Hi all. It's been a while since I've been on here so I hope all are well and had a nice Christmas and New Year.
I haven't had much of a chance to get outside of a night lately and when the heavens were clear the other night, I thought You Beauty, I'm off.
Gear outside, scope at the ready and I started.
I started by focusing my eyepiece on Neptune. I used Sky Safari to obtain it's co-ordinates and spun my Dob around to match (I have placed a printed compass on the bottom of it courtesy of a link on this forum). I then found M42 and checked Sky Safari for its co-ordinates and yep, the scope was pretty much spot on. I say, you have to be quick to match up as the co-ordinates change in the sky pretty quickly. Ha Ha Ha. I was like a yo yo. Up and down. Spinning the Dob bit by bit for the new compass position, checking eyepiece to see if item was in centre and then checking Sky Safari again.
This was done to locate a few other objects and I found it worked quite well.
My only downside was the moon was very bright and probably killed the rest of the night sky. I'm hoping that when the moon is gone, the sky is as clear as we have had recently and I can get back out. I have missed it but I tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed it more.
The use of Sky Safari certainly made this more enjoyable knowing now that I could look for the co-ordinates, spin the Dob around and pretty much be right on the money. I like to think of this as being my "Push To" mechanism.
