Here are some pictures I took of the Moon on the evening of the 5th March 2012. The phase of the Moon is Waxing Gibbous 91% full.

They were all taken using a simple “point and click” digital camera directly though the eye piece of my Bresser Skylux NG 70-700 refractor. The eyepeice lens was 20mm.

The results are not great, but they give you some idea of what is possible using very modest equipment.

Police forces say they have received a number of calls reporting what is believed to have been a meteor.

A “huge fireball” was reported travelling from northern Scotland to southern England at about 21:40 GMT, amid fears a plane had crashed.

BBC News website

I have seen fireballs before and they are very impressive. This one on the 3rd March caused a bit of a stir.

See the full news report here.

Planisphere and a torch with red filter.

I thought I would share with you some of the basic equipment that I consider to be essential when starting amateur astronomy. In reality you need no more than your eyes, but you will soon want to be more methodical than just looking up at night.

My bare minimum equipment is as follows:

1. Planisphere: an instrument that can be adjusted to display the stars at a given date and time. This is very useful for planning your sessions as well as navigating your way around the night sky.
2. Torch: fit the torch with a red filter. I use a mini Maglite that can be fitted with a purpose build plastic filter. Other methods include painting the bulb red or attaching a red plastic sweet wrapper over the end of the torch fastening it with elastic bands. Red light effects your night-vision the least. You need a torch for checking star charts and making your observation notes.

3. Cartes du Ciel: this is a free planetarium programme for your computer. There are versions for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Cartes du Ciel allows you to make star charts that can help you plan your sessions. It is quite easy to use and quite accurate.

   If you have a laptop you can take Cartes du Ciel outside with you, it has a night vision mode.

   The power of planetarium programmes is that they allow you to track the planets and the Moon. The planisphere cannot do that.

4. A sky atlas: charts of the constellations, locations of deep sky objects etc. I use Philip’s Atlas of the Universe by Patrick Moore. This book has nice charts of the constellations. There are plenty of other good books that have very usable charts.
5. A compass : You will soon learn which way is North by the position of the stars. Until then a compass will help orientate yourself. I always have a compass to hand while observing, just in case.

Other things to be aware of is the weather and the temperature drop at night. Dress appropriately, take a woolly hat and gloves.

My Bresser Skylux NG 70-700 refractor

I own a small telescope, the Bresser Skylux NG 70-700 refractor. I have used it to view the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the Andromeda galaxy and the Orion Nebula. The most impressive, and I think what the telescope is best for is observing the Moon.

For your enjoyment, I have taken a few pictures of the telescope.

The telescope has an aperture of 70mm and a focal length of 700mm. I changed the original finder scope to a laser finder. The original finder scope I found to be difficult to use, it has poor focus and thus I was unable to find anything but the very brightest stars using it. The mount is a EQ3 mount. I found the mount easy to use and quite steady.

As I have already stated, I changed the finder scope to a laser finder. This does not magnify the sky, but places a clear red dot in the viewer. I find this much easier to use than the more traditional cross-hair finder scope.

I have used this telescope for basic astrophotography. In particular I have taken fairly good pictures of the Moon directly through the eyepiece using a rather modest digital camera.

I tend to couple this with a Moon filter which helps with the contrast and helps stop the features on the Moon getting washed out. You can find one of my Moon pictures in an older post here.

The telescope came with three eyepieces: 20mm, 12mm, 4mm. This gives magnifications of 35x-262x. This covers “sensible” magnifications for this telescope. Sometimes cheaper poorly made telescopes come with eyepieces that are unsuitable, this is not the case with the Skylux NG 70-700.

Although the telescope is quite portable I tend to use it in my back garden, which is far from a dark sky site.

This telescope was a Christmas present from my wife back in 2008.

Here is a picture of the Moon I took on the 3rd February 2012. The picture was taken using my 7MP Advent digital camera (“point and click”) directly through the eyepiece of my Bresser Skylux NG 70-700 retractor. I used a Moon filter and 20mm eyepiece.

The results are ok. I will post more as I take them.