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Hello from Shropshire, and a story.

iamjulian

By iamjulian
in Welcome

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iamjulian

iamjulian

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Hello

New to the forum but have been browsing for the last few weeks since I started getting interested in astronomy again. To get started I got a planisphere and I have a pair of 8x40 bins on order. I already have a fair bit of camera gear and when I read about the Haig Mount I couldn't resist giving it a go. I went for the most basic design; fixed rod, complete with tangent error, with the intention of refining it. Anyway, build completed I waited for the first clear night for a test run and thought I would share the story with you... Last night there was some thin cloud, quite high, but it was moving quickly so I decided to set up the tripod, mount and camera and hope for a gap. I stood outside in the back garden, not ideal as it faces north and there is a small town to the north so a moderate amount of light pollution. When I am photographing properly I shall be going out into the fields at the front where the sky is inky black. However, for a test run it was dark enough in the garden. After standing around for about half an hour I got lucky and the stars became quite clear. The pole star appeared, wedged between Cassiopeia and Ursa Major so I aligned the hinge as best I could (still need to get a sighter) and was just about to press the wireless remote to start the exposure when my wife went upstairs and lights up the bathroom and bedroom, leaving me standing in near daylight. Bother! My test was thwarted and I made a mental note not to be so lazy next time and to head out into the fields where nobody can switch on a light.

As a complete aside, does anyone know whether it is possible to change the colour scheme of this forum somewhere in my settings? I was actually reluctant to join because the white text on a black/dark grey background makes my eyes go funny and gives me a headache after about fifteen minutes. May be a good thing else I'd be reading here all day. I know a lot of astronomy websites are black with white text, matching the whole 'space' theme. Dark grey isn't quite so bad but it still breaks my eyes. It would be great if there was an option to change the colour scheme in the the preferences somewhere. Don't mean to join and immediately complain you understand :)

I look forward to sharing more as my experience progresses.

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Talitha

Talitha

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:) Hi and welcome to SGL, Julian. I'm not sure if we can individually alter the color scheme, but here's something that might make reading the pages easier on your eyes.

Go up to the toolbar on any page and left-click "Edit"... a drop-down box will unfold. Slide the cursor down the list and left-click "Select All". This will highlight everything on the page, making the text line backgrounds look lighter, and the text dark. Looks a bit like Zebra stripes but give it a try and see if it helps... I hope it does.

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iamjulian

iamjulian

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Thanks again for the warm welcome everyone. A small update to the story... With three clear nights in a row I have now managed to test the Haig Mount and it worked surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because I aimed it very roughly at Polaris, and counted the seconds in my head. I was four seconds slow on a three minute exposure but a disappointing 21 seconds slow on a five minute exposure. Still, when I processed the raw file it wasn't half bad with only very minimal trailling. What struck me most was the sheer number of stars. I haven't had time to work out exactly what I have captured yet, but I was aimed at Gemini.

I suppose people get hooked into astronomy in a number of different ways. It is early days for me, but so far I am enjoying learning the constellations to find my way around, and using this basic, cheap but fun way of imaging.

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