Hello from Texas

[BearGFR]

"Howdy ya'll"

New guy here "just west a piece" from Fort Worth, Texas.  I'm pretty new to astronomy, having just recently purchased an Orion XX14g truss tube Dobsonian reflector with its Skyquest XXg AltAz goto mount from a very good friend of mine (very sadly, not long before he passed).  We live out in the country in Parker County, but sadly not far enough away from Fort Worth to escape the light pollution.   The telescope and accessories are in very good condition as he always took very good care of things.  The learning curve is pretty steep, but I'm getting there and my wife and I have enjoyed quite a few nights already touring the sky.   Some of our favorite targets that are visible right now are the Hercules Cluster, the Ring Nebula, and of course Saturn and Jupiter.  I've learned how to properly collimate both mirrors, built a removable trolley fixture to make moving it slightly easier, updated all the firmware, added a Wifi dongle, some Skyglow filters (which help a little) and even (carefully) cleaned both mirrors.   Along with the gear my friend Ronnie also had what I've learned are some really nice Tele Vue eyepieces, A 31mm Nagler Type 5 and a 13mm Ethos.

Last night "something happened" to the mount.  I haven't posted it yet in public because I'm still searching around to see if it's a known/common problem with a known solution, however I did send a message about it to malc-c who seems to be both very active and helpful.

I see a lot of folks are in the UK.   Although I'm Texan through and through, I love the UK.  In "real life" I've been a mainframe IT guy my whole career and have been able to visit IBM in Hursley several times (between Winchester and Southhampton).

So, "cheers ya'll"

(My nickname is "Bear", so you can probably tell in the photo which one is me and which one is my friend Ronnie)

[Ratlet]

Welcome to the forum. Hopefully you'll get the mount working again!

Not been out Fort Worth, but spent some time in Houston.  Very friendly people and (once out of the city proper) the skies seemed to go on for miles.

Hopefully for you guys the stars at night, are big and bright, *clap clap clap clap*, deep in the heart of Texas.

[CCD-Freak]

Welcome to SGL from a fellow Texan that lives a bit farther west in Graham.   The first photo looks like you have a nice spread and your patio is a great place to enjoy the sky as well as the countryside. 

My wife sometimes calls me "Bear" but my younger grand kids think I am Santa.  (^8

I am getting packed up for the trip to Okie-Tex next week and I am looking forward to the dark skies and visiting with my "astro buddies". 

 

 

[Ratlet]

52 minutes ago, CCD-Freak said:

Welcome to SGL from a fellow Texan that lives a bit farther west in Graham.   The first photo looks like you have a nice spread and your patio is a great place to enjoy the sky as well as the countryside. 

My wife sometimes calls me "Bear" but my younger grand kids think I am Santa.  (^8

I am getting packed up for the trip to Okie-Tex next week and I am looking forward to the dark skies and visiting with my "astro buddies". 

 

 

Sorry to get sidelined on the newcomers thread, but would you be able to do a write up on your trip to the Okie-Tex star party?  I have authorisation from the wife to do a trip to a star party in America at some point in the future.  I've got a few buddies spread from California to Florida and the Okie-Tex party would put me in a central position for them to road trip to.

[Floater]

Welcome. Hope you have lots of fun. 🙂

[BearGFR]

Thanks all!  howdy neighbor.   

I mentioned I had an issue with my telescope.  Found it! And man am I happy considering that both Orion and Meade are gone now so I've got no idea how I'd get parts...

Cliff's notes version of the problem and the solution, as I suspect it might be a little different and unusual:

I use a Wifi dongle and the Synscan app on my Android phone to run things.  Last night after checking out the Ring Nebula and moving to the Hercules Cluster, I noticed it had quit tracking.  When I went to adjust, the app had lost its connection to the mount.  Nothing I tried brought it back, so I switched to the hand controller.  It would not initialize and got the dreaded message "no response both axes".  This morning I dug into it, removed the side cover on the Alt drive because I figured since the Wifi dongle and the hand controller were both dead, it had to be in the mount itself and that's where all the cables connect.   I checked out the connections, found one that was a little loose but that didn't help.  Great.   Decided to check out the drive and encoder assembly on the base/Az drive.  After I disconnected the plug, I saw something shiny that turned out to be water in the socket.  I was stumped as to how it got there because one of the things I've bought is a good, all weather, 24/365 outdoor cover that I use religiously.  It'd been through several heavy rains with nary a drop inside.   At any rate,  I blew out the socket and dried off the plug with compressed air, and it's all working again (whew).   Then my sweet bride reminded me that I'd cleaned the primary mirror yesterday.  My working hypothesis at this point is that I must have missed a drop of distilled water on the primary mirror frame that just managed to fall right into that connector.  Doh!

 

 

[CCD-Freak]

1 hour ago, Ratlet said:

Sorry to get sidelined on the newcomers thread, but would you be able to do a write up on your trip to the Okie-Tex star party?  I have authorisation from the wife to do a trip to a star party in America at some point in the future.  I've got a few buddies spread from California to Florida and the Okie-Tex party would put me in a central position for them to road trip to.

Okie-Tex is my favorite star party.  Over the years I have been to several others like TSP, ESP and RMSS and I just like the dark skies and the laid back feel of Okie-Tex and I have been to it over 30 times.   https://www.okie-tex.com/   If you decide to come let me know and we can save you a spot. 

[BearGFR]

Hey John, thanks for the heads up on Okie-Tex.  That site looks like it might have once been a drive in movie theater.   Getting out to a dark sky spot is definitely on our todo list.  We got up early yesterday morning and were rewarded with awesome views of the Orion Nebula and Jupiter.  I can only imagine what they look like in a truly dark sky.

I did check out the web site some.  It's probably too close for us to plan to be there this year, but it ought to be something we plan for next year.  In the photos I think I saw quite a few camping trailers, and maybe some tents.  My wife and I have been backpacking before and are comfy tent camping, but it's been awhile since we've done it.  Moving out to our place in the country pretty much removed our need to escape the city.  

 

Edited Monday at 13:35 by BearGFR

[Tony Acorn]

Hello BerarGFR and welcome.

I can also say that Malc-C is a great and helpful contributor whose advice has dug me out of a small hole without costing an arm and a leg. He also lives in the same genera area as me. This site is full of helpful people willing to freely share their knowledge as I have found and I continue to offer thanks to them for that. I have a slightly smaller old Dob, I moved up from there to a 6" reflector on an HEQ5-Pro mount and, having played with a DSLR on a Star Adventurer mount, I've gone onto an 80mm Refractor with lots of bells and whistles. I really ought to reduce the crop somewhat. If you get to a star party, I'm sure you will find it hard to resist expanding your toys!

Clear skies,

Tony 

[BearGFR]

Thanks Tony, 

Already I like the vibe here.  Sadly, places that have folks who are truly helpful as opposed to just wanting to brag or be critical of others seem to be in the minority.  I'm fortunate to be a moderator/semi-admin on a muscle car forum dedicated to the Pontiac GTO that is full of really great helpful folks, so I recognize that attitude when I see it. 

I bought a smart phone adapter hoping to capture some of the views, but so far have not been able to make it work for me. I have a Google Pixel 8 XL pro and one of these: https://a.co/d/7LSl4hj

I haven't quite given up yet though. 

 

[Ratlet]

34 minutes ago, BearGFR said:

Thanks Tony, 

Already I like the vibe here.  Sadly, places that have folks who are truly helpful as opposed to just wanting to brag or be critical of others seem to be in the minority.  I'm fortunate to be a moderator/semi-admin on a muscle car forum dedicated to the Pontiac GTO that is full of really great helpful folks, so I recognize that attitude when I see it. 

I bought a smart phone adapter hoping to capture some of the views, but so far have not been able to make it work for me. I have a Google Pixel 8 XL pro and one of these: https://a.co/d/7LSl4hj

I haven't quite given up yet though. 

 

Those are the bees knees for mobile phone mounting on an eyepiece.  Here's a Saturn I took with mine on a pixel 6 last week.:

Single image capture.  I find it real easy to fight the autofocus sometimes so use proshot so I can stick it in manual.

It helps to have a bright target in the fov initially to line things up.  Shining a torch into the scope works too.

I find the easiest way to the lens lined up with the eyepiece is to with point the scope at the moon or a light source, with the holder wide open and then bring the phone to the eyepiece with the holder attached so you can see the bright.

Bring the phone in close but don't put it in the mount, start adjusting the mount so that the bit that grips the phone but doesn't move is in roughly the right place, then you can get the phone in and start adjusting it.

It's a bit of a pain to get setup, but is fantastic once going.  I like to get it setup then video call people to share the view.

[inedible_hulk]

Welcome to the forum @BearGFR. Glad it’s not just me fighting with that phone adapter. Thanks to @Ratlet for the tips 😊.

[Sunshine]

Hello Bear!! I’m just north of the border from you, you are well on your way into the hobby! and you came to the right place. SGL is a delicious melting pot of astro knowledge from the four corners of the planet, you will find the help you need, thanks for joining! looking forward to more posts. As for my nickname, if size is relevant I would be chipmunk.

Edited Monday at 23:04 by Sunshine

[bosun21]

Hi Bear, a warm welcome to SGL 👋.

[steaven1325]

You are welcome to the forum .

[Space Hopper]

Welcome to SGL Bear.

I'm certainly jealous of your weather and climate and your latitude.

I'd love to attend 'Okie-Tex' but probably an unattainable dream.

I'd reckon i'd fit right in nicely with my American scope, mount and selection of black and green eyepieces ! 😀

Wishing you clear skys and good observing 👍🏽🔭

[Alan White]

Welcome to the Forum and your thorough introduction.
I hope your initial view remains that we are not a bragging or argumentative lot here on SGL.
That patio and pool looks just wonderful, bet the night view is good, light pollution or not.

 

[BearGFR]

Thanks everyone!

I'm still learning.  Last night I experimented around with the Synscan app on my phone (after having read more in the manual - duh) and played around with the "Point and Go" and "Identify" functions after having read about them.  Pretty cool!  It was partly cloudy here last night so my choices for doing a 3-star alignment were pretty limited.   If I remember correctly last night I used Arcturus, Alkaid, and Enif.  With the clouds and the light pollution from Fort Worth those were about all I could reasonably get onto. 

Question: Am I correct in assuming that choosing 3 stars that are close to 120 degrees apart in Az and "roughly" the same Alt (or differing? by how much?) will get me a more precise alignment?   Goto was near dead nuts on for some of the targets last night, quite a bit off for others depending on what part of the sky they were in, such that I had to slew around and hunt for them even with the 31mm Nagler Type5 eyepiece (which if I'm understanding correctly gives me 53x magnification with this 1650mm focal length scope) and an 81 degree FOV  (hey, look at me throwing these terms around like I know what I'm doing -- LOL).   For instance, it nailed Hercules near dead center but the Ring was just barely in view, near one edge of the view. 

I depend on the Goto function quite a lot because I'm a long way from knowing what all the objects are supposed to look like, so what I've been doing has been to Goto something, have a look, and then take my best guess at what I'm supposed to be seeing before centering it by hand. 

 I'm still trying to understand magnitude and relative size as well.  According to the Synscan app on my phone the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) is something I should be able to see pretty easily, and using the graphic below to compare the apparent size to other objects that I definitely can see, it's huge compared to something like Hercules M13.  It's should also be "bright enough"  because Synscan tells me it has a magnitude of 4.0 and I have no trouble seeing at least some objects that are both dimmer and smaller (Hercules M13 for example shows in the app as having a magnitude of 5.8)  (Magnitude numbers are "backwards" right?  The higher the value, the dimmer the object?).  Yet, I can see Hercules easily and even the smallier/dimmer Dumbell M27 at magnitude 7.4,  but have never seen the N.A. nebula.  I've got similar issues with Heart (IC 1805 mag 6.5) and Soul (IC1848 mag 6.5) and others that,  according to the app, ought to be bright enough to see here but haven't been able to.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong or what I'm missing?   

[BearGFR]

Quote

Single image capture.  I find it real easy to fight the autofocus sometimes so use proshot so I can stick it in manual.

It helps to have a bright target in the fov initially to line things up.  Shining a torch into the scope works too.

Thanks for that, Ratlet.   I'll give those a try.

[bosun21]

The magnitude is actually surface brightness of the object. In targets like the North American nebula which is very large the brightness is spread over a large area therefore doesn't stand out as much when compared to a small compact target.

[BearGFR]

3 hours ago, bosun21 said:

The magnitude is actually surface brightness of the object. In targets like the North American nebula which is very large the brightness is spread over a large area therefore doesn't stand out as much when compared to a small compact target.

Well then, I continue to learn stuff.  Thanks!!   

I also played around with the FOV tool on the site here, and after plugging in the values for my telescope (focal length 1650mm, aperture 355.4 mm) and eyepiece (focal length 21, fov 81) it looks like the whole thing won't fit in the view anyway.  So that with what you just taught me, maybe all I could see would be the edge of it anyway.

I had no idea that magnitude worked like that....

[Nicola Fletcher]

Hi Bear, 

Welcome to SGL - I’m from Wicklow, Ireland. I’ve been all over the US and lived in Kentucky for a while but still haven’t made it to Texas. I’m really keen to go to one of the star parties there so hopefully in the next couple of years.

Sounds like you got super lucky with your fantastic scope and eyepieces, and you’re making the most of them! I’m also going to have a go at the North America Nebula this weekend - my plan is to use a 3” refractor with a low power eyepiece and a UHC filter. I think the filter should help bring it out. But binoculars might work on that target if you have them.

I hope you enjoy discovering the night sky. I get the feeling you’re hooked already!