John

If you have any interest in meteorites, you might find the online bi-monthly "Meteorite Times" interesting. Each issue contains short articles by a regular team of contributors. The latest (January 2020) issue includes a piece on the Bovedy Meteorite which fell in Northern Ireland in 1969. The current issue and back issues are free to download and read and can be accessed from this web link: https://www.meteorite-times.com/ I hope some find this of interest

Just as a warning, I picked up a pair of those 10x-30x X 60 zoom binoculars that Aldi were selling, for a few quid from a charity shop just out of curiosity. They were really poor, even just for terrestrial at the lower ends of the zoom range. Not sharp, lots of false colour. Just to be avoided. Not even going to give those away - not fair on whoever gets them, might put them off binoculars !

With reference to Neil's comments above, it is said that the minimum difference in light transmission that we can detect visually is around 8-10%.

I've just picked up a pair of Opticron Taiga 8x25's. Not for astronomy (although the moon is very sharp with them) but they are really nice ultra-compact birding / wildlife binoculars. Great to keep in the glove compartment of the car https://www.firstlightoptics.com/all-binoculars/opticron-taiga-compact-25mm-binoculars.html

Thats my choice for cleaning eyepiece and refractor lenses.

Steve started First Light Optics

Back in the days when I used to play around the the Chromacor CA / SA correctors and large achromat refractors, the installation of the Chromacor (which screwed onto the end of a 2 inch diagonal barrel) was preceeded by drilling and tapping a 3rd set screw hole in the 2 inch adaptor on the end of the drawtube. The Chromacor required very precise centering in the drawtube and the 3-screw arrangement was said to be the best way to achieve that. Compression ring adapters were not advocated.

Dino I think. My son might have liked then when he was under 10 - Jurassic Park was a big influence

Just found on e.bay - go on, you can't resist can you ?

14 year old thread revival ! The original topic was on refractors I see.

Integrated Flux Nebulae is a new term to me Gerry but its always nice to learn about new stuff Thanks for the link as well

I think the best advice that I can give is to be adaptable. Roll with the conditions that are presented and select targets accordingly

To be fair, I have read this theory of atmospheric cell sizes enabling smaller apertures to make the best of the seeing conditions a few times before. Refractors do seem to "punch above their weight" sometimes.

Filters of this type work on nebulae. For better views of clusters and galaxies dark skies are the answer. I use good quality O-III and UHC (mostly the former). Best start a new topic in the eyepiece section for more info

Don't worry too much about the optimal magnficiation for disks or Uranus and Neptune - it's the moons that you are trying to pull out of the darkness around them. Using very high magnifications helps pull faint point sources out. I've used these techniques for supernovae and quasar spotting as well. Here is a link to Cartes du Ciel. It's quite not as pretty as Stellarium or Sky Safari but it is free and seems to be pretty accurate for planetary, comet, asteroid etc positions: https://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/start