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First light with kids.


Major

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Evening folks.

Just came back from first stargazing session with my kids. Took me a while and absolutely nothing went as planned, but finally we have little scope ;).

As it usually happens, life gets in the way of hobbies and it turned out I didn't manage to get the 200P I wanted, my camera was damaged beyond repair, so stargazing and extreme spotting was put aside for good bit of time. Sometimes I watched sky while sitting in the garden and having a cigar, but it was not the same type of observation if you know what I mean ;).

At this time of the year I usually get back my interest in space, as days are too short and in many cases too cold for other hobbies. Few days ago I started to look for scopes again and just yesterday by accident I found Rother Valley Optics (which I would recommend). After quick browse of their stuff and even quicker look into my pocket I chose Skyhawk 1145P as a starting scope, as a secondary choice Startravel 80 - I know both are small, but as it's my first time, I don't need to go much bigger - after all I was happily stargazing with 16x50 binos. Went to the shop today and surprise, surprise - none of them are in stock, "but we can order them quickly". Knowing myself, if I wouldn't come back with something, I'd put it aside again for god knows how long, so I asked what they have in stock and came back home with Heritage 100P. Small, light, portable, easy to set up, with Barlow and two eyepieces, 4 inch primary parabolic mirror, sounded good. Bought also moon filter and all happy came back home with it.

Putting it to one piece and setting up red dot finder was very easy and straightforward, sky was clear-ish, so took it out for daytime test. From birds to planes at cruise altitudes, all looked good through 25mm ep, spent few minutes practicing tracking and just looking at nothingness of the day, playing with  focuser, just getting to know the scope. Kids (5 & 7) were almost as excited as I am :D , so I said today they can have an exception from going to beds at 8 and can watch the sky with me.

Scope was outside for few hours (does cooling really matter in cases of such small scopes?), got kids dressed in jumpers and jackets and out we went. From here nothing went as I wanted it to. First of all, I forgot a lot of things and struggled to find any particular object. Not that it was important for kids cause they just wanted to see any stars, but it was wake up calll for me - need to learn sky once again, even to reach that small level I was at few months back. Second, scattered clouds were showing up every now and then, of course blocking the view of brighter objects. And to top it all up - neighbour for some strange reason turned all lights on, illuminating my whole backyard. With all that, I just pointed scope in few random places to have a look at anything, but it was really joyful experience.

Scope is very sharp without Barlow, we could see a lot of stuff I wouldn't think is where it was, also conversation with my daughter (7yo) was kind of interesting/funny. We estabilished that moon isn't made of cheese and that stars are not "loading". Few times it looked like loading icon from Firefox, but I found out it was due to focus and vibrations of the telescope :).  Both of them also were lucky and spotted shooting star, of course both had some wishes etc  ;).

After we came back, they wanted to watch movies about stars. I shown them two of my favourite astro channels on YT and movies about biggest stars and size of Solar System. I didn't expect it, but my little girl was totally blown away, wanted more and said I have no choice now but to show her some more things up there. Result? Sure it is!  This will make all the learning even more worthwhile, as I can't let my daughter down.

I've read on here that best scope is the one that's used the most. Little Heritage will be surely used very often, in company of my kids. They are hooked, I am hooked, now just looking forward to learning more and having as amazing time as we just had.

As a side note - I have seen something I've never seen before. While looking at Casiopeia, I've noticed small, dim dot moving right through the centre of constellation. Tracked it for few seconds, but was unable to make anything out of it. It wasn't a plane for sure, it wasn't ISS, possible sattelite? Don't know what it was, but I know I want more of it :).

Clear skies everyone! ;)

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I'm sure you will all have great fun with that telescope.  It's a bit unfortunate at the moment as the obvious stuff that would have blown them away are not well placed, saturn jupiter moon - but something to look forward too in the coming weeks !

 

andrew

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Congratulations on the new scope - the Heritage 100 is very nice indeed as a starter, and even if eventually you buy something bigger, it's a wonderful little telescope to hang onto for grab-and-go.

Cool-down time really shouldn't be too much of a problem - maybe 15 minutes if it's coming out from a warm inside environment. Try to reach a friendly agreement with you neighbours over their lights - maybe they even thought putting the lights on was helping you find your way round the garden at night!

Pretty certain that what you describe in Cassiopeia was a satellite. If you want to try to identify/locate them, there are several free downloadable programs, for example Orbitron, Previsat and Gpredict, mainly produced by amateur radio enthusiasts.

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Thank you both for kind words.

Andrew - we are looking forward to it. I think I could safely say that first time in years I wait for the winter ;)

Patrick - thank you for all information. Will check out programs you mention. Neighbours luckily will not be an issue for much longer, next week  we're moving to house on the outskirts of our little village, with bigger garden (more unobstructed sky that is...) and not many things resembling civilisation. Don't really want to open my mouth, cause every day of the week I am riding my motorcycle to work and they don't complain....

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Nice one! Hope you have many a good time to come with that scope.

It's better to use a cooled down scope, but it's not worth being overly worried about. For low power viewing, I tend to put the scope outside and use it straight away, but it may be a while before it hits its stride for high power viewing.

Agreed that it sounds like a satellite in Cassiopeia. There are gazillions of them up there! A couple of times, I've hit a geosynchronous one, which appears to be flying across the eyepiece and yet never reaches the edge!

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Sharing the passion with kids is a must for almost every hobby I have. Normally I don't let them stay for that long, but once in a while they can have it easier ;).

Size9Hex, that must have been a sight! Going out now, maybe I'll hunt some more :D

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Great fun to get the urchins involved, my daughters are interested and have a knack of keeping Dad humble! Its is great to sit out together all wrapped up with a hot drink and discuss the night sky. 

Hope you have many entertaining nights in the future.

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