PeterStudz

As a boy In the late 1960’s I can remember being confidently told that there would be tourists flights to the moon in about 1980-something. In fact some airlines (Pan Am is a classics example) offered a waiting list. So I’m not convinced amateur space telescopes will become a thing relatively soon.

But before they do, or before any of this advanced astronomy becomes reality, it would be nice if things could be a little more standard. Eg as a beginner I find it frustrating and confusing that this mount takes a M10 bolt yet this tripod has a 3/8”.

I’d be a little cheesed off if, after launching my space telescope, I then discovered that I had a 3/8” bolt that was trying to attach to a M10 thread. Then had to order an expensive adapter from FLO and request yet another expensive delivery to orbit. 

2 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

The 150P is a great planetary scope. A 5mm would give you x240; on a good night that would be fine. Barlowing that would be a waste - x480 is too much for my 300mm!

A 12mm Barlowed would be your best bet. x200 is good enough to see all the planetary detail the 150 has to offer. The BST's have a good reputation and you won't go far wrong with them

Which Barlow is it you have?

Although I have a 200p I agree with this and it’s my experience too. On a good night last year I got some excellent views of Jupiter and Saturn. But it had to be a good night. Saturn more so as it can take a little more magnification.

I’ve also had great success on the planets  with a 2x Barlow on the 12mm BST. More than the 5mm alone. And as I sometimes view wearing glasses I find that using a Barlow gives better eye relief. My daughter prefers wearing glasses so this is another good reason. 

That is actually very good! And I like the large background of framing stars. It puts it in context. Yes, I can see NG6207. 

Have just come in after looking at the moon. Clouds came in but it was about time to got to bed.

Copernicus did look stunning - it’s got to be one of my top favourite lunar crater. Could also make out Thors hammer.

1 hour ago, sorrimen said:

Thought I’d add, Peter, what eyepiece were you using for that jupiter shot if you can remember? I’m very tempted to buy a 5mm BST but I’m not totally sure if I need it yet.

I had to look back at my pictures & files and I was using a BST StarGuider 5mm. I also bumped up the video to 4K at 60 fps, zoomed at 1.7x. For some reason zooming in the video at between 1.7-1.8x makes an improvement. Not sure why as it doesn’t when I take single images.

On the 8” Dob I find the 5mm quite useful. Especially on the moon. Although for planets like Jupiter and Saturn seeing does need to be good. I had about 7-8 nights of trying when seeing was good and it only worked out well a couple of times. Not that I tried to do this every time. Often I just enjoyed the view. I also like looking a globulars and the ring nebula in the 5mm. Can also be handy at splitting some doubles, although I’m still learning about that. I think you’ll find it worth getting.

Out of interest. I only started taking smartphone snaps because my daughter wanted pictures. She likes it and it helps keep her interest up. I can remember when we first tried this on the Orion Nebula. Just hovering the phone over the eyepiece had her literally jumping up and down - you could see colours on the phone screen.

Although I’m more interested in just observing I have to admit it’s nice looking back at my “astronomy” folder and seeing all the pics that I’ve taken. It reminds me of the whole night itself, although I’ve had plenty of good nights without fiddling with smartphone images. 

And I always like seeing other peoples images, like yours, too. It all adds to the fun of what is a great hobby.

Here are a few pictures with an iPhone 12. Orion Nebula and sunspots with a 4.5” reflector on a wobbling old EQ1 with cheap motor drive. 30 sec exposure single shot for Orion, single shot for the sunspots.

Jupiter and moon via an 8” Dob. Moon single shot, Jupiter a single frame from a video. The black dot is Ganymede. I don’t have a PC so no stacking for me. Any editing done on the phone. 

Interesting. I found the Celestron NeXYZ to be a royal pain in the… over engineered and unnecessarily heavy but then I do have a small telescope. 

The one that worked for me was a no-name brand off eBay. I think I paid about £10 for it. I mainly use BST StarGuiders and do remove the eyecup. Been doing it for about 18 months and there’s no damage. In fact I often remove the eyecups anyway - I sometimes observe with glasses and find that in order to get my eye close in the eyecup just gets in the way.

The mount grips the eyepiece very well, it’s not going anywhere. Might be different with other eyepieces. And to make things easier, once I found the sweet spot, I stuck a screw in the mount (see picture). Now I only have to adjust the “Y” direction. No faffing about with “X” & “Z”. With this mount and BST StarGuiders I’ve never found it necessary to adjust in “Z”. It’s simple, light and with a little practice I can mount it in the dark. 

Thanks @westmarch. I think you are the person who started the thread  “10” Equatorial Platform for Dummies”. I’ve been following that with interest as it’s something I’d like to make. In fact it’ll probably be the next thing.

Thanks for the hand warmer tip. I’ll certainly try that. My red dot followed shortly by my RACI are there first to dew. Not that bothered by the red dot but when the RACI goes it makes life much harder. 

I don’t suffer from dew that often but in the few occasions that I have it’s obviously annoying. And there’s quite a bit of stray light when I view from my back garden in Southampton. 

At the end of last year I got a thin 4mm yoga mat (£6.50 from eBay) in order to make the standard foam mat plus Velcro strip dew shield for my small Skywatcher Skyhawk 1145P. Incidentally, good old fashion Evo-Stik contact adhesive (I prefer the stuff in a tin - see picture) bonds Velcro strip to foam mat so well that if you try and remove it, like I did in a test sample, you’ll take part of the foam mat away - ie the bond is stronger than the foam itself - it’s not going anywhere. 

Then, sometime back at the end of Feb this yr, I wanted to make a shield for my 8” Dob. The thin 4mm foam mat was ideal for my 4.5” telescope but far too floppy for an 8”. Not wanting to waste the foam that I had I went down the shed to see if there was something I could use to stiffen it up a little. There I found some thin veneer (0.45mm) from my model aircraft days. Using the trusty Evo-Stik I simply bonded the veneer to the foam, trimmed it all to size, wrapped it around the OTA and stuck it all together with more Evo-Stik. I also bonded a strip of veneer at the end just to prevent any splitting. Then finished of with tung oil in order to waterproof. Tung oil is also flexible. 

Simple stuff. The result is light (about 185g) and stiff. It all slips on with a tight fit. I also made a little version for the finder using veneer and 2mm craft foam. Of course it won’t roll down but I can live with that. 

Fair enough. Although it’s the length that can make it tricky. Eg the inside of the focuser draw tube was really easy. 

I flocked the complete inside of an old Skywatcher 8” Dob using flocking material from FLO.  I also flocked the inside of the focuser. Didn’t bother with acetate, just stuck it all to the surface. No problems and actually far easier than I thought it would be. 

Here are before & after snaps. 

I use the PushTo feature in PS Align Pro for iPhone. Works really well. Here are some quick snaps of the mount. I have a handle on my Dob so I’ve used a bicycle handle bar holder plus tripod phone mount. Never needed to level anything, it just works. 

Interestingly, even though there’s a damn great magnet on the back of the phone (MagSafe) and I have another magnet in the case (MagSafe case) it has absolutely no impact on how the thing works. In fact it’ll work just as well using the MagSafe magnet to simply attach to the phone to the steel of the OTA - no mount required - although maybe the phone is a little precarious stuck on like this!

And the obvious question - did you buy it new or second hand? If new then it really should have come with suitable adapters. 

I very occasionally have issues with dew on my secondary,  although a simple dew shield is usually enough. But it takes a while. @spike95609 - my Dob is often out for 3 hours, sometimes more. Eg when camping out in the garden with my daughter it’ll be out all night. There’s nothing more annoying than waking up after a bit of kip and encountering dew issues. 

As well as other objects I saw M11 - wild duck cluster - at last, after trying for the 1st time last year and failing. Had to wait until about 2am but worth it.

I think I was expecting something larger and probably went right past it. It’s a lovely sight at medium power and can imagine that it would look very nice in a dark sky. 

Even though it’s not fully dark now I’m looking forward to looking at M57 and some of these other targets during the summer months. Hopefully with a last minute  camping trip to somewhere with less light pollution too! 

These are lovely sketches. And it does seem that sketches are the only way to get a feeling of what it is really like to view at the eyepiece.

5th to 6th May 2022, Southampton, Bortle 7, Skywatcher Skyliner 200p Dob. PSAlign Pro PushTo.

Been busy so it’s taken a while for me to write up anything (I started then stopped) but it was so much fun, if rather tiring, that it might be useful for someone. This, as the title suggests, was completely unplanned especially since I had to get up at 7am for work the next day. 

At about 11pm I had a look outside before I thought I’d head off to bed. The sky looked nice, clear & dark with what moon there was clearing out of the way. A scan around with my binoculars, the forecast for the rest of the week and the fact true darkness was rapidly fading in the near future had me dithering for about 30mins - it did look decent - so I thought I’d take the Dob outside for, maybe, a quick hour session. Now, I kind of knew that it wouldn’t just be 1 hour, it never is!

After having a coffee as the Dob cooled for about 20mins I started observing at about 11:45. And for once it was wasn’t freezing cold, a light coat was enough with no need to wrap up which was nice. For some time I have been playing with the PushTo feature in PSAlign Pro with my phone strapped to the OTA. So I aligned to Arcturus, Sync to Target and pushed-to M3. And immediately there it is was in the 25mm. I used PSAlign Pro in order to find most targets and every time bar one the target was in the low power eyepiece - it was impressive!

M3

It was in my “dark” part of my sky. At low power it was just a smudge and I changed eyepieces to try a tease out more stars. At 12mm I could make out some stars in and around the cluster. I also like using a 5mm eyepiece on globulars. Here I could see a couple of dozen stars “winking” in and out of view as I nudged the Dob.

M13

This was now getting higher in the sky and coming into my “dark” patch. Even though it was significant lower than M3 it was obviously brighter. Individual stars starting to show in my 12mm eyepiece. I decided to leave it for a while and go back later.

M92

This was a bit higher than M13, looked might “tighter” than M13 & M3. Again, individual stars starting to show in my 12mm. 

M81 & M82

These are the only galaxies that I’ve been able to observe from my garden. I have seen them better but they aren’t in a good position now, starting to go over the top of my house. Still, nice getting a view of both in the same FOV  in my 25mm. I also practiced randomly knocking the Dob and then manually (without pushto) star hoping back to target. I did this with other targets too as it’s obviously good practice. 

M3, M13 & M92

I went back and forth between these globules and comparing. The PushTo of PSAligh Pro making this task easy. It was interesting watching the view of M13 improve as it slowly got higher in the sky. Eventually and even with the 25mm I could resolve stars! The first time I’ve been able to do this at such low power. Higher magnification revealed what looked like dozens of stars winking in and out. And at times I could even make out the propeller - another first.

M57

One of my favourites and seems to do well in a light polluted sky. Also the first time I’d since it since last year. I tend to like viewing this at relatively low magnification - just enough to bring out the ring - as to me it looks “spooky” with a background and frame of other stars. I can remember when I first located it last year, just by accident whilst blindly scanning the sky. It immediately jumped out as something unusual and it was a “what on earth is that” moment. 

M27

It was getting late now, about 2:15am, but I decided to have one last blast and  view M27. I’d tried last year, found it, but the few times I’d tried it was rather disappointing - just a very faint smudge. However, this time was different. Even though it still wasn’t that high in the sky I could easily make out its characteristic shape. Looked best in my 12mm. With averted vision I could also make out subtle structure. Had me going “ohhh & ahhh…” in my head.  I was chuffed! 

Finally called it a night at around 2:35am. Packing up I noticed that the telescope did not have any condensation, even after brining it inside for a while. Now that doesn’t happen very often. Got to bed at about 3:15 but with all the concentration wasn’t asleep until around 4am. With just 3 hours sleep I was knackered and it took me several days to recover. Though definitely worth it for what was (so far) one of my best nights of the year. The only negative was that it was a school night and my daughter couldn’t take part. 

Some things that I’ve learned….

My sky is generally darkest between 1 - 3am. Not just slightly but a significant difference. If you can stay up this late and there’s still astro dark, it’s worth it. 

This night definitely had good seeing and transparency. But another impact might have been all the work I’ve put into the telescope - eg flocking, stripping it down, cleaning, collimating etc. Probably a combination of these things. 

Although I’d used PushTo I’d also practiced star hopping. After you get familiar with the space & stars near a target star hoping starts to become intuitive. Often I haven’t a clue what all the stars are called but I can recognise the pattern of stars as find my way around and get closer to target. A bit like finding your around a forest when off path. You don’t need to know what the trees are called but with experience you can recognise the pattern of trees, plants and landscape, eventually navigating with ease - without a map/gps and without much thought. 

7 hours ago, Louis D said:

So, are all the white pick-up trucks and work vans driven by burly contractors in the US also girly by that person's thinking? 

It’s rubbish isn’t it. And it shows more about their disturbed way of thinking than anything else. 

1 hour ago, Astro_Dad said:

Personal preference - I like the glossy black look but my example was a fingerprint magnet so became grubby more quickly- my SW still looks pristine white. 

Yes, 100% personal preference. But some people can be a bit excessive with this. Here I was being a little tongue on check. Eg I had a white smartphone and someone told me “am I not worried that white is girly”. I politely told them where to go. 

And don’t forget the handy knob at the front. I’ve got so use to that. Any Dob without one I’d drill a hole and install one. Not difficult but it’s just another personal preference. 

1 hour ago, Astro_Dad said:

Useful article here:

https://astrogeartoday.com/celestrons-new-starsense-dobsonians-reviewed/

Thanks for posting that.  Hadn’t seen it. Interesting article. And just another note. I have been using the PushTo feature in PSAlign-Pro. I know that it hasn’t got all the bells and whistles of Starsense but it’s simple to use and in a recent 3 hour session located ever target bar one (and all I did was align it to a star again) with ease  in a 3 hour session. It’s all I need and more.

The Starsense 8” has a handle! I’d almost buy it just for that. Although I drilled holes in my Skyliner and fitted a handle so if I bought a StellaLyra one of the first things I’d do is take it apart drill some holes and fit a handle. And while I was at it I’d flock it too. Although I don’t disagree with the overall conclusion much of this is subjective.

I also really do not like the all black look. But for me white with black trim is really nice. This maybe down to the little reflector that my parents bought me as a kid. It was white & black so there’s some nostalgia. I also like doing solar and the bottom section  of my home made base is black. And it really heats up - it feels like you could almost fry an egg on it. Meanwhile the white sections stay cool. Because I don’t like all black I’d also spray paint a black OTA white (I’m serious) while I was fitting a handle, flocking, fitting bobs knobs and the milk bottle mod to the secondary. 

On 22/05/2022 at 07:57, Alan White said:

If you want true grab and go for very short sessions, then I use binoculars, small, portable and instantly usable.

I have an 8 inch Dob and I use binoculars before most sessions. As well as being fun and something in its own right it helps me:

1. Relax and get my eyes use to the dark while the Dob cools. Relaxing is just as important as getting eyes in tune with the dark.

2. See what the quality of the sky is like.

3. Plan star hops. Since I’ve had binoculars every new star hop is planned in binoculars first. It’s so much easier and saves time at the finder & eyepiece.

And some objects, like open clusters, actually look better in my binoculars than they do in the Dob. So I end up seeing more than I would with just the Dob. 

37 minutes ago, Kon said:

Thanks. The problem is that we only get one shot at a time so hard to tinker with settings. It is getting there slowly.

That’s the story of a lot of astronomy - ie don’t expect instant results and above all have patience. This winter/spring I’ve missed some things that I wanted to observe (weather, being busy, object not in a good part of my sky) and now have to wait until next year.  But in some ways that’s what makes it appealing too.  

Wonderful. You are getting rather good at this!