So much for the forecast

[bomberbaz]

Yeah was nearly a complete waste of time tonight but I did actually get something out of it in the end.  It started with me packing the new dob into car to access a darker sky for further evaluation of the capabilities of it. 

Prior to this I checked BBC weather, clear outside and Ventusky. All gave me a similar result of cloud early on clearing to give me a couple of good hours of good clear sky, hmm think the cloud machine got switched on somewhere because it was challenging all night.

So what happened is I found myself fighting said cloud for the 2 hours I stuck out  and all I actually managed was a few decent views of mars and 1 of the ring. 

Back to getting something out of the night. My dob is fitted with a DSC and I wanted to test this out a little more and was the main aim of the night. Last time I used it I wasn't overly impressed with the accuracy and my only thought was the dob base wasn't level so I built a dob levelling base for it.

See here DLP 

It seemed to help a very lot. I tested it on whatever stars i could get, mainly around mars / along pisces and Lyra. Basically these two were easy to see reference points through the murk. Everything I tracked too had an accuracy of around 0.5 degree or less, very pleased and I am slowly falling in love with skysafari.

[alan potts]

5 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

Yeah was nearly a complete waste of time tonight but I did actually get something out of it in the end.  It started with me packing the new dob into car to access a darker sky for further evaluation of the capabilities of it. 

Prior to this I checked BBC weather, clear outside and Ventusky. All gave me a similar result of cloud early on clearing to give me a couple of good hours of good clear sky, hmm think the cloud machine got switched on somewhere because it was challenging all night.

So what happened is I found myself fighting said cloud for the 2 hours I stuck out  and all I actually managed was a few decent views of mars and 1 of the ring. 

Back to getting something out of the night. My dob is fitted with a DSC and I wanted to test this out a little more and was the main aim of the night. Last time I used it I wasn't overly impressed with the accuracy and my only thought was the dob base wasn't level so I built a dob levelling base for it.

See here DLP 

It seemed to help a very lot. I tested it on whatever stars i could get, mainly around mars / along pisces and Lyra. Basically these two were easy to see reference points through the murk. Everything I tracked too had an accuracy of around 0.5 degree or less, very pleased and I am slowly falling in love with skysafari.

It was odd here too Steve, forecast was for patchy cloud, clear as a bell and still.

Alan