A RARE OCCASION

Excellent

Can you find anything, by yourself yet, or are you doing the equivalent of:

panning left-to-right, up a bit, right-to-left, up a bit ... STILL NOT FOUND IT ... START AGAIN!!!!

as I did for ages when I first got mine?

With time comes the skill to "offset" from a known object and find that the thing you want is slap-bang in the middle of the eyepiece

Have you checked out the stars Alcor and Mizar, the middle star of the "Handle" of the "frying pan" / Great Bear? With good eyesight, and dark skies, you will be able to see a pair of stars with the naked eye, or if not it will probably look "elliptical" or a distorted shaped single star. This was used as a test of eyesight in Roman times when selecting warriors - whether they could see two stars, or just one "blur". They are actually one star a long way away from the other, but neatly lined up when viewed from earth ... when viewed through the telescope you will see the two of them a fair distance apart, but Mizar itself then shows up as a double star (which it really is, I think ) so you will see three stars though the eyepiece. Its one of my Sky Tourist sights

 

Trying to think of other good Space Tourist sights that I like They are mostly to be seen a bit later in the summer though. Mind you, time for you to hone your skills and by then the nights will be warmer

Andromeda galaxy
Hercules start cluster
Maybe have a look to see how many Galaxies you can see in Virgo - there are loads ... but its kinda "once you've seen one" but you've kinda gotta do it just the once Not sure the best time for that, but its definitely "spring" and you will have to have NO moon to be able to see them (so that sets the date each year too).

There's a nice coloured star at the bottom of the Summer Cross too (forgotten its name)

And I like the Ring Nebula - not sure your scope has enough aperture for that? worth a try though (not for a few months though ...)

 

For anything overhead my advice is to stick to GoTo. It can be very difficult to locate an object directly overhead "Manually" - although WAY more so with a Dobsonian as its Rotate and Tilt movement freedoms don't lend itself to overhead - the recommended workaround was to put a big block under one side of the scope so that it was no longer overhead, from the scope's perspective!! and then Rotate and Tilt was all you needed

But your Mount may be much easier in that regard (whn using it in manual mode, for something overhead)

 

This thread had just given me an idea!!! Why don't we nominate kind souls such as this and "love bomb" them!? What I mean is, share their address by PM and send them, seeds, plants, post cards, a lottery ticket, anything small and simple to re-pay their act of kindness.

What do you think?

 

That's why I said by PM, to protect the innocent. I think society has deteriorated so much, people like this and their lovely attitude is something to be nurtured and celebrated , before it is lost forever x

 

agreed, but what about the people who aren't on here? I have paid it forward in the past (knocked on an elderly man's door and gave him a bunch of Roses), how about a new thread dedicated to this?

 

Ok, it was just an idea.. Perhaps we have gone past the point of no return where kind gestures, no matter what, are viewed with suspicion ?