Search the Community

I wasn’t able to get out to the park last night but once the smaller of the children was abed & the teenagers uploaded to their games I popped on a hoodie (cunning anti-security light plan) and decamped to the garden, wine in hand, for an impromptu after dinner tour with the ST80. After wrestling with the old wooden tripod on my “new” Prinz 330 60mm earlier in the week, the Manfrotto 55 and full height viewing position made this feel quite the luxury experience! Wide-field views weren’t bad either... 15.4, 9.30 PM ST80 & Baader Zoom. Seeing good, transparency patchy at Zenith, murky below 30 degrees. Castor - almost split @50x low over rooftop M44 Beehive - great view, put the red dot right on it. Was above the houses & enjoyed the soundtrack to a neighbour’s party whilst lost in space. Melotte 111 - lovely view. Super round pin points & some good colour contrast with white & a smattering of orange stars. ST80 loves these slightly fainter clusters. No hint of CA. This cluster now firmly on my highlight list. Chertan & 73 Leonis - but no triplet (well it was worth a try) Algieba - Split (just) at 50x, nice yellow headlights. Had a look for anything apparent in the Virgo galaxy field but lots of white LP to SE so no chance. Cor Caroli - beautiful view in the ST80. White primary with smaller fainter white secondary - nice round stars. Mizar - again a super field, Mizar A&B look a close pair at 50x with size contrast - easy to imagine as an orbital system. Alcor a way off and a couple of other faint stars making a nice little asterism. M81 & M82 - yes! From the garden, a first outside of M31! Hoodie over the EP. Dropped the red dot carefully in line from the diagonal across the bowl of the plough/dipper. Galaxies popped with a slight nudge from original guess. See an oval and a stripe & that fantastic orientation - obviously no detail but a rewarding view from among the security & streetlights! Enjoyed for ages with a glass of wine! Civilised galactic travel...

The promised hole in the sky duly materialised tonight over Hampshire and, barring the odd drifting bank of high cloud, delivered some fantastic views before moon-rise. I'd been mulling over upgrading from the supplied SW prism for a while and having enjoyed splitting doubles over the full moon plumped for a Tak prism which arrived in the week. Tonight I was keen to test this on some familiar winter clusters and add a few of the Messier objects I'd missed before they slip over the spring horizon. I've done enough trips to the park unmolested to now feel quite comfortable & so took my time aligning (AX GTi N. align Arcuturs, Sirius). I slewed confidently to my first target M48 and... nothing. A bank of cloud had drifted in and covered the E/SE sky. I headed West without a plan, lingering on M42 until the cloud caught up and then across to M36-8 in Auriga, Mars, M45, a quick couple of doubles Eta Cassiopeia looking really stunning with the new prism - subtly contrasting yellow/white colours, nice separation and apparent "size" difference. The Double Cluster confirmed that either tonight was exceptional or that I've invested well. Really loving the combination of the Baader Hyperion 24mm, Mak 127 with a nice new prism (did I mention that?) Very crisp pin points in faint cluster stars, easier to define focus and inky black backgrounds - gorgeous views. I'd initially worried that the Mak's narrow field of view meant I'd made a "wrong" choice for a main scope but I am getting so much out of clusters and doubles that it does seem much more usable than just a lunar/planetary specialist - thank goodness. I'd swung well round toward the North West by now and with cloud still obscuring my intended targets to the SE I decided to take another swipe at M81/2 Bodes & Cigar galaxies having been assured these are realistic urban targets with my setup (thank you @Nik271). The goto kind of worked and I picked up a faint smudge in the finder almost by accident then confirmed with more deliberate averted vision. I centred M81 and was very chuffed - a galactic first for me outside of M31. I tried all the magnification possibilities I had in my pockets but it didn't really yield much beyond a central core and an outer halo. The best view was at 63x when I adjusted slightly and pulled M82 into the same frame - I looked at this for a long time, it was almost overhead and neck-ache became the limiting factor or I'd still be out there. Heartened, I took another look for the Leo triplet as the constellation was perfectly placed to the E but nope - that one is still out there... The cloud by now had moved off so, by way of a stop off at M3 as I passed Arcturus (lovely, dim, diamond-granular ball at 150x) I moved on to my intended target list in the hinterland between Procyon & Sirius and bagged a few more Messier clusters. I ended the evening with a cruise back up through M67 & the Beehive, sneaky extra peek at the Double & Owl clusters in Perseus then back to M81 - just to prove it was real. As I walked back at frosted midnight all was silent, the line of Orion's belt was setting, a couple of degrees above the rooftops and the cloud was closing in from the East.

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.

(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.

Hi, Yes. it’s me again Sorry to keep asking questions about scopes please forgive me I appreciate all the help from previous posts After having a clear night yesterday after about a week of clouds, I must of spent maybe two hours outside with my binoculars and may have developed an obsession with Star clusters.... ( would’ve like to see some Nebulae but my binos just aren’t that powerful ) So I think I’m looking to get a scope that’s capable for showing nice sharp images as possible but also good FOV too for my price range (200-300). I was looking at the star travel series specifically 102 and 120 on the az3 Mount (I know theses aren’t the best mount for them but it’s the best in my price range I think) I want something that’s easy to lug around as I will be having short walks to near by fields so need as portable as possible and that takes dobs Out the question after my last post ( who knows might get one for my second scope) Are these two good choices for what I want to see I know it’s got ca but not that fussed and heard it’s onoy on planets so it won’t be an issue. many Thanks Clear Skies

No doubt many of you already know about this but I came accross this free ebook and I thought some of you might be interested ... The book has 188 pages and includes around 70 odd black and white images of nebulae and clusters captured in the few years at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s. One example is plate 55, the Trifid Nebula The ebook can be downloaded for free from : http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36470

Hi all, Sorry if this has been asked before but every time i do research in to this i get different answers from different sauces. Not sure if im looking at out dated information or not so im hoping if i ask my questions here i can get the most up to date answer. So my questions are; 1. How many Stars are their in our Galaxy? 2. How many Galaxies are their in our Local Group? 3. How many Galaxy Clusters are their in our Local Supercluster? 4. How many Superclusters have we found so far? 5. How many starts in total are their in all of the Superclusters?