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Stephen_M

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    Ilkley, West Yorkshire

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  1. Here's a pic of some cloud iridescence on a random Saturday when I happened to look up. Amazing to think before I got into astronomy last year I probably wouldn't have even noticed this. 17th September, 11:53am, no editing, iPhone 2020 SE
  2. Good luck with the new scope! I think a good thing with this hobby is that if you get equipment with a good reputation, then they seem to hold their resale value quite well which can help with upgrading later down the line. Please let us know how you get on over the the observation - reports section. I'll do a shameless plug for my beginners journal that I did, might be something useful there. Particularly, it can be very frustrating when you start so you'll need some patience if you are self-teaching like I did!
  3. If I was starting out again, these Bresser scopes look very nice - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bresser-telescopes/bresser-messier-5-dobsonian-telescope.html . I have a truss tube dob and tbh, it's a right faff getting it out and packed away. I haven't used a 150p, but the fixed tube dobs (not sure on the terminology), you won't have to worry too much about collimation and it should be easy to set up.
  4. I had my first attempt at viewing planets from my back garden last night. I have a tall thin garden with high fences, but placing the dob next to the back door just about gave me enough space to observe Jupiter to the South East at about 9pm. I had a bit of a anxious wait to see if Jupiter would get high enough before the Moon also rose over the rooftops too. To pass the time, I looked a Alberio quickly, and tried to find Saturn but it was too low over the fence to be anything other than a small blurry dot. Alberio looked great using my William 32mm SWA. I must say I am super impressed with this EP with my dob, I also browsed around Aquila of a bit and just marvelled at the amount of stars in this area of the sky. My main purchase over the summer was a Morpheus 4.5mm, which gives magnification of x270, and in combination with my 10" dob gave a great view of Jupiter and the moons. I was wondering if the dark spot was a trick of the light, or a shadow of one of the moons, so thank you for sharing that photo. I could just about make out the main equatorial zone, but it was difficult to make out any other details. Presumably this is due to the 10" capturing too much light, would I benefit from some sort of filter for this? Here's a blurry smartphone pic.
  5. Thank you for this. Definitely highlights how difficult it is to understand the orientation of everything! So with an EP, 180 degrees for the EP, and 45 degrees where the focusser is?
  6. Couple of West Yorkshire options near me, both very popular I hear. https://www.catgillfarm.co.uk/ https://masonscampsite.co.uk/ Harrogate might be a good shout as a bit closer to the A1 for connections. Not sure of sites around there.
  7. Thanks for the comment. I'm excited that from my perspective my astronomy journey appears to be in front of me in the form of a spiral or spring, and that each year you move up a level and build on the knowledge from last year. Hopefully at some point I will start traveling to darker sites for more 'impressive' views, but for now it seems to make sense to maximise everything I can see from the back garden.
  8. Thanks everyone. Those descriptions are really helpful, the other thing that springs to mind is to look at a few object in the garden before it gets dark. I guess I'm hoping this skill will be useful for multiple things such as sketching, and also interpreting star maps to star hop. Thanks again.
  9. Thanks for that. Living within 5 miles of Leeds Bradford I'll give this a try. Weather here seems very dependant on local conditions which I'm presuming is due to topography of the local hills and valleys. I've noticed that still clear nights are bad for observing due to mist forming in the valley, it seems here you need a gentle breeze for best conditions. I get the cloud thing is frustrating, but presumably we're talking very fine margins of error within their models. So if they're tracking a cloud mass/weather front that's hundreds of km in length, even an error of a few percent will mean the predicted edge of it varies considerably compared to the eventual position in reality.
  10. Thanks for the reply, perhaps I have not phrased my question correctly. I get that it's inverted, but for sketching I am hoping to learn how the layout of the field of view is affect by where the telescope is pointed and at what body/head/eye position I am looking through the eyepiece at. With the dob, I can obviously either look through with my eyes perpendicular to the telescope, or parallel, or potentially any other angle between 9 o'clock, 12noon and 3 o'clock. I'm not particularly flexible, so the angle will depend on what's comfortable for me! Using my clock reference, is there an easy way to orient yourself? Thanks.
  11. Still very much what feels like the beginner side of things, these past two nights have been good back yard observing and I've enjoyed discovering M81 and M82. It's almost been a year now of telescope ownership, and so soon it'll be back to the start for me. This is something that is quite an exciting proposition, and I'm looking forward to going through everything again but in slightly more depth than before. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Seeing Ursa Major overhead is new for me, and so TLaO was back out and I was looking for inspiration. I admit I have been spoilt looking at Gemini, Perseus, Orion and Auriga, in so far as the multitude of navigation points to use to find your way. I was intrigued as the description was "hard to find, but easy to see"! The first night, I was back to using blind luck to find them. There certainly is far fewer stars in this part of the sky. However, I was able to find M81 with a bit of aimless searching in the eyepiece, and once found was very impressed with the view. It's hard to say just how faint a smudge of light it is, but it's still awe inspiring that all these DSOs are up there and 'visible' to us all. On the second night, once I'd figured out the magnification of the TLaO picture, which must have been around x50, I was able to hop across to M82 once I'd found M81 again. It's certainly a great view to see the two different shaped galaxies so close to each other. Sketches are below. The only downside to the conditions was the mist forming in the valley, the temp was about freezing and so as the planes were flying into land at Leeds Bradford airport, I could see the mist illuminated overhead. I did look at a few other things, M36/37/38, M44, double cluster in Persues, and just a bit of time observing by naked eye. I think my sketch of M82 has the wrong orientation, so I've posted in the beginners section about that. Thanks for reading!
  12. Hi, I'm sure this is an easy question for someone, so I'm going to post it rather than research myself! It's something that sketching has made me think more about. I'm wondering, is there an easy way to discern what the orientation of your field of view is on a dobsonian? I get that it's reversed, and if I wait a minute, I can tell the direction of travel around polaris. Is it the case that 12 o'clock on the eyepiece if your eyes are parallel to the telescope body will be 6 o'clock if you were looking up from the primary mirror to the sky? Or is it something else? I would consider myself to have good spacial awareness, but just can't figure this out! Thanks, Stephen
  13. Great report, thank you. Some targets there that I can aspire to!
  14. "Walk through the heavens" is my pick of beginner books. I think you have to remember that as a beginner you really need something that covers the basics well and build up the knowledge in a steady and stepwise fashion. TLaO is too advanced by itself for a beginner IMO.
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