A Night of Several Failures

So, after posting the previous blog entry on my new finderscope I noticed that it was pretty clear outside so decided that I would get outside and test out my new toy. Using the joys of google I looked up a few double stars in Ursa Minor that I would try and locate and also decided to see I could catch the transit of Europa’s shadow as it crosses the disc of Jupiter which was occurring that very night.

I quickly got everything set up outside and started aligning the scope; it was at this point I found out that my new RACI finderscope is brilliant at helping align the scope when dealing with some light cloud. So all I can say is that I am more than happy with my recent purchase which was probably the one success I had last night.

My first task was to turn my telescope on Jupiter and I managed get some good clear views of the planet and the Galilean moons with both my 25mm and 8mm eyepieces. Whilst I did make out the banding and colouring on the planet I couldn’t make out the moon’s shadow which was a bit disappointing as it been my main target. I suspect that I was just too late in getting outside and missed the transit but I believe there is meant to be a double shadow transit in March that I will hopefully get to see.

After this I decided to try and get a view at some double stars in Ursa Minor with Struve 1840 and Struve 1841 being the stars of choice as they had some reasonable separation between the components and should both be visible in the same field of view when using my 25mm Eyepiece. Whilst I did locate the stars I seemed unable to make out either of the companions even though they shouldn’t have been too dim for my telescope to pick up. I suspect the problem is that I was suffering from a light layer of cloud which was present for most of the time I was outside.

The cloud soon got worse and it even started lightly raining so I decided to cover up the scope and wait for it to clear. Sure enough it did clear up and thirty minutes I was out again but within about 5 minutes the clouds were back again and this time some rain drops got on my eyepiece and spoilt the view. At this point I finally threw in the towel and went inside feeling rather grumpy that I hadn’t managed to see anything to the detail I wanted to.

This feeling of grumpiness got even worse when I found out I should have been able to see the Aurora as well had I tried to look for it. It is quite rare for the Aurora to be this far south and I still don’t get how I didn’t see it! I guess I just wasn’t looking in the right direction at the right time and the sporadic clouds didn’t help. However, I did find out that someone only 2 miles away got some nice photographs and a work colleaugue called Mark Slater managed to get the photograph from East of Edinburgh which is shown on the right.

Overall, it was a highly unsuccessful night but I will be out again the next chance I get and I will find a way to view both components of Struve 1840 and 1841!

A New Finderscope!

The more or less constant cloudy evenings have resulted in me spending many evenings perusing an amazing website called AstroBuySell UK. This site is basically a bulletin board full of people trying to sell their 2nd hand Astronomy equipment which is both a godsend and a curse for me. It is a godsend because it lets me pay lower amount of cash for equipment I want but the problem is that there are so many good deals on there that I struggle to stop myself buying everything I see!

Anyway, I have a basic list of equipment that I would like to buy in the future and so I keep an eye out for any deals that may pop up. This week someone decided to put their 8x50 Right Angle Correct Image Finder Scope on sale for almost 2/3 the cost of a new one. Considering half the time a few of the online stores I use don’t have them in stock either I jumped at the chance of picking this up.

Anyway I have been after one of these little contraptions for a couple reasons which are as follows:

1. The straight through finder I currently have causes me a couple of issues when I am aiming it at the zenith. The first is that I sometimes have to get down on my knees in rather damp and muddy environments which doesn’t endear me to the wife when I come home all dirty and wet! The second is that even when I don’t have to crawl on the floor I usually have to crane my neck at horrid angles which isn’t the most comfortable thing to do. The right angled element to the new finder means I should be able to avoid these issues now.


2. The current finder is only 30mm whereas the new one is 50mm. This simply gives the finder more light gathering powers and I can therefore see fainter objects easier. I had discovered with the 6x30 finder that I wasn’t always if I was in the right area for some of the dimmer targets.


3. I hate the fact that the up/down and left/right are back to front in my original finderscope. I am sure I could learn to cope with this in the long run but I keep moving the scope the wrong way far to often for my liking! The RACI corrects this but putting right, left, up and down in the correct places!

So I am hoping this will now make my entire alignment process and the confirmation of positioning via the GOTO mount much easier and less painful. Of course I need some clear skies before I can really see if this is really going to be any better!

My First Few Months

Because I am a bit late starting the blog I have already spent the last few months searching the skies for interesting sights but I don't want to spent ages going over everything I have seen. Therefore I am going to try and just going to point out a few of the important things I have seen so far and maybe post a few pictures.

So on my first night I didn't really know what I was doing and just picked a couple of random stars and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Now I fell into the trap of believing I could see something like all the pretty pictures of galaxies you see around the web and was therefore a bit surprised when all I saw was a lovely smudge in the sky. Oh well, at least it is still amazing when you realise that smudge is billions of stars!

So the next night I just set the telescope out the front for 20 minutes so I could get a view of Jupiter and this time I wasn't let down. I could make out the four Galilean Moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto which were very obvious. I also managed to make out the banding in the atmosphere and even get a little glimpse of the giant red spot. It was seeing this that made me go out and buy the Xbox Webcam I mentioned in the last post and managed to take a few pictures of Jupiter such as the one below.

After this I also grabbed some nice views of the Moon and did try and take an image of that but my attempt at stitching about 40 images together didn't work as I managed to miss a section of the moon. After this I decided to jump back to the Deep Space Objects and took my first view of the Orion Nebula (M42) which was superb, with a dusty cloud being visible alongside the Trapezium which is an open cluster of stars at its heart. 

Of course at this point there was news circling the internet about a Supernova occurring in Cigar Galaxy (M82) and I decided to point my scope that way. Unfortunately I couldn't see the bright supernova but I did see the  galaxy and even managed to catch Bode's Galaxy (M81) at the edge of my field of view.

The final objects I have been looking at are multiple stars and I have managed to split a few of them now including Mizar, Almach, Eta Cassiopeiae and Polaris. I even did something completely new and decided to try and sketch what I saw when I was looking at Polaris. I don't normally do "arty" things but decided to give it a go and you see my digitized results below.

You should just be able to see the smaller companion at around the 5 O'clock position from the main star and if you are wondering why the East and West are the wrong way around it is because my telescope flips the view so that is how it appeared to me. As a note, supposedly the main component star is yellow and the smaller one is blue but I just saw white, white and more white! Anyway, I quite enjoyed doing this so I think I will at least try and sketch all the double stars I see in the future.

Other than this the only other interesting experiment I have undertaken is trying to use my Point and Shoot camera to take some wide field shots. I have managed Ursa Minor, The Plough, Orion & Taurus so far but I find myself limited by the bad noise levels my camera produces in the dark. I do plan to get a DSLR at some point but my favourite image I have taken is the one I did of Orion and it is shown below.

My Equipment - Bits & Bobs

So I have probably covered the main pieces of equipment I have in regards to my attempt to start the hobby of astronomy and now I need to explain to you the other miscellaneous things I have. The first of these is a webcam which I bought within a week of getting the telescope so that I could try and get some good planetary and lunar images. I had actually assumed that I needed a DSLR or something to do some imaging but it turns out that webcams are actually the best thing to use for solar system objects. Webcams can also be cheap with the Xbox Webcam being the one I bought, although I paid a little bit more because I got one that had already been adapted for use. I just needed to buy a new Infra-Red Cut Filter and 1.25 Inch nose piece which would fit into my telescope. All in all it cost me £45 and I am pretty happy with it although I did have a little bit of an accident when I tried to clean the CCD chip but I think I saved it!

Other than this I also bought myself a Dew Shield after noticing that as each evening progressed my view began to get dimmer and dimmer from dew build up on the front of my telescope. I believe this is a common issue with a cold wet place like Scotland and a telescope such as my Maksutov-Cassegrain. To be honest it isn't much more than a black camping map rolled up to go around the front of the telescope as per the image to the right but it seems to work!

The two other items I use are actually things I already owned prior to getting the telescope. The first of which is my Canon Ixus 75 Point and Shoot camera which I have been madly using to try and capture wide field shots. Supposedly I could also  use it to take pictures via an eyepiece on the telescope as well but I have the webcam for the type of pictures I could get via that method.

The final item are my pair of 10x50 binoculars which I have had since my teenage years when my parents bought them for me. What annoys me is that I had no idea I could see double stars, nebula or open clusters with them so they had sat wasted in a cupboard for years. Now though I have already used them even so often to see the Orion Nebula, to split Mizar and Alcor in the plough and view the Pleiades Open Cluster. I wish I had known how much I could see with these binoculars in the past but I am at least enjoying using them now.

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My Equipment - Power

The biggest issue I found when I first started using my telescope was in regards to power because I realised I had no idea how to provide the power needed to ensure my telescope mount would function. Now Skymaster were kind enough to provide a battery pack with the telescope which requires a total of 8 AA batteries and it was this I used on Christmas but alas it only lasted about 2 hours before the telescope started acting nuts. So I decided to start searching for something to do and luckily it turned out that my Seagate external hard drive power supply was perfect to use as a mains lead for my telescope. Unfortunately I began to get a little paranoid that this lovely PSU may not be the safest of things to use out in the damp and cold evening via a random extension lead.

Therefore I undertook a mission to search the internet and find out what other people were using to provide power out in the field. And so the first thing I discovered were car jump start power packs which seemed to be a cheapish way to power the scopes.

They seemed to get quite a mixed review however with some people loving them and others finding that they stopped working within a year. Basically, it appears that these car jump start batteries are designed for one off large provisions of power which isn't how telescope mounts draw power. So I had to decide if I wanted to risk spending some hard earned cash on this type of battery or did I want to try something else that may last better.

As you can imagine, the thought of wasting money terrified me so I decided to look at the option of building my own battery pack. Now I am not a DIY expert and I know very little about electrical circuits but there is fair amount of information available online that I felt confident enough to give it a go. However, much to my surprise someone on the Central Scotland Observer's Group decided they wanted to sell their astronomy gear which included a DIY battery pack. So, here was my chance to grab a DIY battery pack built by someone who may know what they were doing alongside a charger for less than the Car Jump Starter kits I had originally looked at.

So, I just grabbed the deal and yes it does looks a little bit worn but it has worked brilliantly since I picked it up and supposedly I am actually the third person to use it. One day if I get into Astrophotography I may want to build my something with a bigger battery but for now this little beauty has been a god send and enables me to take my telescope away from my home to darker sites.

My Equipment - Eyepieces

I want to start by stating something, just because a telescope is bigger doesn't mean the magnification is higher. This was actually news to me as I  had always assumed that big telescopes were "good" because they had high levels of magnification but it turns out I am a numpty and they are good because the bigger aperture means they can capture more light and provide more stable views at the higher magnifications. All I can say is that my Physics with Space Science and Technology degree truly must have been a huge waste of time as I hadn't realised this!

Anyway, the magnification is actually to do with the focal length of the telescope and the eyepiece being utilised as shown in the lovely formula below.

So with the telescope having a fixed focal lenght it is down to the eyepieces to determine the magnification. My telescope has a focal length of 1500mm and it came with 10mm and 25mm eyepieces which meant I could get 150x and 60x magnification. As an additional note I also got a 2x Barlow with the telescope which is an optical lens that alters the focal length by a factor of 2 therefore I can actually double by magnification to 300x and 120x if I wanted.

Of course this all sounds wonderful but the problem is that the higher magnifications aren't always so great as they reduce the field of view and highlight atmospheric and mounting stability issues. In all honesty I have probably used the 25mm eyepiece most so far due to the wider field of view it gives me. However, it is probably also due in part to the fact that I didn't think the 10mm provided with the telescope isn't the best quality. In fact just this week I bought an 8mm BST Explorer eyepiece and have already found the view so much clearer than the supplied 10mm when looking at Jupiter and the Moon.

So basically my current collection of Eyepieces are:-
10mm Stock Skywatcher
25mm Stock Skywatcher
2x Stock Skywatcher Barlow
8mm BST Explorer

This gives me an okay range of views at the moment but I do want to buy a 32mm in the future as this will supposedly give me the best field of view for my telescope. The large field of view is good for some large deep space objects which I can't always fit fully into my current eyepieces. I also may need to buy some sort of foam filled case in the future as I am not sure lugging them around in a Asda Carrier bag is the safest thing to do.

One thing I have noticed about Eyepieces is that they can be very expensive! Some of the high end ones aren't far off the cost of my actual telescope which is rather eye watering. However from what I can understand these are more often needed for telescopes with a low focal ratio (Telescope Focal Length / Telescope Aperture). As I have reasonably high focal ratio I think that I will stick with the "good" lower value eyepieces such as the 8mm BST I have already bought.

My Equipment - The Telescope

So, what I have decided to do over my first few posts on the blog is to discuss the equipment I currently have before moving onto detailing what I have actually seen so far. Anyway, as you can imagine the first and most important piece of equipment for astronomy is the telescope itself which I received for Christmas thanks to my incredibly generous parents.

The telescope they bought me was a Skywatcher Skymax 127 SynScan AZ GOTO and you can see the picture I took of it on Christmas day below.

The basic facts about the telescope are that the aperture on the telescope is 127mm (5 Inches for those who use old school measurements), its focal length is 1500mm and it is a Maksutov-Cassegrain design. I am not going to explain what that all means  because you can just check google for yourself but the result of this design is that I have a nice compact telescope that should be much easier to pack in my car and take on journeys to dark sites and it should show me a fair few objects although it does have a limited field of view.

The SynScan AZ GOTO element of the telescope means that it is an Azimuth-Altitude mount and utilises the SynScan GOTO computer control system. So basically, I can use the little controller that comes with the telescope and tell it where to point without having to do star hopping or any actual work! This got me very excited because I assumed it would be easy for me to just select cool objects like galaxies and such like and the scope would happily go there even though I had no idea where in the sky they might be. Unfortunately I didn't anticipate that for the software to work it needed to know where it was and which way it was pointing and therefore before use it needed aligning. So, I sat outside on Christmas evening trying to work out what and where the bloody stars were that I could use for alignment. This was my first lesson in astronomy, no matter how lazy you want to be, you still  need to know some basics about the night sky!

In the end I did get it aligned but it wasn't the best and I don't think I saw anything that interesting beyond the tiny disc of Uranus and a smudge that was the Andromeda Galaxy. Basically I didn't really know what to look for. This was my second lesson, you really need to plan your nights observations because I probably wasted lots of time trying to work out what I could see.

An interesting observation I had when aligning the scope on Christmas evening and on a few other nights is that I struggled to get good alignment because I found it difficult to tell which star in the finderscope was the correct one to home in on. After trawling the internet I decided that the best bet was to use my finderscope alongside a non magnified red-dot style of finder. I could use the non magnified finder to lock in on a star I could see with the naked eye and align nice and easily before centering it even more with the magnified finder. Across the forums people praise something called a Telrad but when I checked it out I decided the thing would be massive and look stupid on my rather compact telescope. Therefore I procured an alternative called the Rigel Quickfinder which I have used twice now and have decided it is the best thing since sliced bread! The GOTO software has been so much more exact and if I am not sure I can get a good sense of where in the sky I am pointing compared to the stars I can easily see. I have posted a picture of the little beauty below although this image doesn't show the red light finder circles.

A New Adventure

So back on the 25th December 2013 my parents decided to give me a rather interesting Christmas gift, a Skywatcher Skymax 127 SynScan AZ GOTO Telescope. In a later post I talk about this telescope in greater detail but for now you just need to understand that I was very excited to have a telescope and couldn't wait to get out there and view some night sky objects!

Anyway, it is now six weeks later and I still can't believe how much I have learn and seen since that Christmas Day when I tried to use my telescope with 8 AA Batteries and very little knowledge about the night sky. Over those six weeks I think I have driven people at work and facebook mad with pictures and comments but I realised that there are loads more people out there I can bore to death with astronomy talk! Therefore, here I am now starting this blog with an aim to record my journey as I explore the night sky and hopefully inspire other people out there to pick up this hobby which involves standing outside in the freezing cold and spending stupid amounts of money!