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Cumbria newbie, Sorry, joined up and started posting without doing an intro.

The Head Gardener

By The Head Gardener
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The Head Gardener

The Head Gardener

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A quarter of a century ago, Spousal Unit and I bought a 10” Meade Newtonian Equatorial StarFinder, the first major joint purchase we ever made. Had a lot of good nights observing in north Hampshire but when we moved further south the scope was never used due to dreadful light pollution. A typical first purchase – too big to be portable.

After gathering dust for a few years it was sold, and then life got in the way of astronomy which was confined to 'wow' moments when outside late at night with the canine companion and an old pair of 8x40 binoculars.

A few years ago we moved to West Cumbria and despite more 'footpath lights' visible than I would like we have remarkably good viewing from the garden. We're in a slightly elevated position and our field of view is pretty awesome.

Astronomy interest has been growing thanks to our fairly dark location. In 2015 the acquisition of a caravan and learning about Kielder (thanks in part to Stuart Atkinson's blog) saw us attend our first Star Camp. Completely blown away by the whole wonderful experience which started minutes after arrival when Physopto [Derek] helped me with a car/caravan problem. I'll add that not only was it our first Star Camp, but the very first trip in the caravan and I was by myself with husband following a couple of days later!

Lynn & Kevin, Richard, Robbie, Derek, Stuart, Simon and nameless others ensured that we went home from Kielder once again completely hooked on this crazy, frustrating, wonderful hobby, with my first SD card of images. I hadn't realised that my existing fairly extensive DSLR kit was more than suitable for starting imaging.

Since then we've had Storm Desmond, endless rain and cloud, Himself had a Very.Big.Birthday which brought an iOptron SkyGuider to aid imaging, and not much else. We can't make up our minds about which reasonable and portable 'scope to buy. It has to be grab-and-go because we're 20 minutes from fabulous locations like Ennerdale or Caldbeck. He is mainly interested in lunar and planetary, so we're considering something a NexStar 102SLT.

And I have realised that whilst I'm delighted we're toe-dipping back into astronomy again, what really, really excites me is the sun (with thanks to Simon for letting me dribble down the eyepiece of his Lunt at Kielder).

A solar scope is going to be another big purchase here, which means I have an awful lot more reading and research to do first.

And that was probably far more than you need or want to know :smiley:.

Jayne

 

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swag72

swag72

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Posted

Hi Jayne and welcome to SGL - Glad that you found us and hoe that you enjoy your time here. This is a great place, full of helpful and friendly people (like an internet star party :D ) Jump in and get involved....

Look forward to seeing you around :)

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