Before I start, anyone in, or around or maybe just passing the Southampton area, go to into Bitterne shopping area. Why here you ask? Well, bare with me... Look for the Iceland shop, for people not knowing, its the bottom end of the shopping area, kinda under the Bitterne Baptist Church, which runs above and down one side, another landmark is the large concrete circle next to it, and the Red Lion Pub. Ok, with these landmarks, you should have found Iceland, jolly good, next door to that is one of those family run stationary stores. You know the ones, sell stuff, normally kids colouring books really cheap, kinda like a smaller version of The Works mixed with The Birthday Shop with no real intrest to anyone who doesnt want to colour in 5 year old pictures of Bob the Builder. Okay, still with me? Good stuff, now at the back of this shop, I spied some books, so I went in and had a look, there was a fairly small music section, loads of romatic fiction, mills and boon type stuff and then I saw they had a small Astronmy Section, they had books like Atlas of the Universe, new revised edition from Patrick Moore for a fiver! (Normally RRP is £30) So, if your passing that way, grab some bargins before the owners work it out!
Unless you like Mills and Boon, there was alot of that there, how do they keep churning out so many, I reckon I could do it. "He was the Price, next in line to the Throne, she was but a poor servant girl who dreamed she could be his princess..."
Enough of the that, we didnt set up til late tonight, as the nights here are getting shorter, Orion appears to be to low for us to get now, which is a shame, as we still had alot of looking at Orion to do, oh well, about another 6 months and it shall pop up again for us to look on in wonder.
We did have a very nice half moon and a fairly high up Saturn, tonight was going to be intresting, as we were armed with a filter, specificly for Saturn, as our first steps in using filters we thought best to stay with something we know, and Saturn has been a good friend now every night we went spotting, and even better, had a wonderful display of the moons.
Not a real pic, but one I took! Using Starry Night 6 I can show you Saturn and its moons.
The filter worked wonders, by reducing the light off Saturn and returning to us what looked like a more natural picture of the ringed planet, rather a bright in-your-face yellow, it was a lovely orangey brown with more contrast in the clouds, we could see different colour formations in the cloud structure, never once has Saturn failed to impress, now its even more impressive. For those thinking of playing with filters, I say go for it, tonight for me proved they are worth it, but it might be worth researching first, as there are many different filters for many different things, planets tend to have a filter each and as Saturn is quite common at the moment it made sense to me to start with that one, as the planet filters are cheaper than some of the Nebula filters. (As an example, this filter was roughly £7 including the P+P the Nebula filters started at £35+ with some coming in at above £100, there were CCD filters too that were stupid money, like £200+. Another Filter that is worth looking into, and im sure many star gazers already have are Moon Filters, stops your eys from burning out when looking at the moon. Can also work as a simple Light Pollution Filter, but not as good as a normal Light Pollution Filter, again, look for a Filter wheel, or at least ones you can stack.)
For the 2nd half of the evening we look towards our own Moon, being half moon tonight, it wasnt bleaching everything else, plus slightly easier on the eyes, we still used a moon filter tho, we aint that daft, well, not all the time. I try to convince people im not a complete idiot, because some parts are missing, but no one listens, hey ho.
Again from StarryNight 6, The Moon!
Once again, I found The Moon simply breathtaking, it seems so close though the telescope, its almost as if I could visit it myself by walking there (I wish). We had the half with Oceanus Procellarum (Sea of Storms), Mare Imbrium and Mare Cognitum were clear, so you can imagine it was the flat half it was showing. We could just about make out Plato towards the north end of The Moon. (For the fact fans: Plato was a larva flooded crater, its quite a dark spot on the north surface). As an experiment (I mean this very loosely), with the old Draper Scope I had, it came with a 4mm lens, it isnt very good, by a long shot, quite a shoddy build, very small view hole, it was in all fairness, damn near impossible to use on the Draper, but for a go, we used that and a x2 Barlow to look at the moon. My word! it was HUGE, we were looking at the craters near the terminator line, and we could see what looked like Mountin ranges! However, the eye piece, as I said, wasnt great so image did suffer in the long run, but it was a fun little test, but I think it does mean, and this is to everybody thinking about buying eye pieces... Buy a decent make! Dont go cheap, you'll hate the results and a few extra squids for a clearer, easier to see picture is much better in anyones book.
Anyhows, time came to pack up and come home, as clouds were forming and its was getting cold, plus I believe we set out and achieved everything we wanted to tonight, tested the prospect of using filters is now a thumbs up anyway. Ive ordered a new camera SLR digital type, so, hopefully next time i'll have some proper pics to show you all, but thumbs up to Starry Night its done a brill job!
Erm, thats my Sywatcher next to a Wayne attempting to pose, I did send this picture to his laptop, made it his desktop wallpaper and showed his mum. His wasnt that impressed.
My first ever shot, this should be a star within Ursa Major before it got to high, as you can see I am way to shaky, plus I didnt allow time for the exposure, as the camera uses a manual shutter system, so again I had to hold it for a length of time, again shaking as I go. I really need a tripod and theres a device I can get that plugs into the camera to control the shutter, rather than holding it. 
The same thing happened with saturn, although you can make out its colour, you cant see its rings, which is a shame, as its a beatiful sight and still amazes me no matter how many times I see it.
On the bright side, its a learning curve and I see and understand how it works and what I need to do to get better shots, I do however think that I should have started with a brighter subject, the Moon for example would be perfect for this I feel. Im hoping before next time to have some sort of device or tripod to hold the camera in place, rather than me trying to hold it.
