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Hey Dave, welcome to SGL. Where about in Ireland are you from? I'd love to know because we've had nothing but cloudy nights in Antrim for the past few weeks.

The postman came to my door with his arms full, literally, 3 separate parcels, each with some astronomy gear. From FLO, Cheshire EP, Planisphere and The Cambridge Star Atlas From @Jonny_H, BST Starguider 5mm EP From @johnst, Celestron X-Cel 25mm and 12.5mm EP Big thanks to both Jon and John for their speedy postage, excellent packaging and perfect condition gear 👍

I would echo the advice by Oldfort, you can find it with your current equipment you just need to know how to find it. I am very new the observing and I can find Andromeda without much issue by starting at Mirach and moving up following the 2 bright stars, Andromeda is directly beside the last bright star. That is a terrible description so here is a picture. Locating Mirach with the naked eye shouldn't be too hard as it is bright, if you can spot Cassiopeia then look to the right and down towards the horizon. Or as Oldfort suggested you can use the square of Pegasus as a starting point. If you are still struggling you could try going out into darker skies, you don't need perfectly dark skies, driving 5 minutes out of the town into the countryside will make a huge difference. I am able to spot Andromeda with my 10x50 binoculars so I am confident you will find it with a nice 6" scope.

Hey Ciaran, I have two under two so I get ya. It's great to see so many people from NI here, I am hoping to join a club in the area once they are back running again. That's for all the great advice! I ordered The Cambridge Star Atlas from FLO and it arrived this morning so if the curse continues tonight I will be reading through it. I took a quick flick through and there seems to be a lot of information in it.

I'm very new to astronomy having just recently got a telescope and last night was my first time taking the telescope out of my light polluted back yard and into the countryside. I checked the clearoutside website earlier in the day and forecast was giving a few hours of clear skies. When I got out of the car things were looking really good, clear skies and a shocking number of stars visible. Unfortunately that's where the positives ended. I got the telescope setup and pointed at Jupiter, it was a wavy mess, I'm guessing it was because my telescope hadn't cooled down at this stage. I keep the scope in my garage so I had hoped it wouldn't need long to acclimate. I spent some time looking at Saturn which wasn't any better and then thought I'd try my luck with some DSO higher in the sky but as I looked towards the north all I could see was cloud. So back to Jupiter it was, which was starting to look a bit better, I could easily make out the centre band, the clouds rolling in from the north helped a little because Jupiter was so bright it was hard to look at. After a few minutes though the night was lost to the clouds so I packed up and went home with my tail between my legs. All in all, an enjoyable night 🙂

Those images look great to me, especially like the colours in Orion, good job 👍

My first views of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn were amazing, really breathtaking. Then I moved on to some deep sky objects which were, how do I put this . . . somewhat less impressive from my back garden which is in the town. That's why I'm hoping to get a trip out to the OM Dark Sky Park in Davagh forest soon to get some better views of a few Messier objects.

Welcome Richard, I'm new here too

Hi seaeagle, I don't think you can get that particular app on Android, it seems to be iOS only. However there is plenty of polar alignment apps available in the Play Store. I've been using Polar Clock its easy to use without any annoying ads but it doesn't seem to be as feature packed as Polar Scope Align Pro.

Hey Adam, I'm in Antrim town, so I'm not too far away. I hope to get a night at the dark sky reserve sometime, I'm thinking of camping at shepard's rest which is just down the road from it.

Indeed they are, I was back inside within a minute I've seen mention of a new equipment curse, I believe I was the cause of 2 weeks of cloud at the beginning of July because I had bought those binoculars.

Hey, I've just signed up to SGL, I don't normally do these intro things but you seem nice here so I'm going to say hi. I've always had a passing interest in astronomy and the night sky but never really got into it. In the past year or so I've been listening to the Awesome Astronomy podcast which I guess has slowly influenced me because in the past few months I've bought myself 10x50 binoculars and I couldn't stop there, a few weeks later I saw a used Sky-Watcher Explorer 200P EQ5 up for sale and I couldn't pass up on it. I've been reading these forums a lot over the past few weeks and I've learned a tonne! From helpful guides on how to use my new telescope to finding interesting targets to view by reading about your observing sessions. The forums have been a huge help to get me off to a good start, so thank you. Now I'm off to check if the clouds have cleared up at all.