Hi Terere, sil and geolindon,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and interesting posts.
Apologies for the delay in responding but I've spent the last two days assembling and playing with the new toy! I bought a telescope and have been enjoying setting it up and experimenting with it.
I got a small inexpensive Skywatcher 80x400 refractor, on an AZ mount, which shows the stars the same way up as I’m used to seeing them. It has relatively modest magnification, and it can also be used for daytime terrestrial viewing. The idea is that I can use it to help learn the general layout of the skies. It’s pretty basic but I was able to see Jupiter and some of its moons on the first night. No detail, but who cares - I’ve see plenty of pictures, so I know what it looks like - but it was just a thrill to see another planet for the first time! And the telescope shows far more stars than I can see with the naked eye. More than enough to cope with for now. Once I’m a bit more familiar with the maps of the stars then I can move onto a more powerful Newtonian telescope.
I have also made a simple sighting tube to go on the camera. It's just a piece of standard PVC plumbing pipe with a small metal plate attached so that it fits into the shoe on the top of the body. I found that crouching at weird angles trying to squint through the regular viewfinder was a bit too awkward for old bones, but sighting through an open tube seems quicker and easier. It's also reasonably accurate and gives me a quick way of checking what I'll be photographing!
I'm still checking out the various apps that might work on my old Android phone, or on an iPad, but I haven't yet got the direction finding functions working reliably yet. For the moment, an old fashion hand held compass, together with the Stellarium software, is doing the job. I also got a planisphere and some maps, so I should be occupied for a good while now trying to learn all the constellations and ...um.... general starry stuff..... I really liked sil's suggestion of doing a drawing of areas to aid identification and memory retention, so I'll try and discipline myself to do that too.
Thanks again to everybody for your tips and suggestions. I’ll be working through them all. Fascinating hobby.
Cheers,
Chris