John

I agree. This is from the original Tele Vue patent documentation:

I've moved onto Hercules now and it's 3 globular clusters. The very famous Messier 13, the nearly as well known Messier 92 and the more obscure NGC 6229. The latter globular cluster is 4 times further away than M13 and M92 and correspondingly fainter. I posted a little report on this interesting object back in 2021: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/378625-hercules-3rd-globular-ngc-6229/

A few rogue clouds around but generally clear here tonight. I've just been looking at Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Virgo. It's a small faint elongated patch of light with the ED120 refractor at 64x. Could be taken for a galaxy in this region of the sky. Glad to see it though 🙂

Caught Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with my ED120 refractor this evening. Seems to be around magnitude 10 and situated in Virgo around 2/3rds of the way between Porrima and Heze, close to a faint triangle of stars. Does not jump out with this aperture at 64x and could be mistaken for a galaxy, especially in this part of the sky. A faint, rather small fuzzy elongated patch of light. Nice to see it though 🙂

I had the TMB Supermoncentric 5mm for a while. Superb high power eyepiece but with a ~30 degree AFoV and around 3.5mm of eye relief, challenging to use with my undriven scopes. The University Optics HD 5mm ortho that I also had at that time was as good under moderate to normal skies but the TMB SM showed just a little more under better skies, which means around 15% of the time. These days I'm happy to sacrifice a little in performance for comfort 🙄

Interesting report 🙂 Smoothside TV plossls were the 1st 1.25 inch eyepieces that I ever bought - when I migrated from .965" ones way back in the late 1980's The TAL 25mm is no slouch though so it shows that TV was doing something right with their version of the plossl design.

The odd thing is that you don't hear any complaints about eye relief from owners of Zeiss ZAO ortho, TMB Supermonocentric or Pentax XO eyepieces, which are very tight in the shorter focal lengths. Presumably the optical performance of these legends is so good that the effort required to use them is worthwhile 🙂

We will call it a dead heat then 🙂 https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/421727-telescope-setting-up-time/?do=findComment&comment=4482814

NPL's are plossls. Plossls and orthos have eye relief that is around 75% of their focal length. Luckily for us today there are plenty of designs that offer much longer eye relief but there are usually additional glass lens elements involved in achieving that, so additional weight. I have a 4mm HD ortho which has eye relief of 2.7mm I believe. I do use it very occasionally but never for long to be honest. Optically it's excellent but I soon get tired of trying to hold that tiny exit pupil while tracking and the AFoV is just 40 degrees. Even the Nagler 4mm-2mm zoom seems comfy after using the 4mm ortho !

Meade used plastic dew shields and objective counter cells on some of their refractors so I guess balance plays a part in the choice of materials used. Meade made their refractor dew shields generally a bit on the short side though. Maybe that was also a weight saving move ? All the Skywatcher fracs I've owned have used metal dew shields. With my ED120 it screws off but I need to add an Astrozap dew shield extension in dewy conditions and fortunately those are quite light. Interesting what we start mulling over when it's cloudy 🤔

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 🤔