Cup of Tea

With a small scope you'll not see much of Mars beyond a very small orange disc.

Jupiter and Saturn are much more pleasing but they're both very low at the moment.

Stars will only ever appear as points of light. No matter what eyepiece you use. You'll just be able to see more of them.

Try the Moon. You'll get a much better feel for the scope and what it can do.

Also have a look at here...

PS Mars is a planet, not a 'star'.

Hi all

I have an older 8" Newtonian from Orion Optics. Pretty sure it's a Europa 200.

The knurled metal tube clamp nuts are too small for cold hands, so I am looking for replacements.

The thread appears to 8mm stnd but isn't, and doesn't look like 8mm fine. Anyone know the correct thread or, even better, where to source some good tube clamp nuts?

When using a laser collimator, if the dot moves when you rotate the laser, then I suspect the collimator needs collimating.

13 hours ago, wulfrun said:

I think I saw it when it was on originally but I recorded it and re-watched it earlier today. It's well worth seeing even though Horizon has moved into the "let's get a half-hour of material and stretch it to an hour program, with waffle and irrelevant footage" modern style.

I call it low density television...

On 12/07/2019 at 01:37, MarsG76 said:

Some would say that its not possible.. but I'm sure someone will find a way to go that deep and detailed....

 

Simple. Just need something about 10 times the size of Hubble.

On 19/11/2020 at 06:46, johninderby said:

It is so you can shine a light inside to illuminate the circles. Tried an led but it gave an irritating bright spot. Did see a thread on a German forum where they used a mini task light and it seemed to work better. Think it will work better with a more difuse not too bright light.

 

John, try the led again but first give it a good scouring with some Emery paper. This’ll give you a much more diffuse light. 

17 hours ago, geeklee said:

I wondered who had brought this continuous awful weather to Aberdeenshire 😁

Welcome to SGL!

It's been truly grim, hasn't it?

I'm developing a bad case of moss.

Hi, just joined and thought I should say hello.

I live in Banchory, Aberdeenshire. Just got myself an 8 inch newtonian on a Vixen GP mount. Often in Winter we get days and days of cold crisp nights where the skies just get clearer and clearer. No sign of it this year though, just rain, rain, rain since I bought the thing - so that's probably my fault... sorry.