Had A Proper Go Tonight

[TopHouse]

Me and my wife got the 200p out again tonight, had it out last night but mostly out of frustration as I've had it a week without use, last night we managed the moon on and off, reported in another topic.

Anyway,

Tonight, the cloud threatened to clear up tonight, at about 9pm I managed to set it up on our patio, I 'roughly' polar aligned it as we have no problems seeing polaris from our back garden. far less than what the experts would call perfect conditions as we kept the energy saver 11watt outside light on, simply because being unfamiliar, we would have been fumbling all over the place trying to find the knobs etc. So

Moon first, looking at the moon was stunning, lovely and clear, we also did the obvious newbie thing, trying every lens right up to full mag (well you would, wouldn't you) eyepieces I have are :-

6mm, 12.5mm, 17mm & 40mm as part of the antares kit i bought at the same time as the scope.

Tested the skywatcher ones but the antares are MUCH better. So, we did moon starting with the 40 and working right down to the 6 with a x2 barlow! Every configuration was pin sharp though, was really highly delighted.

Tried for the orion nebula but being so new, we couldn't find it, (trying to run before walking) BUT we did have a go at a few stars, it was AMAZING that when you find a star, you get it in the finder, then look in the telescope and there's LOADS more! I did find something near orions belt whilst trying to find the nebula, quite a close concentration of stars, I'm now looking through stellarium and thinking it might have been NGC1981, could i be right? Was on the 17mm EP I think, and am now gutted that if it was, how close i got to the nebula and missed it!

Mars was rising over our roof (back of our house faces roughly NW) it would have meant moving the telescope across the lawn so waited for it to rise more.

It was blumming freezing, note to self, buy some thick socks! Anyway, we came inside for a coffee and a warm, looked at stellarium and decided we were going to try and run again, it was going to be Andromeda! Got outside again, Andromeda almost got forgotten again as mars was high enough.

I swung the scope round, got it centered, WOOHOO, I got mars!!! Thing is, the cloud was starting to move in again, the scope was wet through from all the moisture too, got mars in at low mag, funny thing that went through my head, my favourite uncle, (uncle Albert) now dead, although not an astronomer was a very clever and well read guy on all things scientific, and he loved his binoculars. I always remember him telling me, a star always looks like a star, no matter how much you magnify it, a planet turns into a circle. My mars turned into a tiny circle with the 17, excitement building, I got it centered and swapped to the 12.5, still a tiny circle, but a slightly bigger tiny circle, but a definite, sharp edged circular object.

Holy Rubbish!!! How fast does that thing move!!! And how many people do an impersonation of quasimodo! Hunched over a scope, not daring to remove their eye from the eyepiece, and fumbling around for the knobs to get it back in again because it's moving so fast!

So, 6mm in, found it again, but the cloud was starting to drift in too, however i did manage to see some very slight detail, there seemed to be two obvious darker patches, one at 1 oclock and one at 9 oclock. Then mars disappered completely so it was time to come in, that was around midnight.

I've also had my first go at astrophotography...... with my phone!! Don't laugh too much! Under the circumstances they actually aint that bad! Take a looky :-

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon1.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon2.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon3.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon4.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon5.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon6.jpg

http://www.lazerlight.co.uk/moonpics/moon7.jpg

[DarkerSky]

Super report there TopHouse and not bad photos at all...you must have a pretty decent camera on your phone to get shots like that. Excellent stuff.

Made me laugh when you say how quickly mars moved in the eyepiece. With your 6mm in it will seem to move even faster..!! Good stuff though - and great you got to glimpse some surface detail. Mars really is at its best right now. With a bit of steady seeing you should get to see a bit more detail too.

[Doc]

Great report and a very nice read. I have my doubts it was Ngc1981 you saw, as this is very close to the Orion's nebula, I'm sure even when using a 17mm eyepiece the field of view would have been sufficient to see M42 in the same view. You cannot miss the M42 in a 8" scope, when you see it, you will know.

You could have been looking a Sigma Orion and it's companions.

[TopHouse]

Thanks, I'll have a check in stellarium after. I know I started on the left star of orions belt and was working downwards, still trying to get to grips with it, but what i did see was really awesome. Phone by the way is just a nokia n96. I was surprised how well they came out really.

[mike.brightmore]

Well done. To find M42 the Orion Nebula go down the 'sword' hanging from about the middle of the 3 stars in Orion's belt. About half-way down is a fuzzy patch (easily seen with binoculars). This is the nebula. In the scope you will see 4 stars close together known as the Trapezium. Look for it using a low power eyepiece to start with.