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Hello from wiltshire

jabberwocky

By jabberwocky
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jabberwocky

jabberwocky

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hi everyone, just joined the site and i bought my first scope yesterday. ive recently moved to melksham from northampton and ive finally got round to buying my first telescope. i guess ive had a passing interest in the stars for a while now, i work as a truck driver and for the past 5 years have worked nights and i have seen so many things in the night sky during that time. meteors? too many to count, infact i saw 2 within a minute of each other last night. red ones, green ones, ones that last fractions of a seconds and one that i followed through the sky for several seconds.

my knowledge of the stars is very limited, orion and the plough is about my limit of recognition, i can spot saturn and venus.

my favourite nightsky sight(once i had googled what it was) is noctilucent cloud which i first saw about 4 years ago. i was driving north on the M5 just north of bristol and the whole northern sky was lit up just like a sunrise but without the reds, i had no idea what i was looking at, but it was absolutly stunning, ive never seen it as impressive as that first time since then, it was visible for about 4 hours from about 1am, the cloud reached from low above the horizon to about 65 or 70 degrees, it rose and then fell like a waterfall, it was so bright and vivid people from london to manchester were calling BBC 5 live to find out what it was.

anyway back to stargazing, like i say ive bought my first scope, a SW 130M, should i have got the 130P? well maybe but the 130M is what i have, sunny at the moment so hopefully first light tonight, fingers crossed, first target? Saturn.

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russ

russ

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Hi, welcome to SGL

The 130P uses a Parabolic mirror and is the desirable choice

130M uses a spherical mirror, cheaper to produce, slower focal ratio, longer focal length. But in apertures less than 6" and with slower focal ratios (such as f6.9 like yours), the spherical mirror will produce very nice views.

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jabberwocky

jabberwocky

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ideally i would have gone for the P but they didnt have any in stock and im very impatient to the M it is, ive got my eyes on the 200p now anyway;) so i think that will replace the 130 soon enough. the 130 will either get me hooked or ill end up with a pretty ornament.:icon_eek:

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S.A.M

S.A.M

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Hello jabberwocky and welcome to the lounge. If you are interested ingoing viewing with other like minded people within Wiltshire, there are several groups that meet up for viewing. Wiltshire Astronomical Society (WAS) have a monthly viewing session at Lacock, Swindon Stargazers do Adhoc meetings at East Kennett near Avebury (they have been unlucky over the winter as most planned events have been cancelled due to cloud) and finally Salisbury Plain Observing Group (SPOG) meet around the Plain at different places. SPOG are holding a meeting tomorrow night at Everleigh and hopefully I am doing one on Saturday night at Uffcott near Swindon. You would be more than welcome to attend any of these events and people are more than willing to help you out with any questions you may have. I know most of these meeting places are a bit from Melksham apart from Lacock. Swindon and WAS hold regular monthly meetings, next month at WAS we should have Chris Lintott from the The Sky at Night programme.

What ever your plans are, happy viewing of the night sky.

Peter

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jabberwocky

jabberwocky

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thanks for the welcome guys, and thanks S.A.M for the heads up on the local groups, rather frustratingly im going away this weekend so wont even be able to play with my new toy never mind going to any meets. def be going to a few meets in the near future though. clear blue skies at the moment in melksham so fingers crossed for clear skies tonight.

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