John

I'm nowhere near giving up astronomy - after 50 years of it, I probably couldn't stop it anyway 🙄 The weather conditions over the past few months have caused me to look a bit more critically at what items of gear get used and which don't though 🤔 I guess it's a little easier for those who have been in the hobby for a long time because we are not "champing at the bit" quite so much as those newer to it who are, quite understandably, eager to get on with things.

Some good advice on collimation above. My advice is initially to concentrate on getting the finder scope accurately aligned with the view through the main scope, fully extending and locking the flextube rods and ensuring that the correct adapter is being used in the focuser (earlier posts cover all these things).

It's a 3 inch F/16 achromat. The objective is a Carton from Japan. The scope was one of the final batch made by Ernie Elliott of Broadhurst, Clarkson and Fuller at Telescope House in the Farringdon Road, London in 1992. The design has been used for around 250 years I think 🙂

About 3 minutes but I don't image, don't use GOTO and use alt-az mounts 😁

Zeta Herculis is a candidate for this. I posted a rough sketch and an update of it, made 4 years apart, in this thread that @Nik271 started in 2020: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/362978-zeta-herculis-at-last/?do=findComment&comment=3955182 Time for another update to this sketch now - a further 4 years have passed and Hercules is again rising into a favourable position for observing 🙂

Great setup Neil 🙂 Do you leave the Tak tube clamp bolted onto the side of the mount and lift the scope tube in and out of it ? I've just realised that I could take that approach with my FC100-DL and the Skytee II but wonder if it's more or less hassle than using a DT bar bolted to the Tak clamp, as I do now 🤔

Really nice sketches - they capture the look of these binary stars through a quality refractor perfectly !

Thats a great list Paul 🙂 While on Mars, I believe the clouds that accumulate over the Olympus Mons volcano are visible in amateur scopes under favourable conditions. Is the volcano itself I wonder ? - not sure but it's the biggest in the solar system, I think !

Hi Joe, Yes, back in spring last year. It was a great scope and I had a lot of fun with it for over a decade but now having grandchildren running around the place, the big old dob was likely to prove too tempting for little hands to explore. It's easier to keep my refractors out of harms way so I decided to let the dob go to a new home. I may well get some larger aperture again in due course. If we start to get some nice clear, dark nights again the urge will grow !

I completely forgot to look out for Comet Tsuchinsham-Atlas when I was browsing around Virgo last night 🙄 I'll have to pop a post it note on my eyepiece case to remind me to look for it next time out !

We have a 12 inch Meade ACF in our society observatory. I've not used it myself but those that have (primarily the imagers) seem pleased with it.

There is a considerable amount of difference in the focal plane position with eyepieces of different designs and brands. I usually use a Pentax XW before stepping down to the Svbony 3-8 zoom and there is some further inwards focuser movement needed - maybe 4mm or so ? If I need to step down further than the Svbony 3-8 goes I generally go to the Nagler zoom 2-4mm which needs around 10-12mm outwards focus movement. I find that slightly annoying, but, having always had a wide range of eyepieces in my case, I'm kind of used to it 🙂 Maybe I should move to TV Delos's from the Pentax XW's and then I could have a set that is totally par focal from 24mm (Panoptic) to 2mm (Nagler zoom) 🤔 Hint: don't try an APM super zoom in 1.25 inch mode - that really will annoy you 😉

I found mine excellent again tonight. Very nearly par-focal from 8mm to 5mm I felt with a small adjustment moving to 4 and 3mm (3.5mm really). The Nagler 2-4mm is almost perfectly par-focal across it's range but the Svbony is not far off, IMHO. That was in an F/7.5 120mm refractor. Still, it's not going to suit everybody, granted. I did like the 4mm Nirvana when I had one a while back.

Still very nice here but I'm a bit tired so I've packed in now. Finished my very pleasant session with a 3rd planetary nebula, NGC 6826, the "Blinking" planetary in Cygnus. It wasn't blinking this evening so the transparency must be quite good. Central star nicely seen. Still got a touch of aperture fever though - it would be a good Virgo / Coma galaxy night here with 10/12 inches of aperture 🙄

Still nice and clear here 🙂 1st decent view of M57 this season, which was nice. Pleased to catch M13 and the mag 11.8 galaxy NGC 6207 in the same field of view with the ED120. Galaxy rather challenging but M13 is well resolved (for the aperture) at 150x. The "Cats Eye" planetary nebula NGC 6543 was looking quite bright in Draco. Had a few glimpses of the brighter Markarian Chain galaxies in Virgo as well. Caught a touch of aperture fever with those, recalling the views I used to get with my 12 inch dob of the chain - 10/11 galaxies in a single field. Still, the 120's doing it's best 🙂