Woking

Anybody tried these or similar?

Interesting concept with the swivel in filters, but are there any drawback with this.

A first for me anyway!

SW120 ED from back garden.

Jupiter a little mushy as heading near neighbours house and too early being 8ish. Bands coming in and out with the radiating heat from a lovely Sept day.

Saturn delivered good contrast. Cassini spotted.

Neptune found. A bluey green dot with hint of a disc. Happy with that from suburban skies and glad for the goto.

Couple of hours wait for Mars and best view for a number of years for me. Spent time teasing out surface detail i.e. differing shades of orange, dark grey, and white.

Not long to wait for Uranus to appear from behind the trees and a clear disc. An obvious step up from Neptune  After viewing the Snowball neb earlier it shows why such objects are called planetary nebulae.

Back to Mars again before packing up for the night. Great session in shorts, t shirt and flip flops....summer observing does has it's plus sides!

On a side note I'm wondering about trying all 7 in one night. A future personal challenge maybe. Shame my home sky won't allow Pluto with it being between Jupiter and Saturn at the moment. Not sure if it's possible with my kit either.

Clear skies and stay safe.

59 minutes ago, jetstream said:

For info- under dark skies this image represents how I see the Veil in an 8" 0r 10" scope under dark skies and with the right OIII. It points out the value of travelling to dark skies.

ps not my image- its Knisely's

Veil really needs dark skies. I've tried and tried from my suburban garden but even with an Astronomik OIII it's nothing compared to the one time I saw it from a dark sky site in it's full glory.

Dark skies and OIII = spectacular.

Light polluted garden and OIII = disappointing faint wispy smudge and a car journey to a dark sky site.

No OIII can't see it at all from the garden

Weight should be a consideration too. My ES 2x FE pushes the mount to it's limit and I should really be rebalancing the scope everytime it's added or removed.

Glad it was a good first light and no QC issues with them.

Both planets and their moons are useful for checking the entire FOV.

My preference is handheld for wildlife so the individual focus just reinforces 20x80s for astro only.

That gun barrel rdf certainly does the job and worth a try.

I own a rdf gun sight but it's the rail fitting. 

Like the setup bryand.

I already use the Celestron star pointer pro on my frac so being able to easily swap between that and bins would be ideal.

The celestron skymaster pro bins specifically remark about it's central rail allowing RDF fitting. Just want sonething similar on a higher quality pair of 20x80s though.

Thanks Steve, that's really helpful to know.

ditto on reading your opinion of them. They look a quality pair of bins for the price 

9 hours ago, Shimrod said:

Thanks for all the feedback so far. Based on the reviews, I think the most likely candidates are the Helios Stellar II. Quite a few reviews were for the 16x80 rather than 20x80, and I am now wondering about the relative merits of more magnification of the 20  vs the brighter, wider FOV of the 16.

I seem to be in a similar decision making process to yourself, were there any major reasons for choosing the Helio Stellar 11 over the LightQuest which were also within your budget?

As I currently own 10x50 and 15x70 bins I was looking for the extra step up in mag, so 20x80s make more sense than 16x80s. As you already have the stability of a tripod would you regret the extra mag at the expense of FOV? I can't remember from the excellent Binocularsky reviews if there was any noteable mention of the difference in magnitude of 16x80s vs 20x80s - will have another read now!

Just wondering if  there's a real benefit in using a RDF with 20x80s. I currently use 15x70s without a RDF on a pistol grip and whilst not as easy as handheld 10x50s it's not that difficult to hone in on a target with some star (and tree/bldg.) hopping.

Would the extra mag jump from 15x70s to 20x80s make a mounted RDF a beneficial or even necessary aid?

On a side note, does anybody know if a RDF can be fitted to the Helios LightQuest 20x80s? It doesn't have the central bar /rail that the Helios Stellar and even Celestron Pro versions have.

18 hours ago, kerrylewis said:

Hello Hadyn

Thanks for your reply. I've also had a quick response from Ioptron technical support and they suggest a couple of things which I will try

Take care

Kerry 

Firmware version upgrades?

Browsed for a few months, joined in Jan, bought first scope in March.

SGL incredible for guidance, friendly advice and recommendations, and also a place to link up with local observers and societies.