John

The transparency has improved here plus folks have gone to bed and turned their lights off. I reckon the comet is naked eye visible here now. Not striking at all and you need to know just where to look but I'm pretty certain that I'm picking it up with just my eyes when standing in the darkest spot I can find in the garden.

Yes it's nice from here at the moment too. Just using 7x35 bins and the 70mm TV Ranger but the comet and other stuff showing well. Transparency has just dipped a bit - hope it picks up again soon. Interesting how easily the comet goes from relatively easy to see to rather vague with just a small change in transparency.

1st scope observing for sometime. Just got my little Tele Vue Ranger 70mm out because it's simple and very light. Quite pleased to be able to get clear splits of Rigel and Alnitak in Ursa Major with this little scope. The objective seems to be well figured because the star images are clean and very pleasing at 150x. Both these doubles are unequal brightness. Rigel is the easier one.

I've just been observing comet 46P with a 70mm refractor and 7x35 binoculars. It's not naked eye yet but it seems to be about as bright as the open cluster M35 in Gemini currently so if you can see that you should be able to pick up the comet. The comet is not quite as exensive a patch of nebulous light as M35 but not far off that size.

There is a mod involving washers cut from plastic milk cartons that works well to smooth the azimuth motion. Here is a discussion on this mod: Having owned a few dobs including the Skyliner 200 I'd say that the most useful mods are moving to a 9x50 RACI finder in place of the straight through stock one and adding a Telrad or a Rigel Quikfinder alongside of that. The "dob knob" might come already fitted to the scope these days but does provide a useful handle when tracking the scope manually. Other than that, I'd not rush into other modifications until you have had a few chances to use the scope and start to get a feel for things that you might like to improve. I've had a couple of dobs with "lazy susan" bearings but I much prefer the feel and opertation of well placed and balanced teflon pads. The "Milk carton washer" mod I mention above should help with smoothing the azimuth motion, if it needs it. Learning about collimating the scope is well worthwhile as well. Have fun !

I found a thread on another forum that stated that Tele Vue had confirmed that the safety screws were imperial 10-32 UNF 7/16 inch long. I'm not familiar with imperial fittings so I hope that makes sense !

No problem - thread title edited

Moved to closed as requested.

Nice pair of 6 inch refractors. This thread is about the Skywatcher Evostar ED150 though.

I'll bet they didn't sell many at £130 ! You can get an Aero ED 40mm 68 degree for £105 and thats a cracking eyepiece even in quite fast scopes.

It's listed at £139.00 though. Seems a lot to me when these were around £80 or less not so long ago

There is an SCT version of the Revelation Quartz (which is a GSO product as well) but they seem to be priced at over £130 now. Strange because I'd swear that it's the same diagonal that is branded as Altair Astro in my link above The Revelation branded GSO diagonals used to be priced at well under £100 so I don't know why or when the price jumped.

Here is the dielectric coated version with 99% transmission: https://www.wexphotovideo.com/altair-astro-2-inch-sct-dielectric-diagonal-1543256/?mkwid=s2IN1OCuH_dc&pcrid=89741479259&kword=&match=&plid=&product=1543256&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2vLF55mg3wIVqr3tCh138wciEAQYAiABEgJ1x_D_BwE GSO made I believe. I've owned the push fit version and they are very good for the price

Something like this: https://www.tringastro.co.uk/altair-2-star-diagonal-mirror-for-sct-telescopes-4170-p.asp?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIy4GyiZCg3wIVCrvtCh2FSAQOEAQYBSABEgLfZvD_BwE The screw fitting should screw straight onto the rear port of the SCT.

Are you considering a 2 inch diagonal ? You can get 2 inch diagonals which have an SCT screw fitting. These are probably a better bet with the 8SE (if you are considering a 2 inch diagonal) because they give more clearance at the read of the scope so won't contact the mount when the scope is pointing towards the zenith. The alternative is to use a 2 inch push fit diagonal with a 2" push fit to SCT screw adapter but this approach can lead to clearance issues between the diagonal and the mount.