First proper night and lessons learnt

[Mattscar]

Last night was the first night I can say Iv observed 'properly'; by which I mean left the scope outside for half an hour before I started setting up, took care not to look into my neighbours horrible security lights, polar aligned etc for an hour or two observing time.

First off I just want to praise the mount slightly, throughout the night I left auto tracking on when I had centered an object and even after 10-20 minutes whatever I had centered on was still in (almost) the dead centre of my view. Money well spent I think especially as webcam imaging is something I am very interested in.

I started out by aiming for Jupiter, as I imagine most people who were observing last night were, and was treated to an amazing view of the planet with 4 visible moons suspended to the sides of it (if memory serves it was three on one side and one on the left). After watching it for 10 minutes or so and upping the magnification slightly I began to see definition in the cloud belts, much more than I could have hoped for. My dad did say that, to him atleast, it seemed almost too bright in the eyepiece, but for me it was spot on;perfectly clear, good contrast and definition.

Over the course of the night I observed jupiter several times and was ecstatic with it every time.

This does not mean I didnt have my problems however. Most of which I think I can just put down to over-confidence and newb error.

I have recently downloaded Stellarium to use on my laptop while observing, but have not had time to play with it yet so instead used a planetarium I have downloaded from the windows 8 store. In practice in my bedroom I was able to find objects with it and was quite pleased that it comes with a 'night mode' button that changes it all to red. How foolish I was to believe this would actually work well. Yes it turned everything on the display red (except the mouse) but that didnt stop the screen still giving off a bright white glow, even with the brightness turned down. I think the fix to this is simply to get some more red sheets to stick over the display.

Next came my horribly absent knowledge of any constellations besides orion and the big dipper. I was trying to locate some DSO's but failed horribly every time. It is now painfully obvious that I need to learn some more constellations and actually plan what I want to observe before I go out and do it, rather than ad libbing in the field as it were. I know this is something that will come with time and practice, so although it was annoying I know not to let it bother me.

The final problem was something I REALLY should have thought of. I'd dressed myself in several layers (for those who dont have a onsie, I SERIOUSLY recommend them as they can fit under jeans and jumpers easily and nothing is as snug), a hat, coat etc, but forgot about two pairs of socks. D'oh! In the end cold toes were what took me back inside.

Despite the problems I had, the view of Jupiter, star fields and the amount of shooting stars (including at one point a fire ball right over my house) more than made up for it all and wont stop me going out again tonight. And tomorrow. And saturday. And you get the point

[harryt]

Hi Mattscar

It was a great evening after the disappointment of such a cloudy sunset and no PANSTARRS.

I am an absolute beginner with just a pair of 10 x 50 bins but found this star-hopping article incredibly useful and put it to good use last night so would highly recommend it.

Harry

[Iddy]

great post! think you had an awesome night there!

Keep it up, and enjoy!

Great tip about the onsie btw! got one for diving, but never occured to me to use it under my clothes for observing. will try that the next time! Thanks!

Michiel

[swamp thing]

Nice report.

Worth bearing in mind is, leave the laptop indoors. Even with screening you are effectively shining a light in your eyes Everytime you look at it.

A few printed out star maps and a red torch are the best option. Smart phones, tablets, and laptops maybe fun tech but in this case not the best solutions. I have a tablet but never use it at the eyepiece when hunting faint DSO,s.

[Naemeth]

Glad to hear

I don't weather or not it's a curse or a blessing that my garden is very light polluted and there are quite a few street lights around. On one hand, it means red acetate + brightness on minimum actually cuts down the light to the point it doesn't bother me because my eyes can't get dark adapted enough for it to bother me. On the other, spotting the faintest of DSOs is very difficult because of the light pollution. I only have to hold up a piece of paper in certain spots in my garden and I can read it. In this situation, a laptop does no harm, in a dark site, it does loads of harm because even a laptop is too bright.

A good test of light pollution: Look down at your hands away from any direct light, if you can see them (whether or not it's cloudy), it's a light polluted site, if you can't, it's a dark site .

[swamp thing]

A good test of light pollution: Look down at your hands away from any direct light, if you can see them (whether or not it's cloudy), it's a light polluted site, if you can't, it's a dark site .

If it's really, really dark you'll see your hands fine. The Milky Way will light them up for you.

[Naemeth]

That won't be happening often in the UK unless you're in middle-of-nowhere Wales or middle-of-nowhere Scotland presumably?

[Mattscar]

Thanks for the link harry, will deffo have a read of that at some point.

Iddy - I think you misunderstood slightly? I asusme the onsie you are talking about is a wetsuit one? Im on about the bedtime ones you can get from Primark/New Look etc. Though I wouldn't recommended the Primark ones as they last about 10 mins and seem to be made of paper.

As for light pollution, theres no need to do the test at the moment, I know its a light polluted site. Its not too bad though, aslong as I dont look at the lights theres quite abit of detail to be seen with the naked eye in the sky, and thankfully give it afew more weeks and our hedge's will start to thicken up again which just happen to be in exactly the right place to block out the lights from the observing spot I chose last night

[AndyWB]

A few printed out star maps and a red torch are the best option.

+1 for the print outs. I learnt yesterday that Stellarium lets you take screenshots, and it can do those colour inverted (i.e. black stars on white) which seems much easier to use. (There is a configuration setting you have to set). I tried that with the Ocular plugin, and found that my print outs actually matched what I was seeing through the eyepiece remarkably well.

[skir]

I use a program called lux on my tablet which does a very good job of getting the lighting to a very low level and it has a red light mode too. It has the added bonus of seriously extending the tablets battery life too.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[JamesM]

You might want to look at this product here for helping you with laptop glare should the desire to take it out with you when observing. On the observing aid that I use is this list of 'Telrad' maps that detail the locations of many of the Messier objects, which I then print off and then laminate using a cheap laminator. This makes the charts a bit more durable and of course protects them from the effects of dew or frost. Of course as a consequence the above maps will introduce you to the virtues of using a Telrad finder which primarily helps you locate objects by being able to judge the magnified distances as seen through the eyepiece compared to that which you can see by simply looking up at the night sky or on any normal chart. Telrad finders are fairly inexpensive compared to some optical finders and will certainly get you to the right spot before needing to refer to the optical finder that came with your scope in order to focus down upon your chosen target.

Stellarium is a great tool to help you organise your viewing session as it has the advance date/time feature which helps you see what's coming up and when. Of course you can stellarium to help you acquaint yourself of where some of your chosen objects can be located and for that it might be useful to turn off the constellation markers (cardinal lines) to help recreate what you will actually see 'in the field'.

Clear skies and look forward to reading your next report!

James

[Mattscar]

Cheers for the advice. I knew you could get 'special' covers for screens like that for £10, however being a music tech I just use red lighting gels. Primary Red. so much cheaper and you get more which can be used to adapt other things such as smart phones and tablets as it doesnt block the electrical signals from your finger to the screen.

[Mattscar]

And I've been playing around with Stellarium and quite like the way it works compared to my other similar program so Im going to give that a go first. Who knows though, if I find that doesnt work well proper star maps will definatly be next on the list, or used in conjunction. Anything to help me spot awesome spacey wacey stuff.