Deepest Darkest Essex, Saturday night (freezing cold but crystal clear) 

Sadly the moon destroyed our viewing and hid a lot of the good stuff, but it turns out that i quite enjoy photography.  I virtually put aside the Skywatcher 250px dob and just let others look through it whilst i set up with canon 7d and shot an hours worth of 30 seconds exposure pics. Timelapse vid and startrails were both generated (see below) and next time i intend to shoot 3 or 4 hours at a slower rate....

now i can see how easily people get the photography bug ! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b57IstO5rc 

3rd trip out (the garden so not far !)

sorry its been a while peeps

so i went out again yesterday, about 6pm - took the skywatcher 250px out after charging the  tank, set up, pointed north, did the usually doodahs with setting up GOTO - worked first time... realised my house was actually in the way of Orion, 7 sisters, Jupiter and just about the rest of the heavens, so set up in a different spot and got the GOTO working 1st time again... annoyingly i ended up not using it as i knew where everything was that i wanted to look at

1) Jupiter - it always amazes me with my Zoom ep, how at 24 its bright and tiny but at 8 its massive and STILL bright !!!! something certainly can be said about buying an excellent EP - so at 8x i saw clearly the 2 major cloud bands with the smaller bands also visible and 2 moon flailing around, i must have come back to this target 12 times over the few hours i was out there... always draws my gaze 

2) betelguise - not much to say... hasnt blown up yet - still red, still there... annoying (in some ways)

3) the orion neb - didnt get to see this as i spent ages waiting for it to come up and then the baby started going into one and it took both of us to deal with ! kids PAH ! - ill get u next time

4) andromeda galaxy - for the first time i saw detail and not just a fuzz.... unsure why ! isnt it usually awful ?

5) Pleiades  - binoculars only as its just too close !

all in all a good night - all the equiptment got wet after just 2 hours though and fogged up totally at the end !!!

happy reading:) 

2nd outing - this time with the Essex Group

ok so this is some weeks out of date, however this was the 1st time outside my rear garden.

1 hour and 30 minutes of driving away from London Village brought me to sunny(ish) Dengie - close to the seaside - lower right part of the UK - where all light sources seem to originate.

Thanks to a few people (1 in particular) who scoped (no pun intended) the area out and befriended the landowner we found ourselves just before dusk in a remote spot on a farm track with distant LP visible (clacton i think and brentwood the other way)

The Milky way band was visible clearly with the naked eye, as was the ISS passing over and various other sky, bbc and middle eastern satellites. The ISS through bins looked fantastic and was showing a clear " I " shape.

to summarise the night, the ring nebula, double cluster and various other astro wonders were presented with such clarity that id never seen before. The ring nebula showed some colour which on its own was amazing, however you could clearly see without averted vision, with direct vision, both the inner and outer edges of the ring, clearly in the background behind it was the dark expanse of space

it was still quite late to get dark, jupiter and the Pleiades were not out until after 12:30 and viewing wasnt ideal as clouds came in... in a few weeks time once the clocks move, and the winter planets and orion etc are all on display i intend to camp out and detail everything seen....

the real 1st light report !! seeing as the last one was a let down - thanks to a few helpful peeps at SGL i managed to sort the mount issue - in other words Synscan worked and i have NEVER seen anything as breathtaking as M92 - feel like an ant now .... here is how it all began earlier tonight

it has been a real juggling mission ensuring the wife sleeps as its her turn, the baby feeds, changes etc and also sleeps and i get outside, still at the time not knowing if i could get this "broken" mount to work - turns out i was broken

Attempt 1 - in sheer excitement (i had a great feeling it would work) i carted it all outside, got everything set up (or so i thought) set the scope to north and to zero digs and then fired it up - i chose vega as 1st star of the 2 star alignment, looked through the finderscope got it dead centre and hit enter, found Spica as star 2 in my finder - immediately realised that it HAD worked and i needed to make a tiny adjustment.

so excited at that point, i then looked through my 25mm lens and saw NOTHING at all, couldn't focus on anything at all.. tried the 10mm - nothing

panic set in - i assumed the second mirror has dissolved or something far worse, fallen and cracked the primary mirror - it took me about 2 full minutes to realise that the CAP was on still and the tube was not extended !!!!!! in other words i took the cap off the end, but thats it... idiot boy.

Attempt 2 - even more excited now i knew it worked i followed the same star aligns.... i then put Saturn in and off it slewed... nothing - i worked this 1 out quickly. I had simply knocked the finder scope miles away so i lined it up and went for attempt 3.

Baby starts to cry, ran in fed at a million miles an hour praying for no clouds or worse wet equipment from the non existent rain.

20 mins later attempt 3

Attempt 3 - finally there was Saturn, looking great - I'm still not sure about the collimation but it shouldn't matter when i get the replacement scope. now id seen saturn before - but it somehow looked better - knowing that it wouldn't shoot out of view i sat and marvelled.

finally i punched in the ring nebula - until this point i had never ever seen any messieurs (in fact anything more than our moon and a few planets)

wow - ok not really clear - had to use averted vision, no real colour to it just an averted ring - i hope that collimation on the new scope will resolve it better.

i must have put in 15 different messiers, double closers etc in about 1 minute after that and impatiently waited... then m92 ! it looked as good as the pictures you can see online - just smaller as it was just my eye picking it up and not a camera - m92 - wow !!!!!!

and thats the end of my night - i am going to sleep happy now. i know now that once the new scope arrives undented i can put it on my mount and just go for it - but collimated - i still need help please anyone local feeling generous for a pint or 2 haha

clear skies all

First Light Optics -

What a good after sales care they have - they are picking my damaged scope up on friday - im going to try again tonight to align and assume its just been me who is stupid and did it wrong - with a bit of luck ill nail it and only need to return the OTA rather than the whole thing.....

anyway - thankyou Martin @ FLO !

Synscan (its not as easy to set up as you think)

how do you make a goto / synscan scope work ? well you need power outside firstly.
This can be achieved by purchasing a Maplins power tank (or another supplier) OR buy buying a power pack which plugs in to the wall and a ring tongue set of leads and then you can use mains power - personally i bought both as i didn't know which i would use.

I'm using the power tank ! charged it up overnight and then popped in in the garden on the scope base  (so as not to fall over it or get the wires wound round the goto base whilst its slewing)

i then turned it on and after scratching my head a bit realised how to star align (in other words make the scope realise where its looking at all times - it can't know until you tell it - no built in GPS)

you need to know your GPS globally - use google maps or bing maps - when you find your co ordinates you then need to convert it to decimal minute (websites available to do this) - DONT use your iPhone - i think thats what i did wrong last night - its wrong and always on the move - a fixed gps point on a road in google maps will never change.

so last night i was instructed to find either the brightest star or choose 1 of my own, luckily i know vega, polaris and a few bright others, however both methods didn't work for me - the 2nd star was nowhere to be seen in the scope once it had slewed there... also its worth noting you need to know your sky and really where the stars are going to be when you start, you can't wait a few minutes deciding which stars to use etc (the alignment will have moved by then) vega, polaris, arcturus etc are all very bright and id recommend those (assuming i get it to work) )

so the plan is to input google maps co ordinates this evening, make sure the ground is totally flat (spirit level needed) and ensure i have set daylight savings correctly - then ill try again - fingers crossed ill find the 2nd star... more later on this if i get it to work

ok so this is my first ever attempt at blogging, on top of that i have to go out in about 30 mins so ill make it short and sweet for this 1

last year when i had my skywatcher200p i didn't ever bother to collimate it, nor was it goto capable - i just shoved in four or five eyepieces with and without a 2x barlow at the time, didn't have a clue what i was doing and saw saturn, mars, the moon and a lots of points of light - no messieurs, nothing else - i became disheartened and sold it as i had a wedding to pay for etc etc...

NOW, I'm back on the scene with the help of the SGL crew who are all brilliant (especially the other essex boys haha), helping a new friend to an extent with canon camera advice and feeling like part of the forums - all good so far

FRIDAY AFTERNOON - my long awaited skyliner 250px (goto - i learnt this time !!!!) finally arrived and i will attach here the exciting build up and assembly.... disaster however struck my 2 times - the first was i thought 2 parts were missing and there was no viewing that could take place... eventually after a lot of flapping they were there - just so well packed i couldn't see them... that took care of the base part of my new Dob!

i took the optical tube out the box and lo and behold a large dent is present !!! some horrible nightmare person who needs shooting thinks its funny to either drop or bang something into my long awaited scope - disheartened i continued to put it together not really very pleased or feeling like i could love this scope until the replacement came (i was told i had the last 1 of the batch and the next order was some time away by the supplier) so here i am stuck with damaged goods, however determined to make the best of it i looked up ...

SHIMMER !!!!! my seeing was just horrendous - saturn looked like a squirrels nut (all bumpy and stuff) and the moon was plain drunk - could it be collimation... I've never done that before

SATURDAY DAYTIME - a three hour attempt at trying to understand astrobabys guide has i THINK ruined my day... I'm definitely someone who needs to be shown (if anyone in essex is about anytime soon - even a weekend day - id be very grateful for a little time to show me (ill buy u a beer) !!  )how to collimate 

so the spider vanes were ok, I'm not sure if the mirror did appear totally central but when adjusting the 3 allen keys which determine tilt I'm pretty sure the whole mirror holder moved round a bit... did it go back to where it should be - i don't know ! i assumed it did but now i cannot see any of the primary mirror clips - have i broken the optics... I'm guessing not - i just really need help (pretty please?)

so i can't do a star test as I'm out tonight sadly - so the agony of not knowing will continue...

i enclose pics of the setup and the moment the dent in the optic tube was discovered... night night for now !

they really are big boxes

heavy !

box 1 open

box 1 laid out

you have to add the feet 1st

then assemble the sides and front

like this

and this

then place it level

disaster.... the dent moment

nice - but clearly dented

tearful moment

she is pretty though ! dent aside