SuburbanMak

After family pizza night and an evening in front of the TV it was a bit of an effort of will to head out at midnight to my now regular rugby-field stance. However, it’s been a while since my last “proper” session with the Mak & I’ve been inspired to stick at it to find some fainter objects after recent reports in here so the urge “to boldly go” won out and I duly stumped off to the park with my big kitbag... A dipping crescent moon with earth-light to the West & steady burning stars between translucent skeins of cirrus meant that by the time I’d walked-in & gone through the familiar set up & alignment routine (N. aligned Vega & Arcturus) I was mentally ready to hunt for some new targets. Notes: Skywatcher Mak 127, Baader Hyperion 24mm, 68 degree (1.04 degree TFOV). Thin high cirrus bands about with occasional patches of great transparency between. Seeing steady. Align Vega, Arcturus - confirmed really good seeing outside of the thickest haze. M13 - twinkly, looking good. Even at 63x points of light especially with averted vision. Cor Caroli - split at 63x, lovely steady white pair with neat rings. M63 - fuzzy core, wider nebulosity appeared with viewing time. Averted vision showed something brighter within/aligned [checking the charts I think this can only have been the galaxy’s core itself] “Perseus” shaped asterism at 5 o’clock in finder. Diagonal pair close to L in eyepiece. M51 - twin cores! Dark Lane & some connecting glow. Narrow triangle asterism to upper right with brighter apex & faint pair as left hand base point [Stellarium confirmed these as around Mag 11.7 & they were reasonable bright points not “ghosts”] Centred Vindemiatrix for Virgo tour - couldn’t pick 86 or 87 out of haze though so moved on. Leo - M65 & 6 but no hamburger! M95/6 probable but not a good view. Brighter star to L with faint twin at 11 o’clock High cloud now getting quite generalised then noted a clear area around Lyra to NE. [Switched to Baader Zoom 8-24mm.] Epsilon Lyrae Double Double. Southerly star, secondary at 5 o’clock, dimmer/smaller than primary though not by a large margin. Northerly star a closer pair & dimmer secondary at 1 o’clock. Best (& lovely) view 10mm, 150x dim star making triangle to lower R. Occasional views of other very faint stars, one on the “hypotenuse” & another in the middle of the triangle. Can’t immediately identify these in Stellarium however. Haze by now all over & thickening. By this time it was gone 2 am & quite cold. I packed away and as I did so a few holes appeared in the murk and gave way to aswathe of noctilucent mackerel sky through Cassiopeia and Eastward to a horizontal Cygnus & rising Aquila - the Summer Triangle pointing downward toward the South & East. It was quite beautiful & still. I lingered a while & broke out the 10x50s for a quick sweep of the Milky Way parallel to the Northern horizon and up in to Hercules, marvelling at how bright the Great Globular looks in binoculars when fully dark adapted. Highlights has to be M51 & Epsilon Lyrae but a really satisfying session on a patchy night that’s left me with that tired, mild euphoria I get the day following (is it just me?) Hatching a plan to drive somewhere that gives me a better chance at Virgo to the SE, maybe tonight...

Congratulations! That really is a testament to the value of experience combined with method & persistence. Fantastic read thank you & an inspiration for us smaller aperture guys! Now, the theoretical limit of my Mak 127 is 13.1....

Thank you @Stardaze - I have been lucky enough to catch the Leo Triplet a couple of times ( & 2 of the 3 a few more times) with a Mak 127 from the local park, still suburban Bortle 5 up above but a good open horizon above 10-15 degrees with less much peripheral interference from street & security lighting than the garden. Here views are blocked below 60 degrees by houses to the W, lights to the North & with views to South & East possible above 25 degrees but punctuated with the odd tree! Yet to see them in the ST80.

I wasn’t able to get out to the park last night but once the smaller of the children was abed & the teenagers uploaded to their games I popped on a hoodie (cunning anti-security light plan) and decamped to the garden, wine in hand, for an impromptu after dinner tour with the ST80. After wrestling with the old wooden tripod on my “new” Prinz 330 60mm earlier in the week, the Manfrotto 55 and full height viewing position made this feel quite the luxury experience! Wide-field views weren’t bad either... 15.4, 9.30 PM ST80 & Baader Zoom. Seeing good, transparency patchy at Zenith, murky below 30 degrees. Castor - almost split @50x low over rooftop M44 Beehive - great view, put the red dot right on it. Was above the houses & enjoyed the soundtrack to a neighbour’s party whilst lost in space. Melotte 111 - lovely view. Super round pin points & some good colour contrast with white & a smattering of orange stars. ST80 loves these slightly fainter clusters. No hint of CA. This cluster now firmly on my highlight list. Chertan & 73 Leonis - but no triplet (well it was worth a try) Algieba - Split (just) at 50x, nice yellow headlights. Had a look for anything apparent in the Virgo galaxy field but lots of white LP to SE so no chance. Cor Caroli - beautiful view in the ST80. White primary with smaller fainter white secondary - nice round stars. Mizar - again a super field, Mizar A&B look a close pair at 50x with size contrast - easy to imagine as an orbital system. Alcor a way off and a couple of other faint stars making a nice little asterism. M81 & M82 - yes! From the garden, a first outside of M31! Hoodie over the EP. Dropped the red dot carefully in line from the diagonal across the bowl of the plough/dipper. Galaxies popped with a slight nudge from original guess. See an oval and a stripe & that fantastic orientation - obviously no detail but a rewarding view from among the security & streetlights! Enjoyed for ages with a glass of wine! Civilised galactic travel...

After dinner I popped out into the (security light blighted) garden for a quick test. Arcturus was smack in my narrow wedge of available sky & I was pleased to be able to focus down to a crisp, bright golden disc, flaring a bit across its own rings with just a hint of CA (the only time this was apparent tonight). I took a quick tour of: Algieba - split nicely in the 15mm EP, 48x. Izar (Epsilon Bootes) - tricky, almost splitting with the 15mm (48x) & a nice view. Probably splitting in the 6mm (118x) but a horrible view - a bit dim & awful eye relief. Also suspect the 6mm formed part of Alexander Fleming’s Petri dish collection... Mizar - split at 28x (25mm) & a pretty field with Alcor & the mag 7 star that sits between. Tight ball-like stars, nice. Double Cluster - looked great in both the 25mm & 15mm EPs (28x & 48x). Dark background & pin sharp stars. (Fast coming to the conclusion the Double Cluster looks great in any instrument). Mars - noted initially as “something bright near Auriga that doesn’t belong, has it really moved over there?” - tiny, sandy coloured disc. Auriga, M Thirty-something, probably... not a winner, slipping behind rooftops & small dim targets exposing the weakness of the finder, optically it seems ok but tiny, main issue is the physical difficulty of viewing position. Castor - nice split in the 15mm (48x) Later when the wedge of garden sky had changed... M13 - faff to find, lots of contortions to look through the finder, reposition, wait for mount tremors to die down - eventually though a nice round grey cloud in the 25mm between its two outrider stars, pretty useless in the higher power EPs. Coma Berenices open cluster - very nice view. Overall definitely not a waste of money - it’s a lovely looking thing on its wooden mount & I love all the machined aluminium tubing - everything is metal. The raw optics seem very good (circle K in fact, not circle T as originally thought). I like the way it presents tiny round stars on a really dark background (compared to ST80) & colour contrast is superb. Doubles look great as there is more disc than ring which I suspect helps with clean separation. Yes, the field is narrow (with the 15mm in it’s the same as the Mak 127 & there I have a bright 9x50 finder that I can look through without slipping a disc , + a Telrad AND a tracking mount to help me! ) & the magnification is low, the shorter focal length EPs being dim & tough to look through. The mount is OK-ish, Az slow mo control is great but the Alt doesn’t seem to work at all (more tweaking before judging maybe) & although steady when settled the vibration after any focussing (which is a bit stiff) takes 5s or so to settle down. But! When you get an object centred the view is lovely, contrasty and richly coloured - especially stars - singly, doubles & starfields. I think this will be a stay at home telescope, popping out occasionally for observing a couple of objects in a session. I could get some rings & put it on the goto mount but I think nights when I want to set up & align for a session I’ll favour the modern gear. This is for something different, more the wood-framed Edwardian astronomy experience. “I say Carruthers, the moon looks splendid this evening! What say we pop the refractor out on the balcony and have ourselves a stiff whisky while we’re about it, eh?”.

@ShrewView on arrival today there’s a tiny label marked “Brighton Polytechnic - department of earth & life sciences.” I googled that & RC Stanley together, the only thing that came up was a Physics paper by someone of that name in 1972 sadly not Astro related (something about viscosity) but I’d wager we have a physics post grad who looked after the departmental telescope here. Tonight it was cleaned, out of its box & back out under the stars where it belongs.

Nice box arrived safely today. All bits present & correct. A fine dust of perished 70s cushion foam coated everything but other than that there’s nothing horrendous. Assembled everything & initially couldn’t achieve focus so undid the lens cell and “shoggled” a little - now all seems well and the 25mm EP at least delivered a crackingly sharp nelghbour’s chimney pot test so I reckon we’re in business. The prism was filthy but is a nice piece of glass after judicious care with the the Baader Optical Magic spray. Nice thing is I’m not too nervous about having a bit of a clean - there really is no option... Looks like I might get first light tonight if it stays clear.

My first ‘scope was a Tasco 4VTE bought from the John Moore’s catalogue after many months of desire. In practice it was very awkward to use, straight through view and on a tiny table-top yoke tripod. Very wobbly & usually perched on Dad’s car or pulling contortions when it was on the garden picnic table. 40mm aperture and a dodgy click-zoom 15-50x eyepiece. I remember a few good views of the moon and Orion Nebula but it soon ended up in the back of a cupboard. I understand the primary optics were actually pretty good, the issues started with the weird integral clicky zoom eyepiece & the utterly useless mount. Still, if one came up for sale be an interesting project to get the best out of it... uh-oh, I sense a collection brewing

Agree with this view on the AZGti mount - I have this mount and run the Skywatcher Mak 127 on it (its in my profile pic!). I backpack this to the local park very regularly. The thing about the AZGti mount is that even if you don't use it to find things, you can hit a Point and Track button and it will keep the thing you are looking at in view without having to make constant tweaks. I also have an ST80 (Short Tube refractor from Skywatcher) that works superbly well on either this mount or manually on a photo tripod. Whatever you choose you are on a fantastic journey and the advice and expertise I've benefitted from on here has been amazing!

Plan to see what I can do with the mount in the way of re-greasing & tightening etc, if the optics are any good I'll source some rings to put it on a vixen bar.

Yes - I wondered if perhaps it had belonged to a University astronomy club, certainly somewhere where its been available for general use.

Thanks John - that does look very similar & in beautiful condition! I wonder if they are the same OTA badged for different brands like the Synta of today? Prinz was I believe a Dixons house brand this version is a 60mm, 710mm focal length

For the avoidance of doubt...

I was watching a few old refractors on EBay and got carried away with all that wood & the carefully written index card... Its a Prinz 330, in theory the optics should be OK-ish (Japanese Circle T) and I'll have something super cheap that's a nice object & will do a job to have a go at solar (with appropriate modern filters of course - not the passport to blindness included with this kit). Also prevented me from bidding on a lovely looking Pentax J-60 that is going to go for way more money than I wanted to spend on this whim Look forward to updating on whether I have bought a pile of old rubbish or a usable piece of nostalgia in due course...

Nice report and had a similar experience to @IB20 last night, in my case with another peashooter, the 127 Mak (+ ST80). My son is back from Uni & was keen to see some far off things, to keep his interest I didn't linger much if objects didn't make themselves apparent fairly easily so more than a few to go back and hunt for... Transparency was intermittently excellent but in bands of high mist would deteriorate rapidly, seeing wasn't great on the few doubles we did try for. Picked up M64 quite nicely with a hint of shading in it. M65 & M66 popped in quite easily with a hint of structure in M66, but NGC 3628 was very shy, debatable whether there was actually anything fuzzy going on between the two 10th magnitude stars above and below. M95 / M96 - oddly couldn't find last night as have been landing on these reliably, blaming high level haze. M51 I couldn't find at all + is very much overhead which was a bit positionally awkward. Am very keen to see this one however. In need of a win I dropped to Virgo & picked up M86 & M84 in the same field (24mm, 68 degree so just over a degree TFOV). Great view. I was picking up something top right which I am fairly certain was NGC 4438/5 although not registering as distinct objects. My son could also see something below which would correspond to NGC 4388, he has a 30 year retinal advantage on me... Also looked at M13 early on which was lovely & stars resolving as diamond-dust, M44 super as always, M53 visible but not impressive grey blob, and a highlight I'd not looked at before- the Coma Cluster (Melotte 111, Collander 256) which we picked up naked eye as a shape behind Leo and swung the ST80 to. Its a lovely wide field view quite Beehive like, probably just me missing a trick but I haven't seen a lot of references to this super object. Splitting Izar was messy which shows what the seeing was like but it was late enough to finish on Albireo and show Charlie a coloured sparkler to finish the night!

That's just stunning.

Just worked out how to do this, very cool thank you - I have also now got it talking to SynScan & the AZ GTi mount - now all we need is Clear Skies!

Just made this work with Sky Safari I had selected "SkyWatcher SynScan" and I needed to select "SkyWatcher SynScanLink" - the cluse is in the LINK but I guess. This could be fun

I am using Stellarium and Sky Safari to plan targets but haven't yet used the observing lists in Sky Safari - manually typing R.A & Dec to SynScan User Objects is ok but a bit long winded! I am developing a similar routine to ours, logging my notes on the phone's Notes app then inputting to a spreadsheet the next day - the column headings on this have grown & grown but hopefully means I can sort the observations in lots of useful ways.

Super report thank you! Some inspiration for a galaxy newbie for the next new moon.

Ah!a! Well that is certainly a lead and something to try, thank you - let you know how it turns out. I’m leaning toward Stellarium recently as the feature that lets you set up an ocular circle of a customisable fov I find really useful for prep.

I have an AZ GTi which I've been getting good GoTo results from via SynScan Pro App on iOS (used with both Phone & iPad). I've got paid versions of both Stellarium and Sky Safari on the phone both of which should in theory connect, I've been through the process of plugging in the IP address & port data and getting nothing in Sky Safari. Stellarium at least tries to connect at this point and I can see it scrolling through a script that details various mounts but it is not working. @Zermelo Any knack or tips on the order of doing things that you've gleaned would be most welcome as I'm not finding a lot online on troubleshooting this - would be great to make it work and very encouraging to hear that you have! Mark

@Jiggy 67 I do & have attempted to have it control the mount via SynScan but haven’t been able to make it work. Keyed a lot of these into SynScan as user objects - find the the GoTo very handy for this on moon washed nights when starhopping is tougher.

Thanks @Stu it is in fact! Good to see both Polaris & Mizar too.

UPDATE: After a steward’s inquiry it seems the Pup was not in fact spotted this time. I’m blaming my brush with the law, lord knows what I was actually seeing there - dust, blue lights before the eyes or maybe the effect of those “special cigarettes” drifting across the park. Either way, it’s nice to have something to aim for...