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Newcomer, Hi everybody.

DUBHE

By DUBHE
in Welcome

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DUBHE

DUBHE

Posted
Posted

:hello2:

Hi everybody. Well I’ve taken the plunge, all be it after a little push from my son, to join this forum. I was browsing this forum the other day when I came across Talitha’s work “Have you seen her links” I was absolutely amazed at what she has achieved over the years, I take my hat off to her. I have read some of the post’s and was astounded to see that she takes the time to respond to us mere beginners, her company sounds like the sort of company I’d like to be around, and that goes for all of you at SGL.

Anyway, a little about my self and how I started in this fascinating hobby. I live in North Leicestershire on the three Boarders of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, I’ve always had an interest in the stars but earlier this year I was outside the house waiting for my wife and daughter to come home as they where dropping off a large BBQ they had just fetched from Makro. It was a beautiful evening with a three quarter moon which caught my eye, so I went back into the house and got my binoculars to have a closer look, although they were very small and old indeed. When I looked through them at the moon, I was fascinated by how amazing it looked, and it was from that moment that I decided that I needed to explore the sky further and bought myself a cheap 60mm x 700 telescope. Towards the end of May beginning of June. Even with this telescope, when I first looked through it at the moon I was further astounded by the sight. I then put on the 6mm eye piece that came with the scope and looked through to Saturn. I couldn’t believe that I could see the ring’s around it. I was utterly hooked; thought couldn’t keep up with it at such high magnification, I soon

Got fed up trying to chase it and focus at the same time.

It was then that I bought Celestron SLT60 for £120, mainly for the computerised ‘go to’ mount, knowing that, I would need to buy another scope with a bigger aperture size despite the fact that the Celestron was brilliant as you just pointed at something to get it going then it would find anything that you wanted from that position.

I had been looking at pictures that people had taken themselves in the astronomy magazines and thought to myself that I would like to do some myself, so I bought a Celestron 102 Wide Angle Spotting Scope, with a F stop of F5 which I thought would be useful for Astro photography, despite the fact that it was a spotting scope. When it arrived, the first thing that I did was take the mounting foot off of it, drilled two holes in it and swapped it with the dovetail off of the SLT60, much to the horror of my wife who couldn’t believe that I had just done that to a brand new telescope. I then mounted the spotting scope to the go to mount and it worked perfectly. The finder scope that came with the 102 was really poor, I had already got a Bushnell 16x40 riffle scope which I mounted on the head of the go to mount and waited for it to get dark. When it got dark and I got the chance to look through it, I was pleasantly surprised with the new scope. It was clear and sharp, I was well chuffed.

Shortly after that I bought a cheap second hand Fuji S403 Digital Camera off of e-bay for about twenty pounds. I started taking Afocal photos during daylight, and when I say photos, I mean a lot of photos, and I was having a lot of trouble with vignetting by this time and I knew I had to keep the camera lens as close to eye piece as possible, and it seemed to improve the photo if I just gave it a little bit of zoom on the camera, but not enough to prevent the vignetting from happening. “I know” I’ve got to have a larger surface on my eyepiece, so I got my bino’s (the same ones that started me off in the first place) and an old monocular, took the objective lens out of the bino’s, the eye piece off the monocular and placed the bino lens underneath the mono lens, and guess what It worked, It was also pretty good.

I had sent for some step rings from the far east “ooh they are cheap” If you don’t mind waiting for about a month for them to arrive, as I had been holding the camera by hand, the day the rings arrived I had got a new 32mm Afocal eyepiece “great all set to go” started taking some photos of the church tower weather ****, when disaster struck, the retaining screws holding the filter ring on the front of the camera worked loos and with in minutes the retaining ring had fallen off, the only way to get it back on was to go trough the back of the camera, after removing the back of the camera, It is now officially dead, “don’t know how those little Taiwan people get there hands in there” It’s time to go back to e-bay!!! Any way I’m sending for a new Celstron Omni xlt 120 next week, that’s why I was looking on SGL the other day under,

Beginners first night observing wih Celestron OMNI XLT 120 ...

Found it very interesting, nice one WURZIL!

Well I must go now that’s if anybody is still awake, I’ll try and get some pics posted, when I get my son to show me how. Sorry for the grammar I’m not very good with computers.

Bye for now DUBHE

:icon_eek:

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Talitha

Talitha

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Hi and welcome to SGL, Dubhe. :hello2: Will your son be joining us too, or is he already a member? And thank you for your kind comments... i'm fortunate to be living under dark rural skies which (on average) are less cloudy than yours are. (Although lately, they look much the same as what was overhead during my visit to England in Feb '09. :icon_eek: )

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DUBHE

DUBHE

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:hello2:

Hi again everyone,

Thank you all for your warm welcome, I really appreciate it.

As to your question Talitha, No my son is not a member and as for joining us I’m not sure, he works unusual hours helping to run a local hotel, although he is probably the only one in my family who shows an interest and doesn’t call me boring, never mind I’m happy at what I’m doing and find it all fascinating as well as exciting.

Again thank you.:icon_eek:

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