Astronomy Log

As you would expect the Moon Observer’s Guide (ISBN 0540084190) is a book all about our moon and a what a complete book it is. I think it must contain everything you ever need to know about the moon.

Moon Observers Guide contains chapters on lunar geology, the moon in space, lunar observer’s equipment, moon watching, recording your observations, eclipses and occultations, and the space-age moon.

The Moon Observers Guide contains a useful chapter which discusses the various type of telescopes you can use to view the moon and their advantages and disadvantages.

Throughout The Moon Observer’s Guide are some nice colour and black and white images and drawings of the moon.

A large section of the book follows the moon cycle through 28 days with each day containing a page about the part of the moon that is on show together with an image of that new section on show naming each section of the moon. This is just like having a moon map but split into days which is really good.

There are also chapters on how to record your observations using conventional photography, and digital photography including using camcorders, web cams and digital cameras. Finally there is a nice chapter describing occultations and lunar eclipses.

Overall this Philips title is really good and can be purchased on its own or within the Moonwatch pack which also includes a moon map and moon poster.

Philip’s Moon Observers Guide is available from Amazon

Whilst out in the garden at lunchtime I was amazed to see the moon at around 2pm in the western sky today, not something I get to see often, so I had to go and get my tripod, remote and 300mm lens out and here is what I took.

f/11, 1/500sec, 300mm, ISO200

The Complete Guide to Stargazing (0540089370) is an amazing astronomy book from Philips, which is more like an encyclopedia of astronomy, it’s certainly a coffee table kind of book which you could leave out and see lots of friends pick up and flick through.

The Complete Guide to Stargazing is a very large full colour astronomy book which contains hundreds of images both from NASA and from amateur astronomers alike.

The book was first published in 2006, but this review is based on the reprinted 2007 edition.

The Complete Guide to Stargazing contains eight chapters with a very large a-z of astronomy at the rear. The first chapter entitled ‘The night sky’ introduces you to the basics of the sky including details on wavelengths, distances of galaxies, about stars and how we view them.

The second chapter entitled ‘Getting Started’ introduces you to the night’s sky and how it moves, as well as the sun’s movement, scale of the sky and star brightness.

The third chapter is about equipment for observing, and discusses using binoculars for astronomy as well as teaching you about the various types of telescopes, mounts and how to get to know and use your telescope.

The fourth chapter is about our moon, and contains some great photos in it of the moon and the lunar landings. There are also useful moon maps included.

The fifth chapter is about the solar system and includes information on how to view the sun through a telescope via projection or by using solar filters. Many full colour images of each planet in turn are shown throughout the chapter including images from a distance and terrain images where available, and it’s nice to see amateur images making it into the book, some also detail what type of telescope took the image.

Chapter six covers stars and deep sky objects, again this chapter includes some brilliant images and tips on how to draw objects and photograph them.

Chapter seven is a very useful chapter covering the sky month by month with sky maps and images as well as full descriptions about each item.

The final chapter contains sky maps, and they have been laid out very well, as the left hand side of the page is a map page indicating the constellations and stars, whilst the right hand side of the page is a matching image of the real sky. This makes it really easy to learn the night sky.

Overall The Complete Guide to Stargazing is an amazing book with amazing images, a book which I’m sure most astronomers would love to have, and I can imagine this book being a great gift for anyone interested in astronomy at any age.

The Complete Guide to Stargazing is available at Amazon now.

The Sky at Night - October 2007 Episode “Jodrell Bank”

1st Showing: BBC4 7th October 2007 - 19:00
2nd Showing: BBC1 8th October 2007 - 00:25
3rd Showing: BBC4 8th October 2007 - 02:10
Online Showing: BBC iPlayer for 7 days

“Jodrell Bank, Sir Patrick Moore celebrates the 50th Birthday of the raio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, created just in time to pick up the radar signal from the satellite Sputnik.

It has been at the centre of radio astronomy ever since and has been responsible for the discover of quasars, gravitational lenses and grounbreaking research into pulsars and cosmic explosions such as supernovae.

Astronomer Bernard Lovell talks about how it came to be built, despite huge engineering and financial challenges”.

The Bresser Messier N130 or 130N is a 5” or as the name implies a 130mm aperture Newtonian Telescope with a focal length of 1000mm/100cm/1m.

The Bresser Messier 130N was my first telescope purchase, and I was glad to know that it came complete with a number of eyepieces – 25mm, 15mm, 10mm and a Barlow lens, a planisphere, a good manual, as well as the astronomy software Cartes Du Ciel which can also be downloaded for free on the internet.

I paid £190 for the telescope new. At the time I only wanted to pay a maximum of £250 for a telescope, so it was nice to have some money spare, although this money and more was subsequently spent on astronomy accessories.

There were two largish boxes to unpack; one contained the tripod and equatorial mount whilst the other box contained the scope and the accessories. It did not take me too long to unpack and setup the telescope, although reading the manual was necessary.

As soon as I unpacked the telescope I was amazed that the equatorial telescope mount was so well made and very sturdy for the amount I paid. You may find the tripod quite heavy especially when you add the balancing weights to the tripod, so the 130N scope is not for young children due to the weight. The tripod height can be altered by loosening the tripod locks on the legs in order to get the telescope to a comfortable height for viewing. The tripod base underneath also has a plastic triangle to lock the legs in place, this also doubles up as an accessory tray, which can hold three 1.25 inch eyepieces and other bits and bobs.

When it’s your first telescope you never know what to expect when it comes to what you are going to see. I began by using the scope to see trees and plants outside of the window, and I was amazed to find out that I could see magnified images of ants on trees which were about 30m away.

Using the telescope indoors also gets you used to using the scope and how the equatorial mount works and how to get the scope in focus etc.

The 130N moves across the RA and Dec axis via manual control, although an optional RA motor drive can be fitted to the MON1 mount in order to track objects.

One good thing about the 130N is that you can remove or unscrew the barrel part of the eyepiece focuser on the telescope, which provides you with even more focusing range when doing imaging with the scope.

I have used the 130N many times for taking images of the moon (see my gallery to view the images) and this telescope excelled at viewing the moon as well as planets such as Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. I also managed to use a web cam to get some great images of Jupiter, unfortunately due to the time of year when I owned the telescope; Saturn and Venus were not available for imaging.

I was also able to view other objects such as the Ring Nebula, Hercules cluster, Andromeda Galaxy and Whirlpool galaxy. But don’t expect to get views such as those from the Hubble Space Telescope for £200, but you can see a whole lot of sky if you can find the objects. Astrophotography of certain fast moving deep sky objects will be very difficult with this scope but viewing them will not.

Moving and setting up the Messier 130N telescope was relatively easy with most of the weight being in the tripod mount, it was then just a matter of setting the tripod height and then placing the telescope tube onto the mount and tightening it onto the mount via a screw and you are ready.

After a while I got used to polar aligning the scope as directed in the user manual and then finding objects by using the RA and Dec settings.

Really I don’t know what else to say about the scope, other than for the price the telescope was very good value for money, and I can definitely recommend the Bresser Messier 130N as a starter scope.

Whilst out the with telescope I also got my first chance to try out my Canon 75-300mm USM lens attached to my Canon 400D on the moon.

To try and show what is capable with the lens, I have included shots of the moon at various settings, also I used a tripod and remote control for these images.

Camera Settings: Exposure time was 1/200 sec at f/5.6 and ISO200

The moon at 75mm Zoom:

The moon at 150mm Zoom:

The moon at 300mm Zoom:

The same shot again at 300mm but at 100% magnification:

I think this final shot is really quite good with just a 300mm camera lens, which cost me around £125, nearly as good as using a telescope for the shot.

I managed to get the scope out last night and it was a brilliantly clear night. Below are some images from last night of the moon which I took by just adding the DSLR camera to the back end of the scope. These images were taken using a moon filter attached to the camera, so hence the slight darkness of the images.

The clarity of the moon from the LX200 through the eyepiece is quite astounding and very clear.

I took a trip to my local Maplin store today in order to purchase some new aluminium boxes so that I can put my new LX200 parts in them for storage, such as the power supply and hand controller.

At the moment Maplin have an offer on two different tool boxes, one is at £14.99 for one good quality box which comes with full foam padding that you can cut out and use.

View it here.

The other boxes that I purchased are three aluminium boxes, all different sizes, they don’t have any foam inside, but they are only £19.99 at the moment for all three boxes.

View them here

Now I just need to go and source some foam inserts, I am going to venture to a Dunelm store probably tomorrow to see what they have got, foam wise.

Well tonight I managed to get a thiry minute gap in the clouds in order to get the scope out into the garden. I am still having problems getting the screw into the scope through the base, but as I had such a small window of time I did not power up the scope but instead used it to view the moon manually.

The view through the scope with the meade 26mm and my 20mm eyepieces was really good, even though clouds kept coming across my view of the moon.

I just need more time now to read the manual properly.

Well after a rushed assembly tonight in my conservatory at around 8.30pm, I managed to get my LX200 turned on whilst I got familiar with the hand controls.

After about 30mins I just had to get outside, as the sky was fairly cloudless, so out I went. The first thing that I had problems with was to screw in the bolt under the tripod, even though I have a deluxe locator plate, so heck knows what it would be like without one!

I finally got the tripod screwed into the telescope after what seemed like 15 minutes, I think the problem was that the legs of the tripod were not spread out evenly, even though they were all spread out, as the spacer kept knocking on one of the legs stopping me from connecting the bolt thread with the telescope.

If any body has any tips on how to easily and quickly connect the bolt thread to the LX200 then please tell me, like using the ‘C’ clip or using nuts etc.

I then set the scope off into its automatic alignment, although it kept asking me to identify stars (I thought it was fully automatic with GPS?), and when it did there were no “brightest stars” around, so I think I just unlocked the RA and Dec and manually moved it - which I now know is wrong and you should just use the keys on the handset instead (hey don’t blame me - I didn’t read the manual!).

So obviously when I asked for Andromeda then GOTO - it found me blank sky, and went completely the wrong direction when I asked for the Ring Nebula via GOTO. So for the rest of the evening I gave up on the GOTO until I have read and mastered the manual, instead I manually used the Dec and RA to find Andromeda etc myself.

The LX200 is a cool machine - I just wish I knew how to use it. I think practice will make perfect.

Any tips on setting up the LX200 would be welcomed.