dweller25

I am all set up and cooling down, the scope is out too 😂

This will make a nice sight….. 15th October, 18:49

Nice idea and welcome to SGL 🙂 In my opinion a 6” Dobsonian like this is relatively cheap, easy to use and has good performance……. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/stellalyra-telescopes/stellalyra-6-f8-dobsonian.html Whatever you end up with do put a big sticker on it that says “DO NOT USE THIS TO LOOK AT THE SUN”

That’s does look like a nice scope 👍🙂

About turn from me - Double stars - I think they look best in a refractor 👍 But you want decent resolution too, so as a minimum I would suggest a 4” F/8 or ideally the SW 120ED - more than budget though unless you look around for a used one.

Hey up @BobInYorkshire that look great 👍

Hello and welcome to SGL. Sounds like quite a sight, someone else may come along who saw it too……. Location, date, time ?

No vibration as the fan was mounted on rubber grommets. The important part is the aluminium baffle, which gives maximum cooling and pushes the warm air right out of the tube.

Dob - horizontal, all caps off, fan on. If you don’t have a fan you can make one……

You have three things working against you - low planetary altitude, poor seeing at the moment and a roof possibly radiating heat - so given all that your images are quite good. Can you reposition your scope to avoid building heat ?

Good video - nice handles 😁 A modification to improve contrast is to flock the tube opposite to the focuser 👍

Sounds to me like your subconsciously not really decided 😂

Hello and welcome to SGL, what have you been using your gear for ?

As others mention cool down is very important - best to remove the diagonal and eyepiece in the back of the scope and then point the front of the scope 45’ down so warm air can escape for at least 30 mins. Once cooled find a bright star that is very high - there are a couple in the southern sky at the moment and look at those both in and out of focus. You should see no colour at perfect focus and possibly a red and blue tint on opposite sides of focus. As long as you see no colour at focus you are fine.

@Ian McCallum Your SW 200P is a tough act to beat 👍 I attached a cooling fan to my Skywatcher Dob and it improved cooling times and sharpness enormously…….

That’s a great scope, best bang for the money going and very capable 👍

Does that include the mount or do you have one ? And what kind of visual astronomy do you do - deep sky, lunar, solar, planetary or all of them ?

if the 8” Dob in your avatar is yours then you will have to spend a lot of money on a refractor to beat it’s visual performance on both deep sky objects and the planets.

What are you trying to achieve ?

A 32mm plossl in a Mewlon 180 will give x68 which is great for DSO’s, where the Mewlon is not so good is wide field but you have the TSA for that. However an 8-10” Dob has got to be the best bang for buck going and extra aperture too 👍

Thought you wanted the scope for deep sky ? However, I have recently been using an M180C on Jupiter and Saturn and did not notice any spikes - I’m sure they are there but just not noticeable if that makes sense. Also the Mewlon cools within 35 mins if you rest one of these against a spider support…

Oh wow - I had that too - I had totally forgotten about it - thanks for posting 👍🙂

A Mewlon 180 will sit nicely on your Vixen GP 😈

Good seeing from here 🙂……… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_Observatory

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