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starguest

By starguest
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starguest

starguest

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Hello all. It wouldn't quite be honest saying ' Hi ..............an astroholic'.

Just another shivering, yawning, bleary-eyed, weather-frustrated malcontent joining the fray from north of the border! :)

Been lurking obviously and must say this seems to be the better of our island's astro communities.

I've always been fascinated by the night sky and have a distinct memory of a camping trip in my teens and the image of the star-studded darkness overhead. Ordinary binoculars have provided until recently and now I have a 105mm Mak with a couple of extra eyepieces and a W.O. binoviewer.

The scope came with an ordinary manual eq mount but even with its setting circles and correctly printed out star maps matching the region I observed, I couldn't get on with the hopping, rightabit, downabit trying to find anything too dim to see or aim at with the RDFinder. I get the purist bit but, for me, it's not fun spending time searching when you maybe see some approaching clouds. It's like one of those bumper stickers:- 'So many women...so little time' or as you might see in San Francisco:- 'so many women...so..?' :o

So, with too many stars, NGCs or Messiers etc I got a GOTO. It seems to play up sometimes, first align being almost dead on then few weeks later it's at the edge or not even in the eyepiece. I actually still do some hopping because an object shown on a chart may not have a database entry or provided coordinates, but at least the GOTO will definitely get you to the nearest known object.

And there's an unmentioned benefit with GOTO if you do some hopping from a known object by just hitting the RA or DEC button to see what's around and you come across something interesting. You can display the coordinates and save them as a user object.

So I've had my "wowee" moments with the Mak. Jupiter, Saturn, Orion, M42, Perseus, various coloured doubles and before the GOTO I came across Hercules' M13 and M92 really by chance. Many sources say M13 is the best of the galaxies but I find M92 more impressive in that I get the hint of distinct bright points within it, more so than the others.

Another thing before the GOTO was satellites, when looking at a star and suddenly "another one" appeared at the edge and moved across and being able to follow it manually. Not easily done now.

I'm not that technical an observer, meaning I don't estimate seeing or magnitudes and make a detail log, more a simple ticklist. I have an inkling to do imaging and briefly tried a dslr on the focus as well as piggy back but I'll need to work at it.

I've made a small offering in the Primers/Tutorials section which, albeit obvious, should help towards first step in aligning scope..

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi Starguest and welcome to the forum.

I do understand your reasons for GOTO and I for one believe its a great tool, especially when you're getting your head around the sky in the early stages. If I fancy a little bit of star hopping I just turn it off and have some fun, but like you said it's also good for creating your own list of what YOU find interesting and to perhaps read up on it later if you want to. What I've enjoyed is creating my own tour so that visiting family can share in seeing a few things without me spending ages messing around between objects. The cloudy sky reason is also a very realistic point too, especially if you need to travel to a dark site because time is of the essence and you don't want to wasting it if you're travelling far or will have to be up early the next day for work. Some people aren't so keen using this technology and argue it can make you lazy or that it encourages a short term view of what you're observing as you rattle in the next set of numbers - but hey there isn't a 'correct' way just each to their own!

Wishing you clear skies and good luck your observing!!

James

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Talitha

Talitha

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Hi and welcome to the group, Starguest. :o

I'm a purist who actually enjoys hunting down targets. :)

I used to have a goto scope (Celestron Ultima 2000) but it glitched quite often during my observations of the two Herschel 400 lists and made me wonder if i was truly on target or not. So i replaced it with a non-goto LX-10 and never looked back.

TBH though, the goto was a blessing when it was -10C out. :D

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starguest

starguest

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hey peeps, thanks for the warm welcome, I've seen already by now what a friendly bunch. :o

As luck would have it, I was online early yesterday and the Met Office site showed a sun symbol for the day and moon for night including today, meaning clear skies. Well I spent some hours on my tan post lunch and then later at night just after posting here and elsewhere about 22.30 I switched off and went to open the back door and .... aarrrgghh....clouds!

Unbelieveable!!! and the y stayed until near 1am when I decided to hit the sack. I was so het up to get in some time.

Now today there are some fluffy clouds scattered but it's sunny.

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mark7331

mark7331

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The forecasts aren't very reliable. I tend to look at the Met Office and the BBC. They use the same data but the BBC isn't always the same and, in my opinion, a little more accurate - especially the animated map at the bottom of the page - which doesn't seem to match up with the text forcasts very often.

I think frustration is part of the game. Makes it better when you do get some clear skies. :o

Mark

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