Starhopping under city skies

[The60mmKid]

38 minutes ago, Stu said:

 

@The60mmKid, I still think you may find a step including an RDF useful as it gets your finder more easily into that first star, but see how you go.

I have tried it, you know 😉 For extended periods, in fact. I agree with you that it works well. And I agree with me that I prefer the straight-through finder 😊

And hopefully my copious use of emojis in the previous posts makes it obvious that I'm not seriously deriding the use of technology while observing. Who am I to tell anyone how to observe?! I do enjoy making emphatic statements about pistols, church, etc., though. Life's too short to take all of this seriously. And we're a bit too small for that.. I mean, just point the scope at one of those faint fuzzies reminding us of our place in the grand scheme 😉

[Stu]

56 minutes ago, The60mmKid said:

I have tried it, you know 😉 For extended periods, in fact. I agree with you that it works well. And I agree with me that I prefer the straight-through finder 😊

And hopefully my copious use of emojis in the previous posts makes it obvious that I'm not seriously deriding the use of technology while observing. Who am I to tell anyone how to observe?! I do enjoy making emphatic statements about pistols, church, etc., though. Life's too short to take all of this seriously. And we're a bit too small for that.. I mean, just point the scope at one of those faint fuzzies reminding us of our place in the grand scheme 😉

No sir, no issues with your posts 👍👍

I missed the vital ‘straight-through’ part of your description. Perhaps you will enjoy this post of mine, which wasn’t altogether well received (🤣) but shows I get where you are coming from 👍

 

[PeterW]

My problem with non-RACI is the bit that’s dropped… I could lose the RA bit and do the physical gymnastics, but I’d prefer to keep the CI bit, so I can easily map the view to the naked eye one… avoiding the mental gymnastics for the scope view.

Peter

[Stu]

49 minutes ago, PeterW said:

My problem with non-RACI is the bit that’s dropped… I could lose the RA bit and do the physical gymnastics, but I’d prefer to keep the CI bit, so I can easily map the view to the naked eye one… avoiding the mental gymnastics for the scope view.

Peter

I think the benefit is that you can use a straight through finder much like an RDF. Keep both eyes open and when the star in the finder lines up with the naked eye view you are on target, no need for mental gymnastics. Of course that only  works well with brighter stars, once you are down to the dimmer stars you still have the different orientation to deal with.

[Mircea]

The60mmKid

I'm like you about the phone. I love and use also classic, printed atlases.

It is good you already have a plan, good luck at implementing.

But I should admit, when I attend the star parties of the club, I'm cheating a bit by asking our observing buddy  Armand to help me find elusive objects.

He use Sky Safari and it find any object by combining that software and the RDF + optical finder method. Sky Safari is very user friendly.

 

I decided to step up a bit and I bought a BTC 60X234mm finder for ''Grond''.

It is offered without eyepiece but I like the option to insert what ever eyepiece I want. The finder have a helicoidal  focuser.

I intend to use it like mainly as a finder. By changing the eyepiece, it will work as a small telescope with XCel 25mm ( 8.4x and 6.4 degress) for very large objects like Mell 111, The Binocular Double Cluster in Ophiucus or OB Associations.

Those objects don't fit in field of the 250mm Dobsonian.

 

Clear sky, Mircea

[bosun21]

16 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Aye, the only problem I've encountered is if I lock or unlock the screen I get it back on at full brightness.  The acetate also helps dim it down slightly more than just dropping the brightness

I just tried it on my two phones and I can lock the screen for a period and it switches back on to the red screen. Have you checked for any updates etc? Or maybe it’s your phone itself. I do like the red acetate solution though.

[Zermelo]

I think it might be related to handset or OS version.  I sometimes get a brief flash of white when I'm switching between apps (usually switching between Synscan and Skysafari), so I use the red acetate.  I fixed it to a spare gel phone case, and swap cases when I go out. In fact, the screen is still a little too bright on the darkest nights, even when the screen brightness is at minimum. I may experiment with a double layer of acetate, though I need to check that it doesn't attenuate the capacitative screen interaction too much.

[Stu]

With iOS you can set the phone to sim red for everything; I have mine setup so three clicks on the right button turns it to red.

Got to:

Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Colour filters

The choose Colour tint and out both Intensity and hue sliders fully to the right.

In the Display and text size menu you can also select reduce white point which cuts the white level back.

In the Accessibility menu there is an option for Accessibility Shortcut which I have set to colour filters.

Very handy features which apply to everything including the Home Screen so no bright screens if flicking between apps etc

 

[PeterStudz]

8 hours ago, Stu said:

With iOS you can set the phone to sim red for everything; I have mine setup so three clicks on the right button turns it to red.

Got to:

Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Colour filters

The choose Colour tint and out both Intensity and hue sliders fully to the right.

In the Display and text size menu you can also select reduce white point which cuts the white level back.

In the Accessibility menu there is an option for Accessibility Shortcut which I have set to colour filters.

Very handy features which apply to everything including the Home Screen so no bright screens if flicking between apps etc

 

Yes, I use that. And it’ll stay set to red for everything without any issues for hours on end.

[The60mmKid]

Here's an update:

My concerns were overblown. I just wrapped up a successful evening of star hopping under London skies. Although the light pollution situation is obviously different than at my previous location, there are still plenty of stars from which to begin hops using just my basic 6x30 finder. I think it would be difficult to begin star hopping here, but it's not a problem if one is comfortable with it already.

Also, I should eat my hat. Despite the adamant stand that I took earlier, I decided to try Sky Safari on an e-ink tablet that I use. My gosh, is it fantastic! Consider me humbled.

[Stu]

7 hours ago, The60mmKid said:

Also, I should eat my hat. Despite the adamant stand that I took earlier, I decided to try Sky Safari on an e-ink tablet that I use. My gosh, is it fantastic! Consider me humbled.

Tee hee! Another convert 👍 Kudos to you sir for being open minded enough to try it, and I’m glad you found it useful. The other night I was in Wokingham which is around mag 18.5 or 19 I guess and had forgotten my finder! I used a Baader Morpheus 17.5mm giving a 1.8 degree field of view and got myself onto Mizar. Using SkySafari to match star fields I hopped across to M101 (which I couldn’t see!) and found the supernova 👍.

Whilst I love star atlases, and have many, my brain doesn’t really work with black on white, and the large stars used to represent larger magnitudes. It works much better when viewing a white on black with something that looks realistic, but I know everyone is different.

Enjoy 👍

[Saganite]

On 25/04/2023 at 21:21, Stu said:

As you say, each to their own, and it is nice to respect every way of observing. It’s not technology for technology’s sake, it is genuinely useful and many on here, myself included find SkySafari an invaluable tool for finding targets, particularly unusual ones or dare I say it, lists of interesting doubles.

@The60mmKid, I still think you may find a step including an RDF useful as it gets your finder more easily into that first star, but see how you go.

In my working life I had to drive to sites all over the UK and did so by map reading with 'fine tuning', particularly in large cities, by asking directions from pedestrians. As a system it never failed, but today, give me a Sat nav, a no brainer.  I see star gazing in the same way, and like most , over a few decades,  star hopped my way around the galaxy and beyond  with the use of a good atlas.  In my seventh decade now I will take the easiest route to the object that I wish to see, and so I use a goto most of the time. I do sometimes just star hop, but I prefer not to struggle to find dim objects in a light polluted sky...

Edited June 13, 2023 by Saganite

[The60mmKid]

I've been running Sky Safari on the e-ink tablet that I use for most of my reading and writing. It feels like an excellent compromise between a paper atlas and using my phone, which I generally despise.

[Stu]

52 minutes ago, The60mmKid said:

I've been running Sky Safari on the e-ink tablet that I use for most of my reading and writing. It feels like an excellent compromise between a paper atlas and using my phone, which I generally despise.

That looks great actually, which model is it? Does it have a backlight? I guess the ultimate would be e-ink tablet and use a red light torch?

[The60mmKid]

14 minutes ago, Stu said:

That looks great actually, which model is it? Does it have a backlight? I guess the ultimate would be e-ink tablet and use a red light torch?

I was doing just that last night and found it an effective, thoroughly enjoyable setup 😎 It's significantly less fiddly than what I was using before (paper atlas, binder with my observing catalog, loose paper for notes, pen).

The tablet is a Boox Tab Ultra, which I bought because it immediately converts what I write with a pen into text in a Google doc... quite a revelation for someone like me who must write a lot yet dislikes computers and sitting in an office. Since it's e-ink, the experience is close to reading a book and writing on paper. It isn't backlit, but it has slim lights at the sides of the screen that replicate viewing paper with a lamp. You can adjust the level, and I usually have them off.

With this setup, I can easily toggle back and forth between Sky Safari, my notes template, and my observing catalog.

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by The60mmKid

[Saganite]

That, I like very much.  I have just lately been toying with the idea of using a dedicated tablet instead of my phone, an idea given to me by Stephenstargazer on this forum.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Saganite

[Zermelo]

37 minutes ago, The60mmKid said:

I was doing just that last night and found it an effective, thoroughly enjoyable setup 😎 It's significantly less fiddly than what I was using before (paper atlas, binder with my observing catalog, loose paper for notes, pen).

The tablet is a Boox Tab Ultra, which I bought because it immediately converts what I write with a pen into text in a Google doc... quite a revelation for someone like me who must write a lot yet dislikes computers and sitting in an office. Since it's e-ink, the experience is close to reading a book and writing on paper. It isn't backlit, but it has slim lights at the sides of the screen that replicate viewing paper with a lamp. You can adjust the level, and I usually have them off.

With this setup, I can easily toggle back and forth between Sky Safari, my notes template, and my observing catalog.

 

I presume it's easy to invert and have the star charts as white on black?

Is it possible to alter the colour temperature of the built-in lights?

[Zermelo]

An alternative to a headtorch for use with an e-Reader:

https://www.blockbluelight.co.uk/products/red-light-book-light

[Stu]

I might look into this. I have a Remarkable tablet which I really love for its simplicity but it will not run apps like SkySafari. I didn’t even know there were e-ink Android tablets which run apps 🤪

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

An alternative to a headtorch for use with an e-Reader:

https://www.blockbluelight.co.uk/products/red-light-book-light

It’s cheaper on Amazon 

Amber Reading Lights for Books in Bed – Red Book Light for Reading in Bed - Amber Book Light Clip On https://amzn.eu/d/09Fb32j

 

[Zermelo]

6 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

It’s cheaper on Amazon 

Amber Reading Lights for Books in Bed – Red Book Light for Reading in Bed - Amber Book Light Clip On https://amzn.eu/d/09Fb32j

 

I've ordered this one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BHTSMRS1/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1SZY360Y45R7Z&psc=1

[Guest]

On 24/04/2023 at 17:43, Ags said:

I have Bortle 8 skies and use a 50 mm finder to star hop. Like Mr Spock, I point myself at something bright and work my way from there. Mag 7 or even Mag 8 stars are visible in the finder and that's enough to get me where I'm going. It may be a personal thing, we don't all see the same thing in a finder scope.

I'm not used to star hopping in dark skies and when I do, I struggle. Too many stars! 

Star hopping is a art form.  I cant do it to save my soul. 

[jjohnson3803]

On 24/04/2023 at 16:43, Ags said:

I'm not used to star hopping in dark skies and when I do, I struggle. Too many stars! 

You'd think "too many stars" would be a good thing 😊, but I struggle under really dark skies also.  I usually use a combo of Wixey and AZ circle with a little hopping at home.  In the wild, it can be hard to find little patterns and such to use on when hopping.

 

[The60mmKid]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

I presume it's easy to invert and have the star charts as white on black?

Is it possible to alter the colour temperature of the built-in lights?

Yes and yes, but the e-ink display renders black on white far more clearly than the other way around.

 

[The60mmKid]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

An alternative to a headtorch for use with an e-Reader:

https://www.blockbluelight.co.uk/products/red-light-book-light

Good call. Now that I'm in London, I felt horrendously unfashionable with my headlamp last night... even in the dark.