MartinT

I did also attempt it with my 2x Barlow, because why not, but I think the view was better without - certainly too dim by eye though the little animation the phone made still impressed me. Although I wouldn't have thought anything was in there without the previous hours observation to guide me. PXL_20220513_232549616.NIGHT.mp4

I think I might have pushed the pixel 4a about as far as it'll go! This counts as the very first galaxy I've spotted, so I'm unreasonably chuffed. Also what with the light pollution here and the bright shiny moon last night I realise I didn't make life easy - but I've found picking one target and sticking with it definitely helps me. This was too faint to see much of anything through the eyepiece (celestron ultima duo 13mm on my skywatcher 130pds), so I used the phone with astrometry.net (such an amazing resource) to work out what I was looking at and hone in - turning myself into an iterated plate-solving, push-to system. Once I was on target - and had the reassurance that I actually was where I thought/hoped I was - I could make out more detail by eye (though not as much as the phone could show). I spent a good while peering at (down?) the whirlpool before the bottom of the scope contacted the tripod - another rookie mistake! - and, not having the confidence to try and reset/refind it swapped to splitting the double double (just because I'd read about t earlier in the week) before heading to bed far later than planned. What a fabulous night.

Hi all, I realise that this is a decade old post, but my googling of this very problem last week led me here, so I thought I'd write down the answer for any future searchers. Those daft crosshead screws holding the slo mo controls on are M4 sized. I found a generic m4 thumbscrew that worked well. Although, if you're searching, 5mm would have been better than the 10mm I had - the RA one needed a quick introduction to the hacksaw to trim it to clear the clutch. M

Thanks @Zermelo that's really helpful - ta for the linked thread too. Very informative.

Wow!

Fabulous. I really love the composition of the 2nd one - the building looks almost cosy under the sky

Really nice shots

Lovely images - I really like the 2nd to last. 👍

lovely, evocative shot. 👍

really nice shot, and so good to hear about the efforts and thinking that went into it.

Thanks @bomberbaz I'll have a look

Thanks both, really appreciate it

Hi, I have a skywatcher 130 and would like to look at getting a particularly wide angle, low power eyepiece. I have the 28mm 2" eyepiece it came with and I think that has a 56deg fov (though happy to be corrected here), but I see eyepieces listed with wider view and wondered about them. I've been told that the f5 of my scope is fast enough to cause problems for wider view eyepieces, especially at the cheaper end of the market. How problematic are these limitations? I've also been told that the advantage of using a 2" is the wider views possible. So does anyone have experience of a 2" wide-fov, low power eyepiece - particularly one that's good value (or one to save up for tbh!) Cheers, M

Thanks @Philip R that's a great tip - sounds like an ideal Xmas list addition!

Ta very much. Cheers