a frustrating night with Jupiter!

[+seven_legs]

hi all,

last sunday(8/3/15) i thought i get my 350 flextube dob out to look at jupiter for the first time with this scope. i live in new basford, tons of light pollution. my back garden is very small, low down and surrounded by hedges and rooftops. i cannot ever see orion nedula from here. anyway got setup, did not bother with the goto, collimated with hotech laser. the secondary was out, sorted that and the primary. aim at jupiter and saw a poor soft image. could see two bands and a hint of the grs. then realised that i was looking through half a hedge lol. waited until jupiter was clear of the hedge and still the image was the same. checked collimation again and the primary was way out again, re-did that again and still could get a sharp image or any fine detail. the moons where not disc's nor pin point. i defocus and saw a ton of thermals in the view. by then the scope had been out for a couple of hours so should off been cooled. rechecked collimation and damn it the primary was well out again. by this time i was pulling my hair out( if i had any) and packed up.

 

the one i was pleased by was the size of jupiter's disc, larger that i expected. if only i could see some detail.

anyway, came to the conclusion that it was a combination of heat from rooftops and the hedges plus my primary mirror losing collmination that gave poor views of jupiter:) will wait until i go to the belper site in a few weeks to have another look. in the mean time will try and sort out my mirror problem.

 

the eyepieces i used was. explorer scientific 11mm, 4.7mm 82. skywatcher 7mm nirvana and a bog standard sw barlow

 

thanks all

tony

 

p.s. posted this on sgl

[BAZ]

It probably wasn't helped by the atmosphere, even though it's been clear the air has been fairly shifting and won't give a steady image. When I looked out the other night it was clear, but the brighter stars were twinkling, a sure sign of poor seeing.

[Smithysteve]

Hi Tony, I went out same night 8.00pm to 10.30pm. Looking through the LX200 at f10 with just a 25mm, 70deg, University Konig 2", I started with Jupiter, and the atmosphere was a bit shaky and there was some faint light cloud about too, but at times jupiters grs was showing pretty good, and I could make out a bit of other detail in the bands. I went on to look at m44, m37, m36, m38, comet Lovejoy and Perseus d cluster. Returning to Jupiter every now and then to check on the grs. I had a good night overall, though the seeing was average.

Looks like your main problem is your position with the neighbours hedges and trees etc :-) You are probably right about the heat from neighbours too.

Your kit is impressive and I hope you will come back and tell us you have had a better night soon.

[+seven_legs]

thanks,

 

yes i love my scope, we took to belper in october and every minute we was saying wow, lo.l thats why it was so frustrating last sunday.

planning to go to belper dark site on the 21st march

[Guest]

I think even those of us who have progressed beyond the beginner stage have nights where things just don't go well. You might want to see my "Webcam Woes" thread in the Imaging section. I'm sure many of us aspiring imagers have nights where we completely fail to get anything "on film". Perhaps more frequently we get some images but they are just not as good as we hoped or even expected.

 

Whether we are primarily observers or imagers, we are all learning and some nights we come in from the cold and think "YES!!!!!" and other nights we wished we'd watched TV instead.

[+seven_legs]

know what you mean. i have been into astromony for years but only resently( last few years) began using a telescope again. this scope is the biggest one so far and love it.