u/Entire_Foundation960

When I was quitting porn completely about 2 years ago, something really weird happened. I remember that day very clearly. I was reading this book, "Easy peasy way to quit porn". Due to my healthy habits like helping people psychologically through my posts on Instagram, meditation and journaling, my lust had decreased a lot. That day, when I was reading that book, I realized, "I'm finally free, It's so easy to quit this shit bro." I was on cloud nine.

That very night, I had a nightmare. Maybe night terror would be a more accurate way to put it. There was this ugly looking monster coming towards me. It screamed in my face and I waked up, drenched in sweat.

I knew by then that spiritual attacks were real. Every time you relapse, you repent and start this journey again, notice how your dreams change around the day 20 or 21 mark. They become intensely sexual in nature and they have this HD 1080p quality. It's almost like these lower entities are projecting these videos/dreams onto your retina or your brain. I know deep in my heart that those dreams are not produced by my brain. I'm not this lustful. When you are on this journey, you develop a lot of intuition.

I would see a lot of blood, killing related themes in my dreams. Sometimes I would see my loved ones die. The attacks are real guys.

Now, recently my conscience has been telling me to quit Instagram. I started a mental health page in 2023. But when I scroll, in every other reel I see half naked women. The immodesty runs our society now. I can only imagine how Instagram is going to be in 2050. Have you observed how shitty it has gotten? It wasn't this bad in 2019.

So, anyways, back to the story. There have been two instances when I tried to quit Instagram. After both of those attempts, I got attacked in dreams. In one dream, I was attacked by a killer with a knife. In the next one, I don't want to say it, but lets just say I was behaving in an inappropriate manner with my own family member.

The same thing happened to my friend who is on this journey with me. We were riding on his bike in our hometown, discussing about SR. He said I have been dreaming weird things. I said like what? He said, "I can't even say it." I said, "Did you see your family members in your dreams in a sexual way?" since I had already experienced it. He said, "Yeah literally man. It's so sick." I said to him it was a spiritual attack. He agreed.

If you get these type of dreams. Don't worry. It's not in you. It's not in your nature.

I'm on day 211 now, quit social media guys. Mainly, Instagram. I'm never looking back again. They are pushing this sexual shit on us in shows, reels, notifications, and even Instagram stories. These accounts with weird sexual profile photos are watching my stories.

One more tip, I have understood the mechanism behind fasting. Whenever I felt hungry, I get this feeling of doing more productive things like reading more chapters in books etc. Hunger is also a form of energy. Use it. Don't starve yourself. This has to be done in moderation.

I have an 8 inch dob (Explore scientific). It's f/5.9. Yesterday, I was seeing the M7 star cluster for the first time. I enjoyed the view, but I noticed that the stars around the periphery weren't pinpoint.

So, should I buy a paracorr or investing money to buy a good 2 inch wide angle eyepiece would be the wise decision?

Please give me some specific recommendations on which brand to buy too.

Saw these two for the first time with my Explore scientific 8 inch Dob.

1. The first thing I did was find a 3rd magnitude star called "Fuyue" in Scorpius. It is located just to the left of Shaula. When I was seeing it with my Orion 20mm eyepiece, I saw a faint smudge just beside Fuyue. It's soo close that you can see both of them in the same field of view. At first I thought it was just my eye floater or something, but then I switched to a 2x barlow and a 7mm eyepiece. It was a circular smudge but there was also a white star beside it. If I'm not wrong, it might be HD 161948 (10 mag).

2. To find M7 all you have to do first is find Fuyue and center it in a >=20mm eyepiece. Then move your dob to the left in the azimuth a little bit and then glide your dob along the altitude. You'll most likely find it easily. It's a jewel.

I asked my mother to take a peek. She said that she could see 5 stars in a straight line within the cluster. I was like, wait a minute, I couldn't quite make that observation. I looked at it again, and yes, there are 5 stars right in the middle of the cluster in a straight line. It was a stunning view.

This also made me consider buying a coma corrector, because although the view was really good, even at f/5.9 I could notice that the stars at the periphery weren't pinpoint.

So, you guys got any recommendations for coma correctors for an 8 inch Dob? Or saving up for a Wide field of view 2 inch eyepiece is a better thing to do?

Day 161 right now and one of my friends from graduation with whom I'm barely in contact sends me a reel on semen retention out of nowhere! This shit is crazy man haha.

One day while I was shopping, a little girl came near me and asked me if I wanted to be her friend. Apparently, children feel safer when we are on retention.

Edit* And yeah woman start to accept your follow requests and react to your messages out of nowhere. Even after not being in touch for a long time.

If you have a Dobsonian that has a compression ring only on one side of the focuser, then the collimation you do with a collimation cap is not going to be accurate.

If you have a barlow lens that can be unscrewed, it can get much easier. Put the collimation cap on top of the barlow and remove the lens. Put this barlow+collimation cap combination in the focuser and tighten the screw.

Now, do the collimation again. I have found that it is more accurate when done this way.

It's because when you use a collimation cap alone, you don't tighten the screw for the eyepieces. When you tighten the screw, the eyepiece moves towards the right a little bit, thus changing the configuration of the collimation.

I usually carry my 8" Dob by separating it into two parts. When I set the optical tube down, I squat, and when I stood up, my shoulder banged into the focuser.

After that, I couldn’t get the stars to reach sharp focus. I checked the collimation, and that wasn’t the problem.

So now I’m thinking maybe the bang caused it, although it wasn’t a very hard hit.

I checked the white guide lines on the focuser that are used for measuring, and I noticed the line was showing more on the right side than on the left. I applied a little pressure to the left side of the focuser, and now the line appears and disappears smoothly again.

Is this something to be concerned about? Have you ever banged your focuser before? If so, what problems did you face, and how did you solve them?

Through my 8" dob, Jupiter looked yellowish in colour. The bands were light brown.

Something different that I've noticed is that the great red spot (GRS) looked "saffron" in colour tonight.

Can the changes in atmosphere cause this colour difference? Because up until now, I've always seen the great red spot in "red" colour.

My dob took atleast 45 minutes to cool down. Because of the heat waves from my neighbour's house, I saw Jupiter as if I was looking at the reflection of it in water. The ripples were horrible. But later when my dob cooled down, I could see it clearly.

M3 appears as a fuzzy patch of light and nothing else. I used averted vision and it improved the view a little bit. I've also observed that the angle at which you see the object affects the amount of detail you see. For me, it's the 1 o clock position or the 2 o clock position. I couldn't resolve it into individual stars. My area is considered a suburb. But it might have something to do with the full moon tonight.

Finally, the 8" dob is actually very heavy when you are observing very seriously and get tired. It's a chore to even move the damn thing. If you don't exercise, don't go to the gym, please reconsider your decision of buying the 10" dob or higher lol.

You are not even ready for the 8". Sure, it's easy to move it out, but when you are tired, it can be very exhausting.

Why does this happen? When I defocus a star with a 25mm eyepiece, the donut doesn't look circular. It looks oval.

But when I'm doing a star test, as everyone recommends a high power eyepiece, I used high power. It looks circular this way.

So, what's wrong? My Explore scientific 8 inch Dobsonian came with the secondary slightly offset in a way that when I look through the collimation cap, the secondary and the focuser tube are not concentric. But the secondary looks circular.

If I try to center the secondary, it starts to look oval instead of circular from the hole of collimation cap.

Do you people with Dobs get the circular donut with all eyepieces or not? Help me.

I am seeing that there are two very minor dot scratches on my secondary mirror.

When I am looking through the eyepiece at night nothing seems wrong though.

Will this affect the performance of my scope?

I've recently bought an 8 inch f/5.9 Dob, and I have been beating myself up for two days for not buying a 10 inch. Then I found these websites. He sketched many DSOs with an Orion XT8 f/5.9 (same model as my Explore scientific 8" dob). I am indeed blown away by the sketches.

1. https://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/sg-messier.html

2. and also, another guy documented his DSO viewing experience with an 8" dob here
   https://xt8dob.wordpress.com/about/

3. This review by Zane Landers also helps: https://telescopicwatch.com/orion-8945-skyquest-xt8-review/

He says,

"The quality of many deep-sky objects I can view with the SkyQuest XT8 or any telescope, is heavily dependent on the light pollution I’m under.

Galaxies under dark skies look fabulous with the XT8; I have no trouble spotting the spiral arms of M51 and M33, the H-II regions of M82 and M101, and all sorts of dust lanes and details in several hundred of the brightest galaxies. But under light-polluted skies, the faint details and sometimes whole galaxies themselves completely vanish from view.

Many large, bright nebulae are similarly affected.

Open star clusters and globular star clusters, as well as smaller planetary nebulae, aren’t as affected by light pollution. Even from the suburbs, I’ve no trouble resolving many of the globular clusters like M13 and M15 into individual stars, and open star clusters are still majestic and colorful."

4. About the majestic books by Stephen James O' Meara (Deep sky companion series). I highly recommend checking them out. For all of his work, he used a 4 inch Genesis refractor with "NO FILTERS" for DSO observing. His sketches are more detailed than anything I've ever seen before.

5. From what I've learned here on the sub, many people claim that dark skies are more important for DSO observing. Dark skies are the reason why Stephen James was able to observe DSOs so well with his 4 inch refractor.

I recently bought an 8 inch Dobsonian. I have seen the moon and Jupiter with it and they look pretty amazing. Will I be satisfied with it for Deep sky observing? I don't have any high expectations because I know they won't show any colour or look anything like the High Resolution pictures.

I am willing to spend my time at the eyepiece, to identify details and roughly sketch them. I am willing to use every technique known like averted vision etc.

The question is, will I ever feel like, "Shit. I should have bought a bigger scope" ?