MercianDabbler

The 30 year old diagonal supplied with my SP102 has developed a crack in the plastic so the telescope tube fitting is not being held securely in its thread. I cant grumble given its age but it is definitely not safe now with heavy eyepieces. Requirement 1... the new one needs a metal body. I don't want the same thing happening again. Requirement 2... I've read some past threads on here and am keen to avoid the constriction built in to some types. I use a 32mm Plossl and dont want any loss of field. I'm unsure whether to go for a prism or a mirror one. Dialectric mirrors seem to be all the rage now and would give me more light (which I may or may not notice). Are there downsides to a mirror? - for example do they deteriorate over time? Are they more or less difficult to keep dust free? Choice is also constrained by availability just now. Two that I've found so far which I think meet the requirements are https://www.altairastro.com/125in-lightwave-premium-dielectric-diagonal-169-p.asp - the spec looks decent but I'm not clear if this has a constriction or not. I don't think I've seen any reports on it here either... nether good nor bad. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/diagonals/takahashi-125-diagonal.html - a good brand but a prism. Would I just be paying more money for less light? Other suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance. 2 inch is not an option BTW. I dont feel the need to upgrade the focuser.

Thanks. I'm quite pleased with the pic considering the limited exposure time (which was 12 minutes, not 8 as I said earlier), 4 inch aperture and background glow. I'm glad it's not just me that finds it difficult to find my way around the Virgo galaxy area. So far I've yet to see M101. I've tried my 10x50s from home with no luck. I think I also tried them wayyy back when out and about (remember that?) too but must have another go when I'm in a dark location. For the time being M101 will be off my list - I just don't think it's doable in my Bortle 6 sky at home.

First of all let me say that I'm quite pleased with my final processed image but a few wrinkles cropped up while working on it which have the potential to become 'learning points' for me. The image (also posted in Observing Reports) was taken last night... The details... Canon EOS 70D, unmodded Prime focus of my Vixen SP102 using the Vixen SP RA drive. Target at circa 24 degrees above horizon during the session Bortle 6 Light Pollution at no additional charge 45 light frames of 20 seconds at ISO3200 reduced to 36 frames (80%) in Deep Sky Stacker. 17 darks taken while packing up at the end of the session 25 flats done this morning with the scope pointing at the sky and a white T shirt stretched over the front. 20 flat darks 15 bias. Stacked in DSS and exported as 32 bit rational TIFF Postprocessing in Gimp using nothing at all complicated... 3 or 4 rounds of 'curves' on the value to get the overall brightness and contrast to a sensible place and trying to keep the curve smooth and avoid clipping. crop to remove the vignetted areas another round of curves adjust the colour balance using 'levels' - moving the middle slider towards the right on the green and red channels until the background fuzz looked as neutral as I could achieve. JPEG export at 97% quality I'm not sure if I have previously messed with (messed up?) the settings, but... all used Kappa Sigma for the lights with Kappa set at 2 and 5 iterations The first attempt had Bilinear Interpolation. This one was pretty usable but after applying the curves it had a pronounced green cast. The second attempt had Super Pixel debayerisation. By mistake I stacked all 45 lights. The result was very bright compared to all of the others and quite blurry but with no noticeable colour cast. The third attempt was the same as the second but just stacking the 80% highest scored frames. This looked just as blurry as the previous one, darker and the green cast had returned. Both attempts 2 and 3 showed up as completely black when opened in GIMP and so went no further. Attempt 4 used Bayer Drizzle. This appeared really dark when exported as TIFF and playing with the curves on the level alone produced an image with a really strong green cast that defied any attempts to remove - the red and blue channels appeared very clipped on the histogram. Attempt 5 used AD interpolation. This one appeared not entirely unlike the first attempt but to my eyes the noise was less intrusive and the detail a bit better. The green cast was present again. I used a slightly bigger colour adjustment numbers - I'm not sure if this was down to the colour cast being different or my inability to repeatably judge it. Attempt 5 was the best result and 'a keeper'. So... to the questions... There is still noticeable vignetting in the stacked image. Is this normal even after using flat frames? Why the green cast? I have played with the debayerising options to see if this was the cause but most options produced a green cast with bayer drizzle being really bad. I've managed to postprocess other stacks without changing the colour balance and as a rule I think it's A Bad Thing. The galaxy still has a sepia like tone. Am I not going far enough? Maybe the blue haloes (CA I presume) are putting me off. Any idea why the super pixel method produced TIFFs that were completely black when opened in GIMP (they looked normal in DSS)? Why does DSS mostly produce quite dark TIFFs but sometimes (attempt 2) much lighter ones? I adust the darkness away with curves in GIMP but am I losing any information? Is there anything I could be doing better in terms of stacking and processing? I've attached a copy of attempt 5 before cropping and adjusting the colour levels. Oh, and ignore the file names, I clearly can't count. Thanks in advance for any advice.

A nice haul of targets there. I can only commiserate on the LP. Mine is now pretty much exclusively white and a big new warehouse complex has gone up on some former green belt land less than a mile away so that part of the sky is now a mess. The worsening LP situation put me off doing astronomy for the past few years but my attitude has mellowed now and the scope has seen more action over this winter. Strangely enough our lighting was renewed just a couple of years ago and the council put up what looks like HP sodium when LEDs were going up in most other places. It's flipping bright but masked by the house if I stay on the right side of the garden.

A postscript... Last night was clear (and pretty darned cold) once the snow showers had stopped so I set up again to clear up a few loose ends from Monday. The first was M94 which I had not had time to do on Monday. This was a pretty straightforward star hop from Cor Caroli. I think I could more or less see it in the ST80 and the SP102 showed it easily in the 15mm SLV and the 9mm DeLite. On Monday I had been uncertain whether I'd found M87 or not so I wanted to revisit this with the help of some wider view (not ocular view) screenshots from the desktop version of Stellarium. I confirmed that the nearby almost equilateral triangle of stars was in the correct place so indeed it was M87. While in the area I tried sweeping up to M86 and friends. There was plenty of 'stuff' visible there but even with the help of the new screenshots I could not work out what was what. As far as I can see Stellarium shows very faint galaxies regardless of whether they are going to be do-able. All of these extra objects make it quite hard for me to relate the Stellarium picture of the M86 region to the view in the eyepiece. My third and final mission was to put the DSLR onto the back of the SP102 and see if I could get a picture of M104. I managed 45 20 second frames at ISO3200 - 8 minutes of exposure time once selected down to 80% in DSS. This isnt a huge amount of exposure time but after stacking and some reasonably uncomplicated processing the result was quite pleasing considering the still fairly low altitude in my Bortle 6 sky.

A mixed few evenings over the easter period... Having had a couple of previous attempts at the Leo Triplet with uncertain results it was still on the list with M95 and 96 plus M86 in Virgo added after I watched the Sky at Night April guide on YouTube. Friday required a certain amount of faith with cloud cover during the early part of the evening but I decided to trust the forecast and set up anyway. The time available was pretty limited after waiting for clear skies. Saturday was more consistently clear. Both evenings had a similar lack of success - I could suspect M66 but there was no hint of M65 or the 'Hamburger'. I attempted M95 and 96 using the setting circles but found a fairly nondescript star field with no real clue where the galaxies should be. I decided to try some 'easier' targets in the form of M51 and M101 instead of M86. The star hop in both cases went fine but not a hint of either galaxy. I also tried sitting back in a chair and aiming the 10x50s at M81 which is my usual sanity check for sky conditions and equipment - not a hint of that either. There was a definite visible beam from the head torch when packing up so I had at least some optimism that transparency may not have been the best and another night may prove better. Sunday was cloudy but Monday was forecast clear and cold with a Northerly wind so I decided to don some extra layers and have another go. I used the extended lack of darkness to re-jig my target list having checked the Messier lists for the constellations in the south and east parts of the sky and also checked the contrast index for each target, the main additions being M87 in Virgo in place of M86 and a couple of globular clusters. Over the three nights I'd changed my setup somewhat. On Friday night I used the SP102 with the Rigel finder but found star hopping very difficult going straight from the Rigel to a 32mm Plossl with 1.55 degrees TFOV. For Saturday I piggy backed the ST80 using the bundled 45 degree prism and my Meade 26mm. I really found this combination made star hopping more certain with the view in the ST80 being a fair approximation to that shown in the tablet version of Stellarium and 3.42 degrees TFOV. I don't have any adjustable rings to mount the ST80 so the aim was a little off from the SP102 but not terrible. On Monday I spent some time during daylight with the scopes pointed at a neighbour's TV aerial to improve things. Lacking any adjusters I resorted to bits of 20 and 30 thou plastic sheet cut to fit as shims in between the dovetail and the ADM clamps. I used my Meade reticle eyepiece in the ST80 and a 6mm Starguider in the SP102 and was able to get the two pretty closely aligned. I kept them clamped together to avoid losing the alignment but once outside in the cold and dark the aim was well off in one direction. The main issue was that the focusser tube on the ST80 was moving all over the place but moving one shim from the rear to the front ADM clamp allowed me to arrive at a pretty good alignment. Tightening the focuser clamp screw stopped the wobble but made focussing too stiff. Another job to do! First target on Monday was the Leo Triplet starting just after full darkness. As usual the star hop was very easy. One of the galaxies was pretty apparent straight away and I was confident that it was more then just a faint star. After checking the position against my screenshots from the PC version of Stellarium I concluded that this was M66. Having a closer look at the position of M65 I could see something there too but it was very indistinct. Next up was M95/96. I think I was in the right place for these but again the nondescript star field meant that I had no real confidence so with time being in short supply I moved on pretty quickly. M87 was next. For this one I lined up using the Rigel finder about 60% of the distance between Denebola and Vindemiatrix and tried to match the stars between Stellarium and the ST80. I very quickly alighted on two stars with a noticeable fuzzy blob below the upper one. Judging by the magnitude this seemed promising but I was not certain I was in the right spot. Having checked again in Stellarium I'm still putting this one down as a probable. Next up was some easier fare starting with M3. Again I did a rough aim using the Rigel finder jusdging the distance from Arcturus and its neighbours and then using the ST80 and Stellarium together. I spotted a fuzzy blob on the ST80 pretty easily and switched over to the SP102 for a better view. Both tha Vixen 15mm SLV and the 9mm DeLite showed the cluster niceely but I find the focus more certain with the SLV. I used the same basic approach for M53 and quickly saw the attractive ribbon of stars above it in the ST80 but not the cluster itself. It showed up easily in the SP102 with the 15mm SLV and 9mm DeLite providing nice views again. By now time was marching on well towards midnight and I really should have been packing up but stayed for a couple more targets. I'd put the Sombrero Galaxy M104 on the list because I've never seen it and fancied a crack at it. I could see the top of Corvus peeping over the buildings to the south so started from Algorab. The star hop from there was trouble free with the help of the two nearby distinct patterns which showed 3 stars apiece (there are actually more). I was delighted to find that I could make out M104. The view was hardly detailed but I could see its orientation and at least suspect the dust lane at times with AV. The final target was a revisit to M51 which had been pushed to the back of the queue because I needed to swap sides on the SP mount. By now it was past midnight and M51 was very high indeed so reaching the eyepiece and the axis controls was quite a challenge. I knew my way to the location from previous evenings so that was no problem but the general awkwardness meant that I kept losing the spot by moving the scope in the wrong direction. I had several attempts and at least two of them showed something where M51 should be. At one point I could even suspect two blobs but the view was never clear. I decided to settle for that and pack up. Not a hint of mist in the head torch beam on this occasion. All in all I was very happy with my results on Monday and pleased with the star hopping setup using the piggy backed ST80. Fixing the wobbly focusser and figuring out a better approach for fuzzy targets with nondescript star fields remain on the 'to do' list.

TBH I find planning tricky. Ideally you do it on those very common cloudy nights and then when you are out with the scope you will know exactly what you are doing. It rarely works out that way for me. Trouble is you usually don't know when your next clear night will be - whether it will be moonlit or moonless... and then if (when) you don't get the conditions you'd planned for your plan becomes out of date. The planning process is useful for getting some ideas into your head even if your plan doesn't completely work out when that rare clear, dark night happens. Probably best to have a separate plan for moonlit (double stars etc) and dark nights (DSOs). DSO-wise M81/2 are a good target once you've cracked M31 - they need a few star hops but once you find the right spot you get two galaxies for the price of one. From there galaxies get fainter and trickier so these two are good for 'getting your eye in'. I also return to them when things are not going well elsewhere just to check that I can see them and it's not a problem with bad transparency or something really daft like forgetting that I left a filter screwed to an eyepiece. Only snag is that these two are pretty awkwardly high in the sky just now. Tools-wise, others have mentioned the usual suspects. I'd add a few... Stellarium has a free desktop version which is more fully featured and has more stars than the free tablet/phone version. It can do eyepiece and camera previews too and you can mess with the light pollution levels and so on. I often struggle to relate the tablet Stellarium view to what I see through the scope - the scope shows more stars. Getting an idea of your true field of view with each eyepiece is a useful step - the tablet Stellarium does tell you the FOV for what it is displaying so you can figure out some idea of scale. Sky at Night mag does a half hour or so on YouTube at the start of each month which gives you some more clues about what is good and what is not... with very little effort on your part other than subscribing to the channel and remembering to watch it each month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D8hxXif5bQ For double stars I keep this page open in the browser on the tablet - it's all on one page so I have all of the info there without a network connection. http://users.compaqnet.be/doublestars/ Enjoy your scope. It won't show you what a big dob will but it will get you out there on some occasions when setting up a big scope would not be worthwhile.

I was busy on a Zoom call until around 8:30PM but the forecast showed some time with clear skies. I stuck my head out and saw around 50% clear sky so I decided to pop out with the ST80 and just see what was on offer since I've had way too much cloud so far during the current period of moon free nights. It didn't start well - rounding up the gear and clothing was quick but I had 100% cover by the time I was ready. The clouds were scooting across the sky pretty quickly so I decided to wait it out and experiment with the tripod a bit. This evening I tried out tilting the top of the ball head over at 90 degrees. This prevents the head keeling over in unwanted directions when it is unclamped for altitude movement but puts the scope tube closer to the tripod legs. For the most part it wasn't actually hitting the legs though. Some gaps started to appear and I was able to make out Ursa Major by eye and get the scope aimed at Mizar. From there I was able to star hop using the TV 32mm Plossl to the vicinity of M101. Could I see it? Maybe. Certainly I could not be 100% confident. The most likely suspects were through the 15mm SLV and 9mm DeLite - crisper views through the SLV but probably a better chance with the DeLite but it seems to me to be a lot trickier to get the focus right with the ST80 and 9mm DeLite combination. The logical next target was M51, a fairly easy star hop from Alkaid. I was less convinced that I could see this one though so decided to move on and push my tripod setup by exploring the area of M108 which was practically overhead. By using the vertical extension on the tripod I was able to gain some extra clearance to allow the tube to point nearly vertically and get Merak into view and get the eyepiece at a reasonable height to use from a chair. Steering was pretty awkward at that elevation, more in terms of figuring out whether I needed to move in azimuth or altitude and in which direction rather than any problem actually doing it. Stellarium on the tablet showed far fewer recognisable stars for hopping in this part of the sky so I was using the 10x50 binoculars to figure out the general geography and then trying to find the same stars through the 32mm Plossl. With this combination I was able to get to the right field for M108 and the Owl Nebula. I could not see either of them. By now time was marching on so I decided to finish off with Leo. I lifted and shifted the whole setup to avoid a silver birch and got lined up on Zosma. Through the 10x50s I could not make out the two fainter stars below it so I was a little unsure but the ST80 showed them straight away and removed any doubt. Stellarium kept flashing up the label for Vesta so it seemed rude not to have a look. No problem seeing it, I just needed to check with Stellarium to be sure which of the three objects of similar brightness was the right one. Finally I moved down to the area of the Leo Triplet to see what the ST80 could manage there. No problem navigating this area but the best I could claim was a suspicion of M66. Time to pack up. Once I switched on the head torch I found that the beam was very visible so there was a slight mist in the air by then. Not a hugely successful evening in terms of targets seen but the ST80 is hardly the ideal galaxy spotting vehicle for city skies. I enjoyed being out for a couple of hours though and the clouds had mostly stopped getting in the way so no regrets. The tilted over way of using the ball head worked well. I could almost say that the head has ceased to be the annoyance that it was when I first started using it with the ST80. EDIT: I meant to thank @Tiny Clanger for the tip about tilting the tripod head over... so... Thanks!

Nice report. Glad to see that some folks have had some decent clear skies. Not so here - was promised a decent few hours on Sunday evening and it was clear during twighlight so I was ready with the scope fully assembled, power leads and all. Cloud rolled in so I didn't even get to finish polar alignment. I got a chair and waited outside for a good while to see if it would clear but no joy. CO was still saying clear so I left it all set up and went indoors. An episode of Red Dwarf... still cloudy... Star Trek... nope. Finally gave up when CO decided to agree that it really was cloudy.

Yes I like the ST80 a lot. I bought it a few years back when having read the reviews I thought it was pretty much impossible to go wrong at the price and I haven't changed my mind. There are plenty of occasions when I am happy to pop out with the ST80 but the time to put together the bits for the bigger scope, level it and do even a quick polar alignment would have put me off heading out at all. I also love the wide field - it takes so much less time to find what I'm looking for in the ST80 than it does with the SP102... especially on nights like last night when the moon was making most of the fainter stars invisible to the naked eye. Naturally it does have less grunt though but going out with less grunt is better than not going out at all. I also like the ability to set the camera tripod legs at quite wide angles to make the whole thing lower so that I can enjoy the sky from the comfort of a folding chair. Thanks for the tip regarding the mount. I've been using it with the mounting plate on top but I'll give it a try tipped over at 90 degrees.

I decided to brave the moonlight and pop out for a while with the grab and go setup (ST80 and Manfrotto tripod... plus folding chair) this evening. Mostly revisiting things from other recent sessions. On previous sessions I'd found that the mount had a bit of wobble in altitude which made aiming a bit of a pain - I could centre an object, clamp the head and then the thing would move slightly in altitude as soon as I let go. I thought this was all down to the quick release mechanism and was planning to make a dovetail that could be screwed directly to the head in place of the quick release. While measuring up for this job figured out a way to avoid the job, or at least postpone it. I'm now mounting the scope in line with the long side of the QR plate and pressing the QR latch closed instead of just relying on the spring. Finally I found that some of the wobble was coming from the azimuth swivel so now I'm locking the azimuth instead of leaving it free. Trying out my (hopefully) improved way of using the tripod was one of the motivations for heading out this evening. The evening started off with M42, probably not the best night to be looking at it but it was there and at least I was shaded from the strong moonlight by a neighbour's trees. I tried it both with and without a Astronomik UHC filter. I'm not sure if I like the view better with the filter or not. It does show a bit more detail but the whole scene is dimmer. I could make out 4 stars in the trapezium without the filter but could not be confident that there were 4 of them with the filter. Next up was Meissa to see if I could split this with the ST80. I got it into view pretty quickly using the 32mm Plossl and then tried progressively shorter eyepieces. It took the 5mm Starguider to do the split. I noticed that Mars was pretty close to the Pleiades so decided to see if they would fit into a single view with the ST80. They wouldn't quite - I had to pan a little even with the 32mm Plossl. Instead I pointed the 10x50 binoculars up there which fitted both in without a problem. I also panned over to Aldeberan which was looking (to my eyes) very similar to Mars in colour and brightness. The next target was Algieba. I'd tried this with the ST80 on a previous session and had not been able to split it. Having done it with the SP102 without too much difficulty I wanted to try again with the ST80. I tried the 15mm SLV, 9mm DeLite and 5mm Starguider but no joy so clearly my previous attempt wasnt unrepresentative. I then went indoors and fetched my 6.4mm Meade Plossl but still no joy - I was getting a lot of flare, sometimes one sided and sometimes symettrical. Sometimes I had multiple images of the star, particularly noticeable with more magnification - like a 4 pointed star composed of several dots. The views in the 5mm Starguider and 6.4mm Plossl were pretty similar so the problem wasn't with a single eyepiece. There was no shortage of light so in desperation I put the cap back on the tube with just the little solar projection window open. Bingo! - now I could split it with both the 5mm Starguider and the 9mm DeLite. I'm not sure this is a recognised technique for double stars but it worked on this occasion. By now the Moon was getting above the surrounding trees so that was the next target. The 9mm DeLite and 5mm Starguider both gave a decent sized image and with the help of the moon phase images that I've now downladed to the tablet I was able to identify Mare Crisium, Langrenus and Petavius near to the terminator, Langrenus almost seeming to have a double rim, or at least a stepped rim. I dedided to finish off the evening by revisiting the Beehive cluster. After finding it in Stellarium and then with the binoculars (always seems a bit higher than I expect) I got the ST80 aiming in the same azimuth direction, locked the azimuth and panned up... straight to the target with no problem at all. I started out with the 32mm Plossl, tried the 26mm Meade S4000, 15mm SLV and finally the 9mm DeLite. I was expecting to find one better than the others but in the end I decided that I liked them all. Finally I just spent a few minutes just looking at the sky. Sirius seemed to me to be actually jumping around. I had a look through the binoculars just to check that it was indeed Sirius and there it was flashing all sorts of colours at me, so I guess the seeing was probably not the best. Not a long session - proabably about 90 minutes and back indoors in time for the news at 10.

I like that AZ head. At the moment my ST80 lives on a Manfrotto 055 tripod (bought for camera use but overspecified with one eye on grab and go telescope use) but I am still using the ball head that it came with. It is usable but a bit of a pain so I'm canvassing for better options. A video camera tripod head is another thing under consideration but the need isn't great enough to make me want to splash out on a new one, whichever option I end up going for. FWIW my other scope is a Vixen SP102 (1000mm F10) on a Super Polaris mount that I bought from BC&F in London in the late 1980s. Who says everyone upgrades? 🤔 To be fair I have been buying quite a few eyepieces recently. To not entirely hijack the OP's thread... When the SP102 setup goes anywhere beyond the property boundary it's a car job for me.

The best telescope is the one that you will actually use. If lugging it to a park is a definite requirement then I suspect that the 80 would be more practical. Just because you might physically be able to carry a 102 (plus heavier mount most likely) across town, I think the novelty would wear off pretty quickly. Remember you will also need eyepieces and a bunch of other odds and sods like extra clothing layers, a tablet to run Stellarium maybe... it all adds up. My ST80 plus baggage still takes me at least two trips between the house and garden but I could maybe organise myself enough to do it in one if I really had to.

One of the middle two... but with stars of unequal brightness. Definitely no gap because a potato generally comes in just one part... a gap would clearly imply two potatoes. Yes, that diagram is very useful and I'm not really trying to start an alterative terminology system

Thanks for that - looks useful. I have an Android tablet so the app is not going to work but the images can go onto my SD card. This is a better option for me because the internal storage on my tablet is pretty much full so installing an app usually involves me deciding which other app I can remove. Neither set of images seems to be the right way up compared to what I see in the scope but I'll figure it out.

That's the one I've been using. I quite like it but it doesn't really simulate the terminator very well so I usually end up turning the illumination off. I also find it too easy to rotate the Moon, which is useful for an atlas but somewhat pointless when using it to compare with what you see in the scope. Thanks... I must give that one a try.

I was popping out to the shed to use some metalworking tools and noticed the absence of clouds. The Moon was a serious drawback but I convinced myself that I should not keep using it as an excuse to leave the sope indoors and hatched the plan to revisit a Algieba with the SP102, but avoiding any electrical appendages to keep the setup time somewhat sensible. It still took me 40 minutes to get to the point of looking at anything interesting... the actual scope bits are fairly well organised now but there is always something missing - specs, items of clothing, head torch or whatever. Polar alignment was done quickly using a tablet app and a guesstimate of where 'half past 3' was in the reticle. Looking at the sky and the likely position in relation to silver birches I decided to have a crack at Tegmine first. Trouble is the Moon was in Gemini so all I could see with my naked eye was Castor, Pollux, Procyon and some of Leo, none of which seemed like good starting points. With the 10x50 bins I managed to pick out the Beehive Cluster and then spent a long time trying to get the scope to pick it up too... either that or else figure out what the scope *was* pointing at and go from there. After a lot of failed attempts I finally picked up the cluster in the 32mm Plossl and then used the setting circles to get to Tegmine. I must revisit the Beehive on a more suitable evening. After reading other reports on here about Tegmine on here I wasn't expecting to split it and indeed I couldn't. After a lot of swapping eyepieces the best I managed was a sort of potato shape. There was another star close by but I gather that isn't part of Tegmine. After burning a lot of time on Tegmine I then pointed the scope at Algieba. This was no trouble at all to find and then it split without difficulty in both the 9mm DeLite (111x) and 15mm SLV (67x) so I think I ought to try again with the ST80 at some point. By now Orion was between the two trees so I decided to revisit Meissa. There was some definite hazy high cloud creeping across the sky so it look me a little while to find it, but once I was there the SLV and DeLite both showed the companion. Time was marching on but I thought I'd visit Sigma. The clouds were really starting to intrude now - at times I could not make out Orion's belt but after a few minutes things improved and I found Sigma. There were several stars on view but I really wasn't sure which ones were part of Sigma and whether I was doing well or badly so I think this one is best saved for another time. With the Moon playing such an important part in the evening's session I thought it would be rude not to point the scope there. Sinus Iridium was looking good near the terminator and I think there was just a bit of residual shadow from the Appenines on the other side of Mare Imbrium. I could make out some shapes on the north side of the mountains. One day I hope to see Hadley Rille but I think I was just seeing the lower ridges near the Appenines. Moving South along the terminator and with the Moon Atlas on the tablet there was a very prominent crater with a central peak. I think this was Gassendi, a very elongated crater further South (Schiller I think) and finally... another potato shape - Hainzel It was far less cold than of late and I was actually removing layers while I was outside. I was surprised at the amount of moisture forming on the scope and no doubt some of this was forming on the objective but this evening was going to be electricity free or not at all so the dew heater was not coming out to play. The Moon was indeed a serious impediment - especially when trying to find Tegmine which really should not be very hard to find. In the end I was outside a good deal longer than intended so it must have been a good session.

It's cloudy tonight so at least I could get this question sorted... it turns out that there are horizontal and vertical 'flip' options stored with each the telescope in Stellarium (which makes sense... well it does once you have seen the answer). I had both the SP102 and ST80 set incorrectly. Neither was set the same but both were wrong. Now I need to redo the screenshots but hopefully that's one more problem solved. It's amazing just how many ways there are to get things wrong in this hobby.

Thanks. It's tricky to know what is realistic to put on the target list with the ST80 but I still think it's useful to get familiar with the locality of the target faint fuzzy... even if I don't actually see it. That way I might stand a better chance when the bigger scope is out and the conditions suit (good conditions will happen one day... I hope!)

Clear Outside was unexpectedly promising a few consecutive clear hours last night so I decided to use the opportunity. Since my last decent session I've bought a used 9mm TV DeLite from Andrew Robertson of Kelling fame and was keen to try it out. It wasn't a completely clear picture and the clouds didn't really disperse on schedule and it was a good while after 8PM when I finally got outside. I went with the grab and go setup of Skywatcher ST80 and Manfrotto camera tripod... plus the luxury of a folding chair. While I was waiting indoors I spent some more time working on my target list and preparation for finding the targets. This time I took some Stellarium ocular view screen shots on the laptop and downloaded the images to the tablet. The Moon was pretty prominent so that was the first obvious target. There was plenty on view around the terminator but nothing particularly stood out to me as being the obvious thing to concentrate on so I fired up Moon Atlas 3D on the tablet and found the Apollo 11 and 17 landing sites and found my way around the nearby features. The bottom edge of the Sea of Serenity was looking like a particularly sharp line to me. Mars and the Moon were fairly close so I decided to see if the 32mm Plossl could get them both in. It couldn't - not even close. A brief stop-off at the Pleiades before shifting to Ursa Major. One big advantage of the grab and go setup in the garden is that I can just pick the whole thing up and move it to avoid obstructions and unwanted light sources whenever I shift targets. The setup has disadvantages too - no setting circles naturally and at the moment I don't have a finder fitted. Instead I'm aiming at prominent stars by eye and then checking the view by comparing the ST80 with a 32mm Plossl against the view through my Zeiss 10x50 binos. The ball head is also pretty unsuitable for a telescope but it's what I've got so until I find something better it's what I am using. First target was M109. It wasn't on my prepared hit list but I'd tried it a week or so beforehand with the SP102. That whole session had been a disappointment because although moonless, the lying snow amplifying the LP and I suspect some haze too meant that there was very little contrast on offer. I spent a good while on M109 but to no avail. The Stellarium image had been done for the SP102 so it was not perfect for the ST80. I'm pretty sure I was in the right place but apart from the presence of Phecda the other stars were pretty faint and I could not honestly be sure of any patterns. Next target (on the list this time) was Alcor/Mizar and I managed to split Mizar with the 15mm SLV (26.7x) without difficulty. Next was M101, star hopping from Mizar. The star hopping started out OK but got a bit sketchy towards the target. I think I was in the right place but could not make out M101. I also figured out that my Stellarium screenshots were not mirrored so must see if there is a way to do this in future. Having had a couple of galaxy fails I decided to stop by M81/82 just to prove that I could actually see a galaxy. This time I started hopping from Dubhe. I'm fairly familiar with the steps now and managed to get to M81 without too much difficulty. The 15mm SLV and 9mm DeLite both showed M82 as well - an improvement on the moonless night a week ago when I could not make out M82 through the 4 inch scope regardless of which EP I tried. I tried the 5mm StarGuider with the ST80 as well. This kinda worked but was hard work. Getting the scope aim right, keeping it steady and getting the focus right were tricky to achieve all at the same time. I also tried the 26mm S4000 but the view was disappointing for reasons that became apparent later. After success on two galaxies M109 was still bugging me so I tried again. I could pick out the chain of 4 faint bright spots below Phecda and knew from the screenshot that one of those spots should actually be two but I still couldn't do better than that with either the 15mm SLV or 9mm DeLite. I then tried the 26mm S4000 and noticed that Phecda was looking abnormally blue... which clued me in to the fact that I'd left the UHC filter attached to it last time out. Removing the filter restored the S4000 to its usual clarity but still no M109. To finish off the evening I moved over to Leo. Not a constellation with which I am very familiar. First stop was Algieba which I had little hope of splitting with the ST80 and sure enough I couldn't... but I've never visited it before so it was still good to have a look. The final target was also something of a forlorn hope - the M65/66. I found the star hop from Chertan very easy indeed and there was no doubt I was in the right place. After a lot of trying with the 15mm SLV and 9mm DeLite the best I could do was to see something in the vicinity of M66. Whether this was M66 or the mag 9.8 star next to it I'm not sure. By now it was getting on for 11PM so time to pack up. The final advantage of the grab and go setup is that packing up doesn't take long.

I use fingerless gloves but they are nothing special. I think the key is to keep your body core, arms and legs warm, then the extremities will be OK. I had a scarf and hat with me last night too but took them off because I was warm enough without.

After reading a few reports of good conditions on Friday night I decided to brave the cold, live with the moonlight and cart the SP102 outside for a couple of hours yesterday evening. I set up further down the garden than usual to avoid my silver birches which interfere with the view to the south. The mains extension lead just about reached and I mostly managed to avoid tripping over the various garden features that make this a rather cramped location. I just did a quick levelling and polar alignment with Polaris vaguely near the centre of the polar scope. I didn't bother with the RA drive but still needed power for my makeshift dew heater. The final setup step was to fine tune the Rigel finder's aim... on Rigel of course. First target was Uranus. I wanted to star hop from Mars but (again) could not reconcile the picture in the TV 32mm Plossl with Stellarium. After a few attempts I resorted to the setting circles and found the target easily. I wasn't sure if my scope would show the disc but put the 5mm Starguider in. I think I was seeing the disc - it definitely looked more disc like than out of focus blob like. Sweeping back to Mars I tried to figure out why my star hopping wasn't working. I think the problem is one of scale - I just don't have a feel for how the view in the tablet version of Stellarium should scale to what I see in the EP, likewise whether I should see more or fewer stars when looking through the scope. I lingered for a while on Mars but found it pretty unrewarding. As usual I could suspect a few smudges but no more and there were colour fringes on either side of the disc. Next up was the moon with no particular feature in mind, just look near the terminator and see what looks most interesting. I found a very interesting looking area with some nice subtle ripples and then resorted to the tablet app (Moon Atlas 3D) to try to figure out what I was looking at. The app does simulate the effect of the Sun but it does this by just darkening parts of the image and does not show the effect of shadows from crater walls etc. so it's quite hard to reconcile with the real view. After much mucking about and checking orientation with the binoculars I got my bearings and figured out that it was Sinus Iridium. I tried both the 5mm Starguider and the 15mm SLV with a screw in moon filter. The SLV naturally had less magnification but I think I found the view more absorbing - Promontorium Laplace was particularly crisp. The need to swap the moon filter between EPs was somewhat of a disincentive to changing magnification. The final item on the agenda was to try some more doubles in Orion. I'd downloaded the Coldfield Observatory list onto the tablet before going outside and found this very useful. It was easy enough to hop around with the Rigel finder. I did Delta, the Trapezium and Iota. Delta was very easy. I lingered for a while on the Trapezium trying different eyepieces but I think they all showed four stars once I had my 'eye in' and provided that I didn't clobber the scope. I was quite surprised at how much of the fishes mouth and the edge of M42 was visible through the 15mm SLV in spite of the moonlight. The 26mm Meade S4000 and 32mm TV Plossl showed some too, but less so to my eyes (shouldn't less magnification show more nebulosity?). Iota was a little more challenging. I started with the 15mm SLV and had to look a couple of times but once I'd spotted the fainter companion it was very clear, again as long as I didn't knock the scope. I left out Struve 747 because the Stellarium search wouldn't do that, Theta 2 which sounded less than compelling when time was getting late and Lambda (Meissa) because I'd done that on the previous session. By now it was past 11PM and some high clouds were starting to intrude so I decided it was time to pack up. Checking the objective I found there was no evidence of condensation so my lashup dew heater had done its job with no need to make any further modifications today. My clothing layers had also functioned well, in fact I had to take a few items off because I was too warm during some parts of the session. I also was pleased to see Ursa Major standing on its end and well up to the east of north at the end of the evening. Previous sessions have seen it pretty low and closer to due north which is right in the worst LP from the city centre. I do find it pretty disheartening when LP stops me making out the plough properly but I shall now look forward to putting its galaxies back onto the target list for future sessions.

Thanks both. I uprated the dew band and made some of the hastily done fixings more sturdy ready for the... ahem... 'clear skies' last Tuesday. I was ready. Unfortunately the skies weren't. In future it will be powered up from the get-go but when testing it I wanted to be sure that there was some actual dew for it to clear.

Not an original idea, but I really recommend layers for the cold. Keeping your hands and feet warm is not all about gloves or socks. Ice was an issue for me last night but I don't think I felt cold... Tee shirt, thermal base layer (long sleeved), cotton checked shirt, hoodie (also handy for blocking out neighbours' lights), body warmer and finally a thick jacket. Two pairs of trousers, hiking boots and socks. I have fingerless gloves but these are somewhat poor, being a sort of knotted string construction intended for cycling but my hands were OK. Oh, and a beanie hat too. I certainly needed to get most of those layers off quickly once back indoors!

Maybe more of a cloud, frost and dew report than an observing report but here goes... When I looked midweek CO was forecasting wall to wall 'green' for me for Saturday night. I'd been out on Wednesday trying to capture some more frames of M33 but discovered the need for some dew control. Wednesday's captured frames just about showed M33 but really were not much use other than as a 'learning experience'. Not having the time or inclination to wait for anything to be delivered I decided to cobble a dew band together with leftover bits scavenged from various hiding places. By Saturday morning the forecast had reduced to just an hour of 'green' either side of midnight. I decided to put the SP102 up in the garden near the house to test my dew band, firstly without any power to make sure that the objective was collecting dew before applying power. The evening started cloudy with some wind so annoyingly no dew was forming so I cooked dinner and watched a film with the Mrs and went out again at 8:30 to find a clear sky and frost forming on the tube. On trying to connect up the dew band one of the wires snapped off so it was back inside for a quick repair with a bit better attention paid to supporting the weight of the flex. Back outside I took the tube off the mount and shifted everything down the garden to my usual observing spot. I struggled with the polar scope - on the first attempt everything was OK but after making some adjustments and looking again I could no longer see the lines on the reticle. I decided this was probably dew (after all the mount had been outdoors for several hours) and did my best guess based on remembering how the reticle had looked on the first attempt. Usually I do polar alignment straight after bringing the mount from indoors so that seems like a better move in future. Some high cloud started looming into view from the north west. Between that and the uncertain polar alignment I decided to abandon any attempts at M33 for the time being and stick to visual work. I'm also getting used to my new Rigel finder so tried this out by aiming at the Pleiades and found the main scope aimed correctly when I looked through the EP. With the cloud continuing to loom it wasn't worth spending more time there. Orion was the best bet for staying clear for the longest time but by then the nebula was obscured by a tree branch. I decided to have a poke around the top end of Orion and looking at Stellarium discovered that Meissa was double and had some nice looking alignments of other stars nearby so I went straight there using the Rigel finder again. Another Christmas pressie was a 15mm Vixen SLV eyepiece and with this I was able to split Meissa. My 10mm bundled Skywatcher Plossl and 5mm Starguider could also do it but the view of it in the Starguider was all a bit thin and wobbly. I then went longer and switched to my 26mm Meade (Kowa) S4000 and was pleased to see that this could also do the split as well as showing plenty of the surrounding stars. I really like this EP - I've had it since the late 1980s and never really knew much else for a long time. Finally I tried a 32mm TeleVue Plossl - to my eyes this showed an elongated star. Since I was in the area I tried Sirius but that was just a mess of shimmering colours in every EP I tried. It's a pretty futile exercise with my kit anyway but sometimes I do futile. By this time Casseopeia had cleared so I decided to have a try at M52. No joy at all. I lined up on Ceph and initially intended to try star hopping but I could not reconcile what I was seeing with what Stellarium showed. I checked several times that I was on the correct star and then tried with the setting circles. By this time my head torch was on the blink and the red LED would only stay lit for 5 seconds or so... which wasn't exactly helping. Eventually I got the circles to the right point but I could not see anything cluster-like in any of the EPs I tried, nor again could I reconcile the view with Stellarium. I tried again by going back to Ceph and doing the circles again but the results were the same. Oh well, another night maybe. By now the sky was looking pretty clear all over but it was really getting too late for me to start attempting any AP. I checked the objective before packing up and found that my dew band had partially worked but there was a circle of condensation in the middle so some more work is needed to get a bit more heat to where it's needed... and the condensation probably wasn't helping me with M52 either. Some care was required to avoid my hands becoming attached to the tube when carrying it back indoors. Forecast clear for Tuesday so I shall be refining the dew band tonight.