that blue green dot really was Uranus, I guess the ocular views' accuracy will depend on how close to the truth your info is about the scope stats, EPs focal length and FOV , all stellarium is doing is some maths. I suspect that some of the parameters given for astro kit in my sort of price range are going to be rounded numbers ! Still, for practical purposes , it works fine for me.

I think it is something to do with the high res display I have on the machine I use offline purely for photo editing and storage, here's one of the links I saved from my search for a solution https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/photoshop/photoshop-menu-too-small-on-windows-high-res-display/5f5f45684b561a3d4249f0b8 it seems to have been a problem for years. Still, you have to expect some hassle when thriftily using old software on new hardware. Initially when installed on win7 the CS2 cursor appeared as a row of 3 cursors 🤬 that weirdness turned out to be fixable by changing the windows text size .

https://www.universetoday.com/84285/why-are-dobsonian-telescopes-a-favorite-among-amateur-astronomers/

I second that. Pretty sure that the dodgy ebay sellers are just burning that free download to a disk . CS2 is a useful tool still, and it works fine on a pre-10 version of windows, but on windows 10 you get such tiny text and icons on the tool bars etc that the only solution I've managed to find (that doesn't involve some scary interfering with things I don't understand ) is to use the win10 magnifier on them , which is a pain. Heather

Ah, my mistake,sorry : I searched online to back up my vague memory (of why ( bought a D3300 rather than any other D3xx model) and a certain , wildly opinionated reviewer who is usually good with the practical hands on features of Nikons said "Thank goodness the D3000 has no video mode or Live View." I'd link to the review, but it might upset the O.P. , it is not kind to the camera ! That particular reviewer seems keen to provoke controversy, perhaps to drive views of his site, but as I said, he is usually good on the practicalities. Perhaps he meant to say there is no LV button on the back of the camera ? Whatever, I was wrong . Mea Culpa. Heather

The download version of stellarium is brilliant ( I always appreciate a .org free bit of well thought out software developed by enthusiasts ) , it is possible to take a 360 degree panorama of your back garden ( and/or any number of other locations you frequently view from) and add it to the list of landscapes available . Bit of a fiddle to photoshop your sky transparent and to get the compass points/horizon height a close match to reality, but I've found it very handy, I can see when Jupiter will be vanishing from my view as it hides behind my shed, what time the Orion Nebula plays hide & seek behind a neighbour's tree, etc etc. There's also the stellarium 'ocular view' plugin, where you can set your own telescope's parameters (including that it flips the image, an important detail !), and those of your eyepieces. Then you can select an object ( It worked for me to see Uranus with the heritage 150 for instance ) , choose ocular view, select your scope/EP combo, and stellarium shows you what you will see in the EP. I find it of particular use when there is a faint thing like Uranus or a M object, with an array of faint stars nearby: just get to the right part of the sky, scan around a bit with a low power EP, recognize the pattern from ocular view and you know exactly what you are looking at. Naturally the plugin works in red mode too. Heather

" And the more I find out, the less I know ? 😀 Welcome !

I've never used a 'phone to take pictures with a telescope, so can't help you there, apart from suggesting you try the combination out in daylight: the exposure will be different, but at least you can practice getting the focus right. Keep an eye out for the Moon in the afternoon sky too, its much easier and less frustrating to faff with the controls in daylight. You are absolutely right that the flatly lit full / near full moon shows far less detail than in phases when you have long shadows to pick out the surface relief.

Yep, as a relative newbie myself I have been impressed with the tone of the vast majority of contributors here, it's a rare nice place as forums go. Fingers crossed for clear skies for you (and all of us ) soon. Heather

I can gauge the temperature outside from my sofa very easily by the cat's reluctance to go outside and slaughter mice . Cat firmly in place on hearthrug : probably going to be a frost tonight 😀

Wah ! So nearly clear round here, about 25% of the sky has a veil of very thin cloud , it seems to be drifting quite fast though, so who knows ...

As you are in the UK, I guess you have not been able to look at any astronomical objects yet ? The cloud cover has been pretty much continuous. What were you looking at, and how far away was it ? The telescope probably wouldn't focus closer than a couple of hundred metres. (how annoying is it that the correct spelling of metres gets a wobbly red line ! Stupid spellchecker !) So, are you seeing light at all, however blurry ? If it is entirely black, then there must be a cap on somewhere (business end of the telescope, or bottom end of the eyepiece ?)

As Arthur C Clarke said , “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 😀

Unfortunately the D300 does not have live view, as far as I know , which is a very useful feature, it locks the mirror up and shows the viewfinder image on the screen. zooming in on that live view makes it much easier to focus accurately when autofocus is problematic. Have a play around, and see if any of the delayed shutter release options actually flip the mirror up at the start of the delay period, it might be enough to let the camera settle. I believe the 3300 (which I have) was the first model in the D3 line to have LV (easily accessed by a button on the back of the camera marked ... LV) Heather

We had an ace 'elderly lady' (probably younger than I am now !) as head of physics at my grammar school, she did a perfectly judged , hugely impressive lesson with us where a big block of ice was stood on the front bench , perched on top of, and bridging the gap between, two lab, stools . Below the ice block was a large shallow metal tray to catch the drips. Over the ice block was a wire, each end had a metal mass on it, maybe a 1kg , the masses hung down either side. As teach. explained about pressure and melting point, the wire slowly cut into the block, which refroze behind it . She continued to teach from in front of the bench for the whole lesson. Just a few minutes before the bell went for change of lesson, the masses crashed noisily onto the tray below, the wire having cut all the way through the still whole block , with perfect dramatic timing !

He heh , I was quite spectacularly bad at chemistry : we had a teacher who we were told had been 'in industry' , and his teaching style was ramble on for 45 minutes, set off some sort of approximately relevant small explosion, then hand out notes we were to take home, copy the hand out into our books for homework, and return them looking pristine so he could issue them again next year. No questions were to be asked or answered in class. I got lost early on. I was not the only one, and the concerned parents of some fellow pupils (with expectations of oxbridge) complained : Mr P and his giant pile of handouts vanished silently in the middle of a term, and a young female (trained) teacher appeared in his place. For the rest of the year she was constantly saying things like "In the past, this (whatever) would occasionally be done in school as a practical demonstration, but for some time now the law has forbidden it as too dangerous " The inevitable hand went up and the reply was always "Mr P. did that last term ..." The only thing I clearly recall was getting to push some blobs of mercury around , not sure why we were issued any of that stuff by Mr P., no doubt it was against the rules too : there's a good reason why Alice's Mad Hatter was unwell ... Bunsen burner water cannon sounds like fun though 😀

I don't know, but I have printed a Bahtinov mask onto acetate in an inkjet printer then cut it down to the correct size for placing in a Cokin filter holder. Not used it yet though !

150 Heritage, great choice ! I second the warm clothes (and socks/boots) and the align the RDF finder in daylight suggestions. Don't forget a red beam torch (or white beam torch plus layers red cellophane from festive sweet wrappers, that's my kind of d.i.y. ! ) A low box or table might be useful to put the 'scope on , depending on how tall the boy is, if he is short / young, and the 'scope needs to be on the ground, a bit of plastic like a thick bin liner under it will keep any damp from the susceptible particle board type base if it is put on damp grass. You'd probably want a stool or chair yourself to see through the thing then ! The Orion nebula looks good in the heritage dob, and the Pleiades are another easy but impressive target. Mars is still good and high, even if is no longer as close to us as it was earlier in the year, you are unlikely to see more than a vague dark patch or line on the red planet with the stock 10mm, but it's fabulous to know when you see the planet, you are looking at the actual rocky surface of another planet, not the top of gas clouds. Be prepared, take a hot drink and a snack to keep him (and you) going, and have fun, Heather

Science education can surgically remove all the joy from the subject. Teachers in England these days have to be constantly mindful of targets, assessments and the curriculum, if you can't test or assess something, it's not going to be a priority of management, who are increasingly all about the statistics. I hated the fact that many of my fellow primary school teachers knew so little about science that they were reluctant to teach it in an interesting way, fearing that the pupils might ask questions they couldn't answer . So they avoided the fun experiments ("It might turn out wrong and not prove what I want it to !" ) whilst I relished the unexpected result, as it gave a chance to analyze what might have produced the seeming anomaly, and involve the pupils in some critical thinking and possibly the devising of further tests . Plus I was happy to say, "I don't know why that happened, let's see if we can find out" . Which is precisely what science is all about. I like to think I got quite a few pupils interested in science, or at the very least gave them a basic understanding of how it works. I ran a free after school science club too, which was always over subscribed . Often a week or so into the new school year I'd get pupils who had moved on to 'the big school' down the road pop back at the end of the day to say hello and tell me how they were getting on, and I'd always ask them what science lessons they'd had in those exciting, proper , well equipped lab.s , taught by actual graduates in chemistry, physics etc . Every year, every returning pupil said their first task in the chemistry lab was to draw and label a bunsen burner. Good grief, I'm pretty sure I had to draw the exact same thing myself over 40 years ago. What a great way to convince 11 year olds that science is boring . You couldn't just do a demo of putting out a candle with carbon dioxide, or do the exploding custard tin thing , or burn a bit of magnesium ribbon or anything slightly theatrical to grab their interest ?

My Acme Thunderer is more recent, a mere 30 years old, all metal (bar the cork 'pea') but it's called in many hundreds of children at the end of playtimes ! I also have a CWS stamped (Co-operative Wholesale Soc.) police style whistle dated 1941 which grandad used in the home guard ( the Birmingham CWS factory turned from making pots & pans to war work). Acme make a range of historical whistles from the original machine tools , interesting to browse their website. The Black Country in general I think of as a sort of run-together set of towns which each had their particular industrial specializations, often heavier industry than Brum's small metal stuff, like chain making at Netherton, and leather tanning at Walsall , I really don't know much about the area beyond a few visits to the excellent Black country Museum, and geological field trips to the Wren's Nest. The Lunar Society , Watt, Boulton, Priestley, Wedgewood, Darwin* (and typical self deprecating brummie humour that they called themselves the lunatics ) I read "The Lunar Men" by Jenny Uglow, a while back and whilst it seems well researched and accurate, I didn't much enjoy the book, too much of a set of disparate biographies, not enough of the development of scientific ideas for my taste. By the way, we have one of the lunatics to thank for gas lighting, Murdoch , so I guess you could call him the father of light pollution ! *Not that one, his grandfather Erasmus

You're welcome, I may be exiled in Leicestershire, but I'm proud of my real home., and find its history interesting : a settlement with no major river, no handy geological treasures such as coal or iron ore, no port , no royal connections, no ancient religious foundations, and yet still it grew to a city, simply because of the industry and enterprise of the inhabitants. The coins, buttons, whistles and other 'toys' as they were known, such as metal buckles , are small tangible pieces of the lives of normal people , I think that's where the fascination with them lies for me.

Assuming you mean a Nikon D5600 ? https://imaging.nikon.com/support/digitutor/d5600/functions/whitebalance.html Heather

Interesting ! Brummie metal working was so ubiquitous for 200 years it had a nickname, "metal bashing industry" . Best not mention the notorious tool for precision work, the Brumagen screwdriver (a hammer, ideal for knocking screws in to save time ... ) Some old companies still carry on in the traditional way in the same factories with the same tools, one fascinating story is J. Hudson, still making the famous metal 'acme thunderer' whistles in Brum as they did in Victorian times https://www.acmewhistles.co.uk/since-1870 In the 1960s my dad worked for J.R Gaunt & sons, one of many button makers in Brum ( https://www.oldcopper.org/makers/buttons_birmingham.php, ) they also made military badges and medals , they were I believe taken over in the 70's by the Birmingham Mint , around that time my dad went to work for Hoskins and Sewell another company founded in Victroria's reign , who made metal bed frames, specifically hospital ones when dad worked for them. http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=MS+1088 My grandad though, saw the way the world was heading, having been impressed by the newfangled bakelite (the first ever manmade plastic) in the late 1920s, he got into the machining of plastics, set up a small business with a couple of partners, and made a modest but comfortable living from it.