I’ll observe as soon as I am able, but for now ya’ll have to put up with images I pretend to take (which are infrequent now as the Weather seems to be rubbish everywhere!)

I can definitely see how well the sight tube works for aligning the secondary mirror, and even though I was confused by its use on Sunday, after having thought about the issue I had since, I can see where the confusion came from and hopefully the weather will cooperate sometime soon and I can have another attempt at getting things spot on!

I didn’t attempt to use the autocollimator as the issues I had with the sight tube meant I had an “open system” and the images in the autocollimator were not dark enough as a consequence. I got the collimation as close as I could with a 1.25″ Cheshire and Laser and called it a morning.

Because the weather forecast for Sunday evening was favourable I left the scope setup in my backyard, planning to do some observing Sunday evening, especially now the evenings are closing in and things are looking pretty dark by about 18:30 now.

Of course, at 18:30 people are still awake and moving around their houses, switching lights on, switching lights off, walking into their own backyards triggering five million watt security lights and letting their pet dogs out that bark at the sound of a pin dropping 55 AU away.

I’m not bitter.

It was also really quite cold that evening so the scope was covered in dew, which wasn’t a problem (or didn’t seem to be a problem) as it hadn’t affected the primary or secondary mirrors so I could still see stuff. Unfortunately it did completely mess up my Telrad Finder meaning that I could really aim the scope anywhere to see anything. I have also moved the Telrad slightly on my scope meaning that it needs quite a significant realignment, and as it was so badly dewed up, I couldn’t really see much through it to achieve anything.

So, after going out at around 18:30, I packed at around 19:00, cursing at neighbours, lights and dew

Maybe next time!

Updates should appear in the sidebar, but should this be far too complicated, the address for direct access is THIS ONE!

Thanks.

so

I absolutely, totally get that but why is that simplified further to ?! Without going downstairs to look at the exercise again, I think the purpose was to simplify the root so it could be calculated by hand. I figure, however, that if you don’t know the square root of 0.75, then you won’t know the square root of three divided by two either?! ¹

At least the LaTeX looks pretty…

I’ve also run into the usual problems I have with focusers – more specificate, replacement focusers.

I haven’t used my 305mm Reflector since I attempted to replace the standard focuser with a dual speed Moonlight focuser, well, probably 3 years a go now. Collimation seemed to be a nightmare, and the few times I did bother to take the scope out, images were pretty rubbish. It’s on my list of things to do now I have some decent collimation tools and a laser, but score one for focuser upgrades biting me in the ass.

September was bonus month for me at work, and although it didn’t even clear my overdraft, I thought I might as well treat myself to something, no matter how small. So I decided to upgrade the focuser on my Skywatcher Refractor from the admittedly okay rack-and-pinion to a nice and shiny Crayford; I went for the Skywatcher Crayford as it promised to be a direct, drop-in replacement.

Was it heck as like!

The new focuser seems to be about 1-1.5mm too wide, so won’t actually fit in the OTA. I’m fairly hopeful that was some jiggling and wiggling and a bit of brute force it will actually fit, but I’m leaving that for now so I don’t do something silly and break everything.

Unfortunately, as I was trying to get the focuser to fit I noticed I was chipping the black paint inside the tube and looking at the lens I now have a one nicely covered in black paint chips. So I can’t even put the old focuser back on and do some observing.

Hopefully I’ll get out at some point with the little 66mm Refractor, or maybe I’ll find out where I put the 114mm Reflector and use that.

I might even properly collimate the 305mm!

Unfortunately, the place I ordered it from were out of stock and told me it could be some weeks before they got any more in – “Did I want to wait?”

Well I did, and the scope arrived on Wednesday, or it would have arrived on Wednesday if the FedEx dude had bothered to either bang harder on the front door, or actually walk towards the noise of the radio and come to the back gate. He didn’t, so I had to rearrange it for Thursday and this time he did actually manage to deliver it then.

Put it all together Thursday evening – the instructions are pretty basic and I ignored the part about making sure the lens is the correct orientation before tightening the screw because, yes you can undo it and put it the right way round without any problems!

Now I just have to wait until I am home during the day so I can put it through its paces. I am on holiday from work for twenty days from Sunday, so I hope to get a lot of observing done – Solar and Night-Time!

I’d dug my Skywatcher 102mm Refractor out of the cupboard last week, and my batteries for the RDFs arrived earlier this week, so I was good to go for a change.

I started off with the Baader Hyperion Zoom again, just to give it another chance, and I am glad to say that things were definitely better this time. I was pleased to be able to find objects with the longer focal length settings and then zoom in to pick out more detail. I did have to refocus more than I was expecting to when zooming in, but it didn’t seem to be too much of an issue. I’m still not overly bowled over by the narrowness of the longer focal lengths, and this time I definitely picked up some “fuzziness” in the outer edge of the field of view – she’s a keeper for the time being.

After taking the Zoom out of the telescope, I found myself using my Nagler T4 12mm eyepiece for most of the remainder of the session with considerable success. First up was M13 in Hercules which I managed to make a few notes on and complete a half decent sketch of – I’ll try to get the sketch up here once I find the cable for my scanner.

I then tried, without success, to locate M57 and M27 for a while. I think it was still a little too bright, and the light pollution from where I observe in my backyard is pretty bad so I wasn’t able to see anything of these two objects. I think I’ll leave these until I can get my Dob setup and the focuser / collimation sorted.

While messing around in the South trying to find M57 and M27 I noticed a very bright “Star” low down, just about to disappear behind the tree near my house. Memories flooded back as this was wear Jupiter was the first time I had ever observed it – and low and behold – there she was again! I spent some time on Jupiter, and even pushed the magnification up with my 4mm Ortho eyepiece, and was able to make out dark bands and saw 4 moons.

Had scan round the Northern skies but didn’t find anything and then decided to call it a night at around 22:15. All in all, a good session, although I had forgotten just how bright the skies were and this made it quite difficult to get dark adapted and then find and see things. It’s a shame I cannot drive so I could go to a dark site once in a while.

To start with, the head on my EZ Touch mount had come loose after months of sitting in the corner doing nothing, so as well as rotating in the azimuth, it just plain rotated whenever you tried to move it! This was easily fixed though, with my handy allen key set from my Earth, Moon & Sun model I am building. After some tightening, everything was back to normal again.

Then came the focuser, which If I remember correctly, had the same problem last time I tried to observe. As soon as I was pointing the telescope over about 30-40° in altitude, I couldn’t move the focus at all, and with my heavier eyepieces, the focus would slide out on its own due to the extra weight. Again, an allen key and some googling this time came to the rescue and solved the problem.

During all this, I discovered my Red Dot Finder didn’t work and it was one of those flat watch-type batteries that no one, not even dedicated battery shops carry. So I was without a finder for the whole session – my first session in at least 18 months, maybe much, much longer.

Thoughts on the Zoom
After all the hype garnered by the eyepiece over at Cloudy Nights I thought I’d give one a try as it’d be a nice grab-n-go eyepiece for my ZS66.
I can’t say that I was super impressed unfortunately.

The Good

• Twist up / down eye guard
• Easy eye placement
• Sharp across entire field of view

The Bad

• Very difficult to read what zoom setting you are on in the dark
• Twisting the eye guard up or down caused the zoom setting to change and movement of the telescope
• The longest focal length (24mm) is useless as a “finder” as the field of view is far too narrow at 44° to actually find anything
• The shortest focal length (8mm) didn’t seem short enough (not enough magnification), and perversely, seemed far too wide at 72°!

Now, I appreciate this was my first observing session in a very long time so I won’t be selling up quite yet, but as far as the eyepiece goes, I don’t think I would ever use it as the only piece for a session. I would always need a longer focal length piece with a wider field of view for finding things, and I would always need a shorter focal length for high powered stuff. I’ll give it another go, with equipment hopefully firing on all cylinders, but keep an eye on Astronomy Buy & Sell UK!

The Session
Nothing much to report due to the RDF issue, I did have a scan around the Milky Way running through Cygnus, which was nice, and I spotted a small fuzzy patch that was M13 through my 35mm Panoptic, but lost it when switching to the 12mm Nagler T4.

I was hoping to get out and do some of the Abell Planetaries mentioned in the latest copy of the Deep Sky newsletter from BAA.

At least I have been able to complete the second assignment of my OU course, albeit after having to ask for a week extension.

I really want to try and get out with the telescope sometime soon, but I’m convinces there hasn’t been a clear sky now for at least a year! There are still two Televue Ethos eyepieces in my case that have never seen the dark sky! Perhaps someone else could make better use of them – for a good price

The Weather Station has been running well since I got a decent USB->Serial converter to connect to my PC. I need to upgrade the wind speed thingy (very technical I know!) and sometime soon mount it somewhere not quite so shaded and surrounded by buildings.