Well after 5 nights......

[Misplaced (Craig)]

.........and some great help from a member on here I have seen the moon in great detail, Mars not that impressive, the Jewel Box and Saturn.

Saturn was great seeing a couple of its moons as well and the moon has been outstanding.

Overall I am getting better at setting up but Polar Aligning is still avoiding me even with using the SynScan. I will keep at it and hopefully get there in the next few weeks.

I'll keep you all updated if you are interested!

Mis

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Very interested Craig , keep 'em coming .

Brian.

[leon]

Nice one Craig, it dose take time and experience but the end result is well worth the effort, glad you enjoyed your experience, keep at it mate.

Leon

[madwayne (Wayne)]

Hi Craig

It will get easier but as you become more skilled new challenges will present themselves in this ever evolving hobby.

Good luck, clear skies and yes please do keep us posted.

Wayne

[OzStarGazer]

It is just the beginning of a journey you will love more and more. Happy watching and clear skies!

[Misplaced (Craig)]

Thanks for all the encouragement guys.

One thing that I found strange was the Synscan tonight decided to throw up a load of stars for alignment that I hadn't researched!! It would normally throw up Canopus, Sirius, ?Haden? - does anyone know why?

Oh and by the way I just realised that the date format is mm/dd/yyyy......I wondered why last night it was miles of the moon.....lol......bloody Yanks...lol

[Amaranthus (Barry)]

Hadar = Beta Centauri, between Rigel Kentaurus and Crux

It throws up stars that it judges are above your horizon and well enough spaced to do properly build the alignment model.

[raymo]

A couple of points Craig: In fairness to the manufacturer, the hand controller does show you that it is mm/dd/yyyy format.
Second point; the firmware was designed by an idiot, or mine is faulty.
Pick a star, and go to it, fine. Pick the second star and go to it, fine.
Then you can't go back to the first star, because it has disappeared from
the list. Try choosing different stars, and the same thing happens again.
Just maybe the hardware is on the cusp of changing the available stars, and gets confused. We'll see if it continues, and see what your future
battles with the hand controller bring you.
cheers raymo

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Yeah keep at it mate, it might seem a bit like a black art at the moment, but before too long you'll look back and chuckle.

Truth be told I still have the odd bad night, where I've forgotten to do something or not paid enough attention...and my gotos go to pot it's just a case of persevere, take a breath and start again, it's all resolvable

Mars can be impressive, but we're 2 months past opposition now and it's getting smaller, and there's a phase to it and you need a night of good seeing for any detail to be apparent. Saturn should be good for a few more months to come, and then as we get towards the end of the year the king of planets will be back...there's always something going on in that system, whether it's the dancing moons, the spot and storms, moon transits...

And of course the Moon never fails to impress...it's interesting to watch the different phases and how it affects the shadow detail, the terminator moving, etc... there's always something new to see or learn about in this hobby!

[Misplaced (Craig)]

Yeh.......that's how I new the date format I was using was wrong......lol

The software is bizarre as for the first couple of nights it was showing Rigel, Canopus etc but now both of them are missing!

Anyway the clouds have rolled in but hopefully it will be like yesterday and they'll clear for a nice clear night😄😄