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.   

17 hours ago, Epick Crom said:

Hi my fellow stargazers! Had an interesting session last night hunting down various objects with various degrees of success! 

M67: Located this compact cluster in Cancer and as a bonus stumbled upon Omicron Cancri, a wide double!

NGC 2392: The Eskimo nebula in Gemini. Searched hard but was again not able to find it☹️.Oh well will try again and again until I nab it.

M 36: Had to work hard as its low down here but got it! Nice cluster.

NGC 3201: Globular in Vela. Fourth attempt at this object and successfully star hopped to it. Much fainter and spread out than I thought.

NGC 3132: Eight Burst nebula in Vela. First attempt to locate it and got it! Nice circular planetary nebula with prominent central star. Vivid blue colour, highlight of the night!

M78: Nebula in Orion still eludes me☹️

NGC 2419. The famous Intergalactic Wanderer in Lynx. A tough ask as this constellation is still really low but I had a go at finding it but was unsuccessful.

All in all a fun night was had, nothing like crusing the night sky hunting for objects and finding unexpected delights along the way! Clear skies to you all 👍

Joe

 

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.   

30 minutes ago, wulfrun said:

Nice idea, unfortunately it'd mean "garden-hopping", it's an adjacent street whose garden backs onto the end of my next-door neighbour's. It's just possible I may have "garden-hopped" in a mis-spent youth (as a prank and not with illegal intent, I might add) but not at my present age thanks. I may go around and ask them, politely, to re-aim/re-adjust it. It's probably coincidence but they do seem always to have it on on cold, clear (astro-friendly) nights but not all nights.

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

15 hours ago, wulfrun said:

Seems very clear here (and very cold), not much twinkling going on. Counted 10, which tells me what I already knew, not a good result. Just spent an hour being irritated by insecurity lights. The most annoying does on-off-on-off ad nauseam because it's close to a boiler flue and can "see" the plume. Aaaargh!

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...

48 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

Does anyone know of a translation from the number of stars visible in this count to a Bortle rating?  I know the Bortle rating is a bit more than just NELM (and Orion being low down will affect matters too), but it would be a rough guide.

I did find (and can't remember where) some NELM charts by constellation; these are the ones for Orion:

I counted up the interior stars for each (almost certainly wrongly for the last one), and compared the NELM to the Bortle scale, giving:

Chart  Count   Bortle

<3.5       4           9
<4.5       7           8
<5.5     22           6
<6.5     44           4
<7.5    113          2

If you have done the count already, how does the result in this table tally with your local Bortle rating, if you already know it?
I'm supposedly in a Bortle 4 area and I only managed 10 (!) last night, but I'm hoping for a recount.  I know my eyes are getting on a bit, but I have previously seen stars down almost to mag 6 at this location - although they were higher in the sky than Orion is, and away from the rooftops.

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! 

3 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

We're on it mate thanks! 👍

 

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

7 minutes ago, wibblefish said:

Yeah I signed up for this the other week. Hoping to be able to do it but this seems to be the week atm!

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. 

1 hour ago, Stu said:

The South Downs are pretty good. I’m Walton-on-Thames and my club have occasionally ventured down to near Bignor which has been excellent on occasion. Mind you, Ranmore Common is much nearer for us and still worthwhile.

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/

37 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

Can't beat a sky with less light pollution.
I remember a few years back helping a visitor put some things into her car on my drive.
Looking up (At Orion) she commented 'you have more stars here than where I live'.
It was about 15 miles away.
I know😕

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/

8 hours ago, Stu said:

Nice report! Darker skies make such a different, seemingly tough targets just become easy. Hopefully you can get your scope down there once lockdown eases.

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. 

2 hours ago, wibblefish said:

Another update, all the new finders are installed though I need to find some time during the day to align them properly, maybe this weekend! Looking forward to using them in anger sometime in the next ... weeks? ... months? .... who knows

 

 

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!

On 04/08/2020 at 16:20, Ags said:

With my AZ-GTi I I just manually point the scope at Saturn or Jupiter and then select Point and Track. That's enough for planetary viewing and imaging.

For deep sky I never align on solar system objects as I find that results in less accurate gotos. I usually go for two star alignment, with one of the stars being Polaris. The other star is whatever is brightest and visible from my location. I am also in a highly light polluted environment, but you should still be able to pick out the very brightest stars, which is all you need for alignment? If you have trouble identifying any stars, download an app like Stellarium for your phone.

+1 on the Point & Track feature on the AZ GTi mount, its so useful. 

That's cool - looks almost like a drawing. 

Here are the only two I managed to grab the other night, tweaked for contrast and sharpness in PS Express (attached).  I am sufficiently encouraged to have since invested in the rings to connect my DSLR to the eyepiece.   I sense this may be the start of  a slippery & expensive slope toward imaging...   

Put up a thread here on that  little project:   

I sense this may be the start of  a slippery & expensive slope toward imaging...

My objectives on getting a new Skymax 127 were purely visual observing having parked imaging for a far-off time when I have time on my hands but, on taking delivery of a Baader Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom and fixed Hyperion 24mm 68 degree, I noticed a photo on the box and was intrigued..

My DSLR hardly gets an outing these days with an iPhone camera always on hand but I thought it has to be worth a go so I ordered a Baader M43-T2 thread ring and a Nikon T ring to connect it all together, perhaps this could be quick and dirty way of getting into basic imaging at low cost. It all connects incredibly simply in seconds and although I'm only using the supplied SW plastic-bodied diagonal feels nice and secure when its on the 'scope.

It makes quite a chunky load on the little AZ GTi mount but with the Vixen bar at its extreme balance point the mount performs fine at what I reckon is the very top end of its published 5KG payload. 

Initially I just wanted to establish if there's a decently bright and focusable image that makes it to the CCD & given the absence of stars due to current weather and this being a bit of an operation to put together, a daylight test seemed a good idea.  I have a very handy church spire about 500m away (about the maximum possible distance from a church in Winchester) and poking it all out of an upper storey window in failing light on an extremely windy Saturday I captured the orb below on a  2.5 s exposure - (distance view included for scale, the spire is centre frame partially in the trees). 

Verdict: focussing is tricky, as you can see, but on the Skymax 127 there's definitely plenty of leeway either side with the focuser which answered my initial exam question, it just takes some focus to focus!

I've ordered the Baader heavy duty quick release system pictured on the box which should make this much safer and more practical  in the dark and cold, although it does make this not quite the bargain-basement option it is with just the 2 rings.

Given the light & time limitations of the test Id say its definitely worth trying on nighttime targets, if the clouds ever clear...

Will post any results up here but this looks like a really promising way of resurrecting a Nikon D90 that has been on the dole for a while (it shoots RAW video too!)

Any hints, tips or suitable targets appreciated!

Having tried this low-tech method of image capture the other night all I can say is outstanding patience & steady hand! Nice drop of Strauss too  

3 hours ago, LeeHore7 said:

Nice set up. I have the Skymax 127 az gti and have the rdf fitted at the moment but would like to fit my 9x50 raci finderscope to it but I wondering if it would be to heavy for my mount. 

Is running fine with both finders on board + a heavier eyepiece than supplied.  At first it squealed when lowering the altitude but after moving along the clamp bar a couple of inches all sounded happy again and has performed as normal after. 

Quite - although not that heavy & as I say, it works.