Jump to content

Greetings from Horsham, UK

dishmop

By dishmop
in Welcome

Recommended Posts

dishmop

dishmop

Posted
Posted

Hello folks,

I've been fiddling around with a manual Astromaster 130eq for the last year, after my wife bought me one for a Christmas present. I've spent the last 12 months progressively trying to figure out what the heck to do with this telescope.

I started out by cheating. Lots. I grabbed a copy of Google Sky Map for my smartphone and starting trying to work out what things were in the night sky. In the north part of Horsham where I am (West Sussex) the light pollution isn't too bad. Armed with the Sky Map I was pointing the scope around at stuff with the standard EPs (10mm, 20mm) and that was great to be able to be able to show some of that more easily viewable things like Jupiter, the Moon, Saturn and the Orion Nebula to my daughter and wife (who's also a science nerd).

I figured I'd try to take some pictures... and I wanted to get some cheap upgrades too. Cue one of those Morgan SPC 880's flashed to a 900 and an Celestron Omni Barlow x2. More fiddling ensued. Lots of reading up on Registax. Large facepalm ensuing when I realised I should be polar aligning my Astromaster's GEM and using the small arms to adjust it and follow stars... I had put the tube on the mount the wrong way around for 6 months. Doh !

Towards the end of this year I've been getting a bit better at trying to get the best out of this little Astromaster 130eq, with some nice shots of the moon (stiched together with Microsoft ICE) and Jupiter. It seems really great value for money, I've attached a few shots to this post.

For Christmas this year the misses also bought an IR/UV filter for the webcam, and I felt like I wanted to start building up for some better planetary imaging and dabble with DSOs. To that end I picked up a second hand SW200p newt from another SGL member (hi Hugh!) and will be grabbing a HEQ5 Pro GOTO mount this month. I can re-use all my eyepieces and existing webcam to see what sort of improvement I can get, and hopefully be able to share the experience with the family, and also the neighbours and our daughters friends, who all now think of me as some sort of astronaut.

Hopefully the larger aperture will be a good step up from my 130, and in the next month I'll start the incredibly tough decision about whether to invest in a DSLR camera or CCD for the DSO photography, while I re-use my existing webcam as a cheap autoguider. I hope it all works out! I'm sure I will be roving around in search of a darker observing point near Horsham before too long.

I've quite enjoyed the last 12 months of going from zero to, well, something a bit more than zero at least, knowledge. I'm finding it quite fulfilling to persue this hobby, and it's a great feeling when you're walking outside and you can recognise the constellations and identify planets because you know where they're supposed to be (like waiting for the train this morning, I could see mars and saturn :( )

Anyway, apologies for the rambling, hello to all, and I hope to make a few more posts in the near future.

----

Dave

post-32139-133877713928_thumb.jpg

post-32139-133877713934_thumb.png

post-32139-13387771394_thumb.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 31
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.