#1  
Old 30-01-2020, 04:28 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
Star strucked

I recently purchased a second hand 8 inch dobsonian with a goto mount.

Took it out on a clear night, 2-star aligned to Sirius and Acrux, spent the night exploring Hadar, Procyon, Gacrux, Rigil. It was a challenge trying to figure out the orientation of what I was seeing vs the phone app or whether I was looking at what it said I was looking at.

As I was exploring Becrux, I saw a little triangle cluster through the 26mm ( barely visible on the finder ) and I zoomed in to find a cluster of stars! Made the dozens of mozzie bites worth it. I suspect without the street lamps, I may have been able to see more?

The night sky is truly awesome and the experience of looking at the stars on a quite dark night cannot be compared to looking at NASA photos. Couldn't have done it without the GOTO finder.

Alignment was off so I had to use the finder scope first ( that was the first lesson ) as it was just outside the 26mm eye piece fov. Likely because it took me bloody 5 minutes to find a second star in my severely restricted view of the sky.

Tracking worked perfectly but stars would go out of focus if I left it there for ~10 minutes. Next clear night, I'm gonna bring a couple of cans of mozzie spray, caffine and find a dark, clear spot to explore the night skies!

I've got a Nikon D90, there's prolly some adapter that will fit that to the eyepiece for some long exposure for fainter nebulars or what not. Early days yet, so much to learn just to orientate myself.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 30-01-2020, 06:55 PM
mental4astro's Avatar
mental4astro (Alexander)
kids+wife+scopes=happyman

mental4astro is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: sydney, australia
Posts: 4,979
Hi Joe,

to IIS!

That little triangular cluster of stars you found would be The Jewel Box! (NGC 4755 if you would like to chase it down again )

It is not only a brilliant cluster, but among the diamonds there is a ruby! Have another go at the Jewel Box and see if you can spot it The great thing here is you can see the ruby under Sydney skies!

Congrats on the scope too. It is a fine machine. It will take you a few goes at figuring out how to get the best alignment with its goto, but there is always a learning curve. One tip, try not to set up the scope on lush turf. This makes a significant impact on the ability on the scope to be moved by the motors - and this goes for push-pull scopes too.

Here's some other targets you might like to chase down:

* NGC 3372, the Eta Carina nebula. Here you will find stars at the three stages of their lives: protostars, forming stars that have not started their nuclear fires and lie hidden inside strands of dark material called dark pillars; main sequence stars, their nuclear fires have kicked off and are burning bright; geriatric stars, stars at the end of their life and going through their death throes. The name of the nebula is actually the name of the star Eta Carina, a super massive star that is expected to go supernova shortly (well any time between now and the next 10,000 years...)

* NGC 5139, Omega Centauri. The largest & brightest globular cluster in the sky. It is the remnant core of a galaxy our own Milky Way devoured eons ago. A black hole sits at the heart of this cluster, keeping all these millions of stars in stable orbits around it. Be patient with yourself with GC's. Look to one side of the ball of stars, hold your gaze for a moment and all the little stars will suddenly leap out!

* NGC 5128, Centaurus A, aka the Hamburger Galaxy. One of the few galaxies that be just glimpsed from the Big Smoke. Again, be patient with yourself here. It will challenge your novice eyes Cent. A. Not everything is flashy-showy in the sky, and urban skies present bigger problems. But it will also prepare you well for when you do go to a dark site

This should get you going,

Alex.

Last edited by mental4astro; 30-01-2020 at 07:52 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 30-01-2020, 07:49 PM
Outcast's Avatar
Outcast (Carlton)
Always gonna be a NOOB...

Outcast is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Cairns, Qld
Posts: 1,285
Hi Joe

Welcome to the wonderful world of astronomy...

Alex has already given you some things to look for but, what he didn't tell you is that over the course of last year he put up some really good posts, not only for beginners but, for those seeking more out of their observing too...

Fortunately, you don't have to go searching for them coz, I captured them & put them into word documents... so here ya go.. some light reading to whet the appetite some more...

Had to split the Moon & Planets one into two documents to meet the file size limits...

Enjoy...
Attached Files
File Type: doc Observing the Moon & Planets Pt I.doc (95.0 KB, 80 views)
File Type: doc Observing the Moon & Planets Pt II.doc (130.5 KB, 67 views)
File Type: doc Observing Galaxies - where are they - A how and why guide.doc (75.5 KB, 88 views)
File Type: doc Understanding Nebulae.doc (88.0 KB, 76 views)
File Type: doc The Autumn Sky.doc (43.0 KB, 73 views)
File Type: doc The Winter Sky.doc (63.5 KB, 87 views)
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 30-01-2020, 08:03 PM
Startrek (Martin)
Registered User

Startrek is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Sydney and South Coast NSW
Posts: 5,990
Hi Joe
Welcome to IIS
Great information provided by Alex and Carlton
I started with a 10” f5 dob (non Goto) and star charts etc...
Stellarium is a great planetarium to get you quickly familiar with the night sky and it’s free.A basic laptop is preferable as you can bring it outside with you next to your dob and put together a target plan for the evenings viewing or basic imaging.There are many other planetariums available too but I prefer Stellarium as it has an excellent display, interface and tools to use , “your eyes to the universe”

Enjoy your astronomical journey !!
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 02-02-2020, 09:13 AM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
That's some awesome info right there! Now I know what the letters M and NGC are! Baby steps...

Unfortunately, when I took the telescope out two nights ago for the second time, the GOTO device had stopped working it kept saying "Dec/Alt No Response" or "Both Axes No Response", I've gone back to Bintel ( where the original purchaser got it from ) and spoken with Don who was great. Learned a great deal from him but even the WiFi dongle didn't work so I have to take it back to Graeme at Skywatcher tomorrow.

Really sucks as I was looking forward to my second clearish night, had the mozzie sprays and all...
Oh well, at least I can read about it in the meantime and use the finder scope


I've got Stellarium, sky safari, bought a nokia ring to attach my D90 and a moon filter for viewing with the kids. Have to get a dolly next to take it to a dark park.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 02-02-2020, 11:09 AM
JeniSkunk's Avatar
JeniSkunk (Jenifur)
Registered User

JeniSkunk is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 368
Hope you're enjoying the forums, Joe
Another phone app worth having is Clear Outside. It gives you a forecast assessment of the amount of cloud at the various height layers, for the current night, and the next few.
I learned of this app from Pete at Astro Anarchy here in Brisbane. He uses it on his iPhone, and after seeing it, I got a copy for my Samsung Android tablet.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 02-02-2020, 11:11 AM
Startrek (Martin)
Registered User

Startrek is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Sydney and South Coast NSW
Posts: 5,990
Joe,
Sorry to hear about your issues but they will get fixed especially if your dealing with Don at Bintel
He steered me in the right direction nearly 4 years ago when I started astronomy and has promptly resolved all my issues big or small and offered great advice and help. Don is a wealth of knowledge and has over 40 years experience in astronomy
Great bloke to chat with too
Cheers
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 19-02-2020, 06:35 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
And so I got my AZ mount back from Graeme at Skywatcher, he looked after me and I'm very happy with his service. Also upgraded the board to support WIFI!!

Tonight looks like a clear sydney night, waning moon ( is that what you call it? ), no clouds, no rain in sight! Excitement mounting... the long anticipated second night of mozzie filled viewing!
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 20-02-2020, 01:10 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
Soooooo last night I saw Jupiter! With my naked eye! And 4 moons with the telescope, that was an amazing way to finish the night, but let me start at the start.

I packed the gear and got moving around 11pm after putting the kids to bed, don't know why my kids seems to sleep later than the other kids we know. I'll bring them on the next trip.

Spent the first hour scouting a few sites, eventually settled on a soccer field behind a school that didn't have any flood lights or street lights, only high rises a few ks away and good visibility on the whole sky. Later on, I found that trees blocked anything under Alt 20 ( does that make sense? )
Good thing I bought a dolly, got it all setup in the middle of the soccer field which had a cricket pitch.

The wifi board was awesome, allowed me to search easily, only complaint is the arrow keys for moving the motors do not have tactile sensors and the phone screen is really bright, even on lowest settings.

As this was a new site, I took some time to orientate myself. So Sirius is around Orion and that sets in the west after about 1am, pity, I missed one of the clusters.
I'm getting better at aligning the finder scope with the telescope but actually, after aligning the telescope well, I could actually get whatever target onto a 10mm eye piece and not have to worry about the finder scope at all! Plus, after every GOTO, I've got the option to realign after manually changing the alignment, I don't know whether the Synscan app incrementally improves alignment everytime I do this or I was just wasting time?


I had a blast of a time exploring the sky, started with all the usu big stars, Sirius, Crux, Hadar, Caponicus, visited my favourite Jewel box several times, went off looking at clusters, M, Cadwell.
Running chicken really doesn't look like a chicken to me, let alone running anywhere... Saw beetle juice for the first time, really red!
Saw the ruby in jewel box, amazing!
Couldn't make out a few nebulas eg thor's helmet/hammer?
Rigil Kent is a dual star! And I could actually see two of them, left one bigger or is that just my zoom being off? If not, then those two stars must be pretty far apart, it sure did look like two dots, the only dual star system that looked like a dual star that I found. Loved it!
Contrasted the blue/red of the Ara stars in the same eye piece, really really cool!
Saw Mars, looked like a red giant, but slightly bigger.
Tuc 47 and all the nebulas looked very faint, like it seems that there's something there but my eye couldn't quite decide what it was, Don put it down to light pollution, I'm in the geographical center of sydney pretty much.
Saw some amazing clusters, M4, 80, 46, 47 can't remember which ones were clusters, the Omega centauri? Very faint but looked like there were a lot of stars.
Actually ended up identifying the stars for Libra and Scorpius, felt like a pro manually panning to trace the Scorpius constellation
Arcturus and there was another red one around N, NE were amazing, so red and bright. Antares!
Orion had a distinctive pattern of stars, 4 in a cluster and 3 nearby in a line, so amazing... in fact, *EVERYWHERE* I looked, there were stars! Stars through the finder that isn't as visible to the naked eye and more through the telescope. I mean, it might sound obvious to everyone else but hehe, I was really amazed.
And then as the moon rose, I saw a bright dot beneath it, jupiter! The moon was really bright, and by that time it was so cold everything was fogging up, telescope was damp from dew, but that really added the icing to the awesome night.

I'm constantly trying to get a good focus, sometimes I think it's my eye that's failing, other times, I need to tweak the focus. I told Don I need an eye patch, he told me to suck it up and look with both eyes open... I'll give it a go but maybe an eye patch would work better for mere mortals like me.
Also, my low camping chair was only good for when I was snacking, browsing to see what to explore next, it was useless for the telescope as the eye piece is at an awkward height for me, too high for sitting but too low for standing. So I just ended up kneeling on the grass pitch for most of the night.

Got back around 4:30am... showed the wife Jupiter, she wasn't particularly impressed: "How come it's not round." was her comment
I think next time, I need to drive out of sydney. Won't lie though, felt uneasy throughout the whole night being in the middle of a dark quiet field by myself. Mozzies kept me company though, overall it was an awesome experience, can't wait to do it again!

Oh and I got the Clear Outside app, that is everything I need, clouds, rain, wind, time! thank you Jenifur for suggesting it.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 20-02-2020, 01:46 PM
raymo
Registered User

raymo is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: margaret river, western australia
Posts: 6,070
Sounds like your focuser is slipping, are you nipping up the focuser lock
after getting the focus spot on? Why don't you make or buy an adjustable viewing seat.
raymo

Last edited by raymo; 20-02-2020 at 01:48 PM. Reason: more text
Reply With Quote
  #11  
Old 21-02-2020, 02:33 PM
jrm_astro's Avatar
jrm_astro (John)
Registered User

jrm_astro is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2019
Location: Wynnum, QLDt
Posts: 9
Hi Joe,

Your enthusiasm is fantastic. It really is a great hobby.
Enjoy the observing, never take up astrophotography and you will have a happy astro life

Cheers

John
Reply With Quote
  #12  
Old 21-02-2020, 05:25 PM
Outcast's Avatar
Outcast (Carlton)
Always gonna be a NOOB...

Outcast is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Cairns, Qld
Posts: 1,285
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordrax View Post

The wifi board was awesome, allowed me to search easily, only complaint is the arrow keys for moving the motors do not have tactile sensors and the phone screen is really bright, even on lowest settings.
Not sure what phone you use but, have a look in the display settings; my Galaxy S8 has a 'night time' setting which helps tone everything down a little & makes it somewhat more tolerable to use during an astro session....

Cheers
Reply With Quote
  #13  
Old 21-02-2020, 06:50 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
I'll lock the focuser, didn't know that was a thing.
Am looking for a chair, worst comes to worst, i'll get a drummer stool for now.
Next clear night is next tuesday, I'm thinking of driving out of sydney, north, west or south but don't know where I'd find a dark, open space with a carpark nearby.


> never take up astrophotography and you will have a happy astro life

hahahaha! Too late, I've already got started down that path with a nikon camera adapter for the focuser.
Reply With Quote
  #14  
Old 23-02-2020, 09:27 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
Soooo, I'm upgrading my carry case from one on the right to the one on the left

https://photos.app.goo.gl/9uZzgDYj1mStKgvf9
Reply With Quote
  #15  
Old 25-02-2020, 08:59 AM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
Last night, I clambered up on my roof and laid there with my new 15x70 binoculars taking a look at the exceptionally clear night sky in the middle of Sydney.

I imagined that I could just make out the shape of the milky way. Lying down, with the binoculars resting on my eyes, I gazed upwards at a whoooooooole bunch of stars everywhere. It's easy to find the brightest star when there is only *one* bloody star in the sky but man, I was pretty disorientated without the goto.

I can now reliably spot Crux, and from crux, hadar and rigel. And from Orion, bettle juice. With these two on opposite sides of the sky, I can start to orientate myself and learn the other ones as I go. But so many bloody stars....

Binoculars were good. Once I stopped shaking, the chromatic aberration reduced to a point where I didn't really notice it anymore. Still, I could never really hold it still enough to stop the stars from doing little circles, I think the secret is in the breathing... or a little tripod. Even just lying there and looking up was pretty awesome, cept for the damn mozzies. I'm in a townhouse, 10m in the air and there's bloody mozzies up there biting my fingers and feet.

Then I went downstairs and took out the dob for a spin, I've got SkySafari talking to Synscan talking to the wifi board on the skywatcher az mount so goto is really really awesome now. But it actually took me three tries, two spectacular failures, to align it to hadar and spica, maybe I found rigel kent or some other bright star. At home, my view is restricted to NE - S, alt 45 - 90 due to close fences and trees so by 12am, I couldn't even see sirius or copernicus because of trees.
What I really need to do is build a flat aluminium platform on my roof with a retractible roof, so I can get a full view of the night sky, and put some props around the outside so the neighbours and council thinks it's some service tank.
Thursday night is meant to be quite clear, park in north Epping which is supposedly bortle 5, if the weather holds, that's where I'll be with my can of mozzie spray.
Reply With Quote
  #16  
Old 25-02-2020, 12:09 PM
JeniSkunk's Avatar
JeniSkunk (Jenifur)
Registered User

JeniSkunk is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 368
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordrax View Post
Binoculars were good. Once I stopped shaking, the chromatic aberration reduced to a point where I didn't really notice it anymore. Still, I could never really hold it still enough to stop the stars from doing little circles, I think the secret is in the breathing...
That's pretty much what can work, and taking a break when your arms feel tired.

Quote:
park in north Epping which is supposedly bortle 5
Simulating Bortle levels, is what Stellarium is good at, so you can more easily see the reduced quantity of stars visible due to light pollution.
Reply With Quote
  #17  
Old 27-02-2020, 12:33 PM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
The observation tips are awesome! Please keep them coming

Sooooo gonna be a clear, warm, calm night in Sydney tonight. I've upgraded my battery torch with red cellophane, unfortunately my phone doesn't do night mode but I can stay in sky safari now.
Upgraded my carry case, got my binoculars and I'll all set to go!! Pretty excited right now

Had a funny discussion with the wife about my safety being out in the dark alone. Apart from going in a group, I don't know how else to mitigate risks of... serial killer targeting lone hobby asteonomers?!

What I would really like to do is find the closest bortle 1-2 area to Sydney open to the public. Any suggestions would be awesome!
Reply With Quote
  #18  
Old 02-03-2020, 01:16 PM
kalon (Kevin)
Registered User

kalon is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: Sydney
Posts: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordrax View Post
What I would really like to do is find the closest bortle 1-2 area to Sydney open to the public. Any suggestions would be awesome!
Closest truly dark skies I have been able to find are:
  1. Putty Road - drive time ~90 minutes. Just 30 minutes out past Windsor you get decent skies. Sydney light bowl cuts off viewing to the south and east, but great for a quick transit and decent viewing in a short single-night session. You will need to level yourself, you will literally be pulling off the side of the road in to any decent sized clearing you find
  2. Hargraves Lookout, Blackheath - drive time ~90 minutes. Listed second because of the surrounding light pollution of Katoomba and the valley houses, this is a cleared lookout at the end of a short unsealed road section (totally doable in a regular car). The site is well cleared and being a lookout, it is quite exposed - 300 degrees of visibility. The valley does have a decent number of properties in it, but their overall contribution pales in comparison to the Katoomba (and Sydney) light bowl. I've had many a night of wide-field astrophotography there, so deep sky will be significantly better!
  3. Glen Davis Road, Capertee - drive time ~2 hours. Listed third only because of the drive time, this is by far the closest "dark" sky I have found that is doable (and worthwhile) in a single night. My best viewing has been from here, including staying in the nearby Royal Hotel in Capertee with a good friend to make a weekend of it. VERY dark. The only real light sources are a small light bowl from Lithgow and the minor irritants of coal mines, but they won't affect the fact that you have incredibly dark skies over all. If I could stay there, I'd never leave. You will again need to level yourself, as you will be pulling off the side of the road in to any of the many clearings, and if you drive very far along, you can remove a lot of the Lithgow light bowl.

I can give exact Google Maps for all of my favourite spots as a DM, if you'd like!
Reply With Quote
  #19  
Old 03-03-2020, 09:16 AM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
That is very kind of you kalon! Will DM you.

So last week, I 'discovered' a few things.

Public parks are not the best place for observing because even the small ones has public toilet buildings with lights that are on all night ( or at 11pm at least ) which makes some of the bortle 5 skies within 25mins of me as good as staying home. So I ended up parking outside of a sports place in north eppings and dollying the telescope into the carpark. Took me another hour or so this time to settle on a spot, lots of time wasted but by 12ish i was aligned and ready to go.

Bortle 5 skies is ... somewhat better than bortle 8. This is going off https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ for the relative locations (Atlas 2015 data) but I tested it out at home on my roof and I could _still_ see all the objects that I could see driving out alone by myself in the dark... ( wife kept ringing me to see if I was ok )

Binoculars are really really cool!!! Most of the night, I actually spent lying down on the carpark aligned NS and panning the binoculars left to right. I started with orion and tracked my way past the running chicken, southern pleiades, then the pleiades would make a triangle with miaplacidus and aspidiske with vathorz in the middle. Aspidiske forms a larger "crux" with avior in the bottom and the omicron cluster to the right. Auhail and ahadi forms a Y shape with canopus at the bottom, Ahadi is very distinguishable by the 3 stars nearby and from there I pan to sirius and down to orion. On the other side of crux, I mapped out centaurus and by that time was such a _pro_ at the binoculars I could point to omega centauri. Lo and behold my surprise when I could see it with the binoculars!!! Better yet, somehow it looked better with the binos than with the telescope!

I stayed around to see antares the ax handle, scorpio, libra rise and mars just below that and finally jupiter and it's moons again. The moons actually orbit quite far from jupiter! Just going by the eye, it seems as if the furthest moon that was visible orbits at 5x jupiter's diameter away. All 4 visible moons were on one side this time instead of two on each side.

Packed up and went home happy and excited for being 4am in the morning... traffic was great!

There were only two almost encounters, one early on when a sports car came into the carpark and stayed for a while, I don't think they saw me over their bright headlights or heard me over their really loud mufflers, was relieved when they went. Then a service truck came around 4am, it would have been easy to see me in the bright night sky if these drivers were not blinded by their own headlights methinks.

EDIT: Of course I went back and forth with the gem/jewel clusters several times ( much easier with the binoculars when I can navigate ) and stared in wonder at eta carina and it's surroundings.
It was also fun just to point to random dark spots in the sky and see stars and other objects then try to identify what they were with sky safari

Last edited by mordrax; 03-03-2020 at 09:19 AM. Reason: missed observation
Reply With Quote
  #20  
Old 01-05-2020, 12:37 AM
mordrax (Joe)
Registered User

mordrax is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Location: Sydney
Posts: 14
It's been bloody cold last few weeks, but that suits me fine as it gets rid of the mozzies problem.

Last night, I saw saturn for the first time. Almost blew both pairs of socks off! Flabergasted, amazeballs, jaw dropping, stunning! **** amazing!
I saw _the_ ring ( 8" dob ) couldn't see any more than that on 25mm, 10mm or 4mm.
But it was clear as day, one planet and one thick ring.

Tonight, I showed it to the kids, but sadly quite a bit of atmospheric shimmering meant that the ring wasn't really clear and kinda blurred into the planet, but still absolutely amazing...

Couldn't see pluto, skysafari said it's mag 14.4, at one point, I could almost pretend I saw a faint outline of something... but naaaa, flicked back to saturn... WOW! So lonely, just one bright planet in the middle of nowhere, doing it's own thing, long before I was here and long after I'm gone.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +10. The time is now 05:39 PM.

Powered by vBulletin Version 3.8.7 | Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Advertisement
Bintel
Advertisement
Testar
Advertisement