First Light with SynScan WiFi & SkySafari iOS

[Dazzyt66]

On Thursday night (19th) we had our first light using new SynScan WiFi and SynScan app on iOS. Which we thought was impressive.

Last night we went one step further by using the iPhone app linked to my iPad using SkySafari. It worked without a hitch after just doing a quick north alignment because it wasn’t quite dark yet. We then single star aligned the scope to Venus and synced it with SS.

Our night (my daughter and I) thus started with Venus. My daughter (22) hadn’t seen Venus through a Scope before so her delight was great - even though it wasn’t great seeing and Venus was just a glowing disk rather than any subtle detail I have seen on crisp autumn nights - and it was only 9pm so not remotely dark!

Using Stellarium we then skipped to the moon for a while until the stars started to come out one by one. The moon is a great view with sharp details using 18mm bst and some good earth shine.

As it got darker we decided to use Stellarium to its best by making the most of the limited views from my new garden. As we only moved at the end of last year it was my first real chance I got to see how my restricted to mainly W NW NE and E (there is a house almost directly north which limits targets to higher in the sky). This house is directly opposite to the less restricted (but more light polluted) south facing views I had before so it was new all round! Anyway I digress.

We started with double stars working our way across the W and NW into the east. Our favourite had to be Iota Cancri in the West with it’s define yellow and blue stars. The blue tinge definite in the scope at 8mm. Mirzar was also great, with the slewing of targets spot on each time. I couldn’t believe how much easier this makes viewing the sky - although it still feels very much like cheating since I upgraded from the dob!

Now it was darker we moved on to clusters and brighter DSOs. Again using the same method of starting in the West and moving around northwards.

Too many good views to talk through here but M44, M37, M81 and M57 were our best of cluster and fuzzies. Although the Ring Nebula wasn’t as distinct as I’ve seen in the autumn again it was discernible low in the east even with the sky partly lit by building site floodlights!

At this point I locked my phone  - out of habit - which disconnected the two devices and although the scope would still work with SynScan, SS wasn’t happy. Note to self there! 

So we called it a night there. My daughter happy with a night stargazing through my larger scope (she took my original FirstScope to uni with her) and me more than happy with my WiFi upgrade and my first time using SS to control my scope. Brill! ??????