Last Night

[TopHouse]

I hope everyone had it as clear as I did last night, about quarter to midnight it cleared up, and cleared up royaly! I set my scope up and looked around with naked eye for a while, could see more than I've seen for a LONG time! I saw a couple of perseids, about 3 satelites, 1 irdium (I'm assuming that's what it was and it flashed twice)

I started with the scope, first of all I was going to have a dabble with drift aligning, so I find a nice bright star, plug the camera in and launch WCS for the first time, I struggled and struggled, i knew I was on the star as I'm familiar enough with my finders now. Adjusted gain, nothing, shutter speed, nothing, pulled camera out and waved my hand in front of it, yep, working, back in scope, nothing!

I was starting to get frustrated, then it came to me, take end cap off scope!

So, I'd got fed up with drift aligning experiments at that point, so on to the double double and it looked stunning, in fact all around that area the eyepiece was filled with stars! Nearby is andromeda, lets have a try... WOW! it was the biggest I've ever seen it! And the brightest, I nearly had to check I wasn't looking at Orion neb!

I had a good look round at oter local stuff, then carted the scope to front of hous to have a go at Jupiter, naked eye jupiter was VERY bright, but not so sharp, it had a spikiness to it like pictures of the star of bethlehem in books, telescope views were also not the best i've had, strangely puzzling. I had a go at imaging it again and that was slightly disappointing too, with strange concentric rings, as though it was carved from a piece of tree trunk, (picture in image processing section) but it certainly didn't spoil the splendour i had at the back!

[russ]

hehe taking the dust cap off always helps

So glad i don't have to bother with drift aligning anymore.

But it sounds like a really great night. It was amazingly clear down my way too. And there's some amazing sights around Lyra/Cygnus.

[mark7331]

Last time I had the scope out I just couldn't find polaris in the polar scope. After ten minutes of "oh no! my mount's broken!!!" I took the cap off the polar scope and normal service resumed.

[iamjulian]

Glad you had a good night TopHouse. Me too. First night in ages and it was super clear. M13 looked best I have ever seen it at 125x.

[toml42]

my first decent night in ages too, writing my observing log afterwards, i noticed the last entry was june 11th

[ezza123]

Sounds Like you had a good night, Even in my little 127Mak Andromeda was a sight yesterday!