I came back from the UK with one of my post-build projects, a telescope. We have good dark skies here (yes, I know the sky is dark at night but In many places in the UK light pollution from streetlights ruins the visibility in the sky) and I wanted to re-kindle a former hobby and continuing interest.
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| 'Scope on tripod with eyepiece and laserfinder guide fitted |
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| Looking down the 6 inch (150mm) barrel towards the mirror |
Technology has moved things along a lot since I last owned a telescope, the mount (on top of the tripod) is motorised and electronically controlled so that once everything is aligned the control system will direct the scope to any object in the sky including planets, nebulae, galaxies, clusters and another 43000 objects in the standard catalogue. I'd never used one before and alignment consists entering exact Longitude, Latitude and time at the observation site and then directing the telescope to two named stars with the laserfinder. After a hurried consultation of the Stellarium app (most of the star names are in Arabic or Greek) to find the two stars requested the mount aligned accurately.
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| The Synscan GOTO controller mounted on the tripod |
I've now got the camera mounted on the scope and tomorrow is forecast to be clear so I hope to be able to post up some of my pictures - doigts crossé as we say in France.
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