SuburbanMak

I saved the original packing for my Mak127 and have supplemented it with a cut-up foam sleep mat and a strip of sticky Velcro. Now all fits snugly in a standard sports bag with room to spare for finders, diagonal etc. Star Adventurer tripod + AZ GTI an easy carry - all seems safe, ready to Grab and Go!

(Originally posted this in the wrong section Notes from 10.2. ) Had three sessions last night, the first the CPRE Orion star count with my 11 year old daughter, magic. The second was from the light-blighted garden mid evening - successfully picked up M41, M35 and M67 all for the first time - then a neighbour put on more lights so had a go at Polaris, nearly, almost sort of resolved as a double this time. After a tea and warm break I managed to convince myself that the Mak 127 carry over to the park at 11:30 pm constituted allowable lockdown exercise (body AND mind officer...) so headed out to a wider and, it turned out, reasonably darker viewing spot in the park. I haven't yet much comparative experience of conditions but I would say seeing was quite steady while transparency a bit milky. Winchester sits in a river valley and I suspect this may be a local feature until I can get up & out of town. Anyhoo, what started as proof-of-concept of some grab & go bag & padding ideas, turned into a really super session of clusters and doubles, most of which I had never seen before, & fruitless searches for fainter things. Technique-wise I brightest star aligned on Sirius and Arcturus & did have a few accuracy niggles with the GoTo , however a combination of the Telrad + 10x50 Bino sweeps got most of the bright targets quickly in the Finderscope and centred. Highlight has to be the Beehive, M44 which I found breathtaking & can't believe I have never looked for before, Beta Mono triple-star which was amazingly 3D and set me off on a Tatooine sunset imagination-trip and M67, dim & red the kind of place where Klingons might hang out! After much reading on here over all these starless nights I had made a list and although I deviated a bit from it and failed to find ANY galaxies or planetary nebula, the list was a great idea and reminded me that I wanted to go and hunt down the targets in Cancer which I would otherwise have forgotten and missed two of the highlights of the evening. Eventually my phone battery gave out and as I was wi-fi tethered to the AZ GTi this ended my session shortly before frost-bite ensued. That dew shield was a good buy For what its worth, here are my notes, all observations made on SW Mak 127 on AZ GTi, Baader Hyeprion 24mm 68 degree fixed for most & occasional higher mag on Baader Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom. Telrad & SW 9x50 finder, supplemented by Celestron Nature DX ED 10x50 Bins.

Great report thank you - I too "discovered" M67 last night - great colour, really red/orange.

Had three sessions last night, the first the CPRE Orion star count with my 11 year old daughter, magic. The second was from the light-blighted garden mid evening - successfully picked up M41, M35 and M67 all for the first time - then a neighbour put on more lights so had a go at Polaris, nearly, almost sort of resolved as a double this time. After a tea and warm break I managed to convince myself that the Mak 127 carry over to the park at 11:30 pm constituted allowable lockdown exercise (body AND mind officer...) so headed out to a wider and, it turned out, reasonably darker viewing spot in the park. I haven't yet much comparative experience of conditions but I would say seeing was quite steady while transparency a bit milky. Winchester sits in a river valley and I suspect this may be a local feature until I can get up & out of town. Anyhoo, what started as proof-of-concept of some grab & go bag & padding ideas, turned into a really super session of clusters and doubles, most of which I had never seen before, & fruitless searches for fainter things. Technique-wise I brightest star aligned on Sirius and Arcturus & did have a few accuracy niggles with the GoTo , however a combination of the Telrad + 10x50 Bino sweeps got most of the bright targets quickly in the Finderscope and centred. Highlight has to be the Beehive, M44 which I found breathtaking & can't believe I have never looked for before, Beta Mono triple-star which was amazingly 3D and set me off on a Tatooine sunset imagination-trip and M67, dim & red the kind of place where Klingons might hang out! After much reading on here over all these starless nights I had made a list and although I deviated a bit from it and failed to find ANY galaxies or planetary nebula, the list was a great idea and reminded me that I wanted to go and hunt down the targets in Cancer which I would otherwise have forgotten and missed two of the highlights of the evening. Eventually my phone battery gave out and as I was wi-fi tethered to the AZ GTi this ended my session shortly before frost-bite ensued. That dew shield was a good buy For what its worth, here are my notes, all observations made on SW Mak 127 on AZ GTi, Baader Hyeprion 24mm 68 degree fixed for most & occasional higher mag on Baader Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom. Telrad & SW 9x50 finder, supplemented by Celestron Nature DX ED 10x50 Bins.

Ha! In the Derby/Notts area we used to call it "cat creeping", like night-time garden parcour in flares.

If you can reach it there's a "sensitivity" dial on the back of most of them, it's possible to surreptitiously adjust them in the dead of night. Allegedly...

This is really interesting thank you for posting - last night from central Winchester I counted 19 (my 11 year old daughter 21) pretty much spot on your NELM 5 chart above. Theoretically we are Bortle 5 here.

Finally got some clear skies last night & both my daughter and I did this which was fun. After 20 minutes to adapt (hiding between shed and car to escape neighbourhood security lights) Freya counted 21, I got 19 - but then she's 11 vs. 50 so I was quite pleased! Also looks like Winchester is not as light polluted as I'd thought, but then Orion was to the S.E which is the direction of S. Downs park so less out there until you reach Portsmouth 25 miles away or so.

Great report - as a beginner its so encouraging to read of sessions that routinely include "not finding things" and realise its a normal part of the process. Likewise lingering on the views that really take the breath away - they don't come along that often! Also finishing the evening with a binocular-wander around a few wide-field greatest hits is becoming a routine for me and rounds off a session. Thanks again and here's to clear skies!

Cool - thought it must be on here somewhere, it’s a good initiative.

Not am encouraging forecast! Clear outside has a few hours Wednesday evening for my area, but they’ve led me up the garden path before... fingers crossed.

Bignor looks great, right in the middle, although a bit of a drive for me. Going to try Cheesefoot Head on the A272 Petersfield road out of Winchester should give a good panorama W,N & E. and having dropped the kids off there for various Scout night hikes know its pretty dark up there, Old Winchester Hill in Meonstoke which is called out by the NP as one of their stargazing sites and Farley Mount Monument which promised great elevated views E-S & W.

Chatting on here about possible darker sites near me and came across the CPRE light pollution survey which you can contribute to this week. I’m going to rope the kids in & thought I’d share the link: https://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-care-about/nature-and-landscapes/dark-skies/star-count-2021/

This has got me looking at dark sky maps near me & I realised this week is the CPRE starcount which I’ll do with kids if the sky clears (Wednesday looking most likely right now). https://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-care-about/nature-and-landscapes/dark-skies/star-count-2021/

Thanks - yes, the park will definitely be on the list for a quick impromptu view that’s darker than the garden. Am on the edge of the S.Downs national park & have a few spots identified a short car trip away for after lockdown that should offer about as good as it gets for South central England.

The view from my centre of town garden is both physically & light-pollution restricted. Anything below 25 degrees is out of the question, anything West below 60 degrees behind bright buildings and a huge South-Easterly sycamore tree combines with a neighbour’s security & outdoor fairy-light obsession to make a fairly narrow observing window to say the least. The local park about 5 mins away potentially offers a darker & wider alternative which I confirmed this week on a late night dog comfort-break excursion. All of a sudden, from a spot around the 22 on the rugby pitch, a break in the cloud presented a full vista of Orion, Taurus, both Canis, Auriga, Gemini, Perseus & Cassiopeia- I was star-struck to the point where my furry companion thought I’d lost it. Messier clusters in Auriga I’d struggled to get in the eyepiece from the garden were immediately visible as naked-eye diamond-dust, the Pleiades sparkled and M42 glowed. It was ten minutes of magic. Inspired by my mid-week bonus I hatched a plan to head to the park the next time a clear-sky coincided with a non-school night. Tonight promised a couple of clear hours around midnight but dodgy weather earlier in the evening combined with the feeling that lugging the Mak and tripod to the park might be tough to justify as a lockdown exercise break, confined me to a late night stroll armed only with my trusty 10x50s. Having overcome the nagging sensation I might be mistaken for some kind of lurking pervert, I set off for the park. In the end I got about 15 minutes before fog bubbled up from the river. But even this fleeting glimpse allowed me to confirm I can now easily find the Messier clusters in Auriga and put my bins straight onto the double cluster in Perseus, things I’d never seen before lockdown. As the fog closed in I took a sweep of the alpha Perseii cluster and Pleiades, my current binocular greatest hits, and headed home happy.

Welcome from another lockdown beginner! Likewise - getting a bit fed up of the neighbour's security lights need the freedom to roam.... Folk on here have been great and the amount of valuable experience around is amazing. Here's to clouds and lockdowns lifting!

In the immortal words of Depeche Mode: I'm waiting for the night to fall, I know that it will save us all, When everything's dark, keeps us from stark, Reality.... Although I don't think this is what they were on about but here's my Skymax 127.

Looks business-like. After one night of rolling around on the floor getting neck-ache I went all-in on finders too. After a couple of sessions I can tell I am not going to regret a penny and sure you will find the same. +1 on everything folk saying here about alignment, I got it as best I could on the top of a church spire about 500m away then fine tuned on first the moon & then Capella in one of those rare clear nights, happy star-hopping!