Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Webcam has arrived!!!

New Webcam for astro-photography arrived in the post today today yay!  :)

cant wait till the next clear night!!!

still waiting for the flocking to come :/

HK

Sunday, 22 January 2012

quick planet watch

Just been out briefly to have a look at what's about, it was pretty windy so it gave me a chance to test out the anti vibration pads I made and they worked better than I thought they would which is great! the image still wobbled but it quickly subsided after 1 or 2 seconds. however I think I need to do a bit more tinkering with the focuser as its not as smooth as when I tested it the first time.

Ok so out in the garden I whizzed the telescope round to grab a look at Jupiter which was pretty amazing on a slightly blueish background I could clearly see the bands and the 4 moons :)

I saw what I thought was a bright star near the horizon so I pointed my scope at it and to my surprise I had found Venus, which was the first time I had ever seen it! (though a telescope).

I have also bought a webcam to do some astro-photography and downloaded lots of software so I will add a pictures section to my blog and add them when they come up :)

Also bought some flocking paper to flock the inside of my scope, I will put some pictures up after I have done all that but I'm sure you have all seen the inside of a flocked telescope :)

Thats all for now just a quick update

HK

Friday, 20 January 2012

Collimation

Found this and thought it was very useful. Accurately aligned optics makes astronomy so much fun :)

Enjoy
Collimation with a barlowed laser

HK

Thursday, 19 January 2012

Hello all

welcome to my new blog all about the wonders of astronomy =)

I started astronomy a few years ago after I found my old 76mm no brand Newtonian reflector and pointed it at what I thought was a bright star in the sky, the 'star' had a strange appearance as if it had 2 ears, excited I grabbed my 10 mm eyepiece and sure enough it was Saturn I couldn't believe it after seeing many pictures in books and on television none of it compares to actually seeing it yourself through a telescope.Since then my passion has only grown.

I wanted to up my game and purchased This:

A Skywatcher Explorer 130M with motorised eq2 mount. When I bought this I was able to get money off an eyepiece set found Here which is mazing for the price I paid.

Ok so the rest of this blog is pretty much going to follow my journey in astronomy including any kit upgrades, DIY mods for my telescope, images I have taken and all sorts 

hope you enjoy

HK