This year's first observing night

Hi folks,

I count my observing year to run from mid september to about june. It was clear on wednesday night so I got the scope out and had a great hour or so. I saw mars (no detail visible, and a bit shimmery), M31 (sky not dark enough to use more than x84 so no real detail visible), and M13 which was beautiful. I has able to use x125 and I could see a bright central core, surrounded by 100s of stars, fading away at the edges. This is the first time I've seen M13 through a telescope so it was a memorable night. I had a quick look at some starfields (pleiades and perseus), which were lovely. My scope (LXD75 8" SNT) is great for starfields.

I didn't take any pictures, but with literary skills such as these they would be superfluous

Dark skies,
Simon

Hello,

I also have a LXD 75 8" SNT - recently bought so still getting to grips with it - what sort of detail could I expect to see in star clusters and galaxies? In your experience how has the go-to performed? I am very happy with what I have seen so far. Where abouts in NI are you located? Are you a member of any clubs?

Thanks

Neill

Hi Neill,

I only got mine last october, and last winter wasn't a good one for astronomy - I think we averaged 2 non-raining nights per month, so I didn't get a whole lot of use out of it.

Although not the perfect scope for planetary work, saturn was beautiful. I saw M31 last winter when it was darker and the shape was visible, but not a great deal of detail as I have never been able to go above x125 at my site. I'm not sure if this is the location, or whether the SNT just needs a long time to cool down. M42 looks great in this scope - the wide field helps here. M13 was lovely last night, but I'm afraid that's the extent of my deep sky work so far.

With regard to the autostar - on the whole it seems pretty good. Occasionally I will think I have done a fairly good polar alignment and then it will be miles off when I try to goto, but mostly it is pretty accurate. I am pretty sure this is just lack of practise. In my garden many of the stars it picks to align on are not visible so I sometimes just have to accept where it has pointed and hope it's ok (not a great idea). If it is off, you can slew manually (with the buttons!) to the required object and then sync the autostar. That seems to work well.

I don't actually bother aligning autostar when I am just going out to observe something that I can find by slewing the scope manually. I just do a polar align and power it up so that the tracking works.

As far as expected detail goes - the optical resolution and limiting magnitude is identical to an LX90, so just check out some of the superb photos people are taking with those.

I think the scope is sweet, but try asking albertw. He probably gets a lot more use out of his

I'm in bangor, no astro club. The nearest one I am aware of is EAAS, but that isn't feasible for me to join at the moment with the ages of my kids.

Where are you?

Simon

Hello,

I live near Carrickfergus and am member of both the EAAS and the IAA (Irish Astronomcial Association) - its based at Stranmillis in Belfast - www.btinternet.com/~jimmyaquarius/