Finally sussed polar alignment and had first truly successful night.

[upahill]

I have been having problems the last 3 nights getting goto to work so spent all day today working on the mount with a promise of clear skies around 9pm (I use the app Scope Nights, which seems to be fairly accurate)

After watching some videos on how to polar align properly with the LXD75, I have a somewhat better understanding of what to do. I had never even noticed the clock dials on the polar scope, or the effect they had. I didnt know anything about peak transit times etc so it has been quite a learning curve.

Today I :

1. Aligned the polar scope to the mount, took some fiddling and rounded the grub bolts, so will replace these tomorrow with some thumbscrews - it needs doing perfectly anyway but was loosing the light and my target church steeple.

2. Aligned the clock dials, and marked up the mount head to make things a bit easier.

3. Download the app Scope Help which has some very useful features such as polar align, a red light, torch and a spirit level for the mount.

4. Got everything setup perfectly outside, checked my tripod level 100 times, got the north leg as north as possible, tripled checked all bolts and tightened up everything I could get to with a set of alan keys.

5. Polar aligned.

6. Tried the 2 star alignment, it was still a little cloudy so couldn't get it 100% accurate, its still missing the first star by quite a long way (about 7-10 moon widths) but the second star was closer.

7. Tried out the goto - it worked (ish) and I was off.

****

First target was of course Jupiter mainly to check the GOTO was semi-aligned. I worked my way through the eyepieces going from 30x up to 126x with the 6mm Eyepiece. I also tried the 3x barlow but its such a cheapo that a) the focusing was way to precise and the image just wasn't very clear - although by this stage i was pushing 380x magnification.

Orion and the great nebulae has disappeared by the time I had got everything sorted, I think it was just above the horizon but so was a little bit of cloud just where I wanted to look. I had about 50% cloud cover so had to pick targets carefully.

Using the guided tour I went to M13 - I wasn't expecting to see anything but after doing a bit of a spiral search I came across a nice fuzzy blob which was easily visible at 30x - again I worked my way through the eyepieces, stopping at 126x which showed no detail at all. I'm definitely beginning to think an eyepiece upgrade is in order.

My best view tonight was of M44 (Praesepe, Beehive) - I dialed in using the 32mm eyepiece I had just had delivered and what a wonderful sight, the clouds were starting to clear and I could really get a nice focus with a lovely deep black background (the moon wasn't up yet) I decided that this was a lovely cluster which didn't need high magnification to be appreciated, the 17mm framed it perfectly and I spent a few minutes realizing why people do sketches!

After about 20 minutes I chickened out, it was getting clearer but all the equipment was getting moist and my fingers were icicles. I think its around -2 tonight up here but felt like -5 to -10 with the bit of wind I was getting. Still I am happy that I can now get the GOTO working, and will dedicate tomorrow to making a few more mods to the scope and really cracking on with tightening everything up.

Added to my wishlist is a helical focusser of some sort, some flocking and of course better eyepieces. I am considering the baader hyperions. Birthday yesterday so have a few pounds to spend at FLO

Anyone else had any success tonight?

[upahill]

Another good night tonight with perfect clear skies, but a little windy and very cold. Despite the temperature I set up at sunset and it went quite dark very quickly.

Managed to view M1 which was a light blur, I had a lot of problems with my vision going completely black - it was almost like I was closing my eye but obviously wasn't. I couldn't see any detail in this messier and it was much easier to identify at low magnifications.

M3 was another light fuzz but with a much brighter core that could be easily seen. Visibility was high but wind was wobbling the scope quite a bit.

M13 was a very small blob that took a few minutes to become visible to my eye. Not as interesting as the others.

I viewed M31 with both the 15&6mm lenses and it was much bigger than M3 - still difficult to see any detail, I think I need more aperture lol.

My last visit was to M34 which was an awesome cluster which I just loved viewing. Had my glass of scotch whilst viewing this one and then packed up at around 10.30 so a pretty good night all in all. Only thing I needed was a warmer night to make it perfect.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Two nice nights in a row! Some nice objects you bagged there.

[upahill]

Another good night tonight.

M38 bagged, thousands of stars, lovely view.

M92, very faint but visibly bright core.

M82, two galaxies in the FOV one cigar shape and one flat disc shape, need to confirm which was M82 and what the other one was.

M104 - tried this, but didnt succeed, just couldnt find it anywhere.

M51 - Visible but not much detail, was hard to define the shape of it - will try this one again soon.

M31 - Excellent viewing on this one tonight.

Three nights in a row, wifey is going to want to spend time with me if this carries on lol

[KevUU]

Wow, three really good nights, well done

The partner of M82 is M81, a really nice pair to see in the same field.

M51 tends to be very vague (for me from my garden anyway) but have a look next time and see if you can see two cores - there's a partner galaxy NGC 5195 very close by. I know at a dark sky people can see dust lanes and whatnot, but just seeing those two cores through the fuzz is great to me

Cheers!

[upahill]

Thanks for the tip. I still feel my eyepieces are letting me down a little, so going to save up for at least one very good one (perhaps a 13mm)

I guess I can add M81 to my list then - was definitely impressive seeing both in the FOV.