John

Great stuff ! Such a famous object but so hard to see much of it with a scope

Excellent stuff - nice to read ! It's a nice night here in North Somerset as well. I've been on a society zoom meeting but I'm free now to do some observing with my 12 inch dob (another upside down dustbin !)

Uranus, 7 Tauri and a few other bits and pieces with the 12 inch dob so far. I'll have a break for a society zoom meeting then hopefully get back out again

I recently had an Orion Optics 200mm F/6 and used it on my Skytee II mount on a wooden tripod. The OO optical tube weighs a bit less that the Skywatcher equivalent I believe. With a counterweight on the opposite side, I found this setup (pictured below) was stable enough for satisfying visual observing. I felt like the mount and tripod were getting towards their limit though so I don't think that I would use a Skywatcher 10" inch tube assembly on the mount. One of the Skywatcher 8" F/5's would probably be OK though.

Hi and welcome to the forum

I do occasionally use 450x with my 12 inch (Orion Optics) dob but not all that often. More frequently I find that 350x is the highest useful magnification. Your location and seeing conditions might be different to mine of course.

My most "grab and go" setup was this one which was truly a one handed lift outside and no cooldown time needed:

That's a nice setup. I used to have something very similar, quite a few years ago.

1000mm divided by 4mm = 250x magnification. The 26mm eyepiece will be giving 38x. 250x might be too much magnification, depending on the conditions you observe under. For the sort of purposes that you want to use the scope for you might want to consider a zoom eyepiece. A 21.5mm - 7.2mm zoom eyepiece (for example) gives you magnifications between 47x and 139x so a good wide range covering a 1:3 ratio.

With the planets positioned as they have been for the past 3 years (ie: quite low for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) I've found that refractors are easier to use to view them. It's difficult to pick one scope because they have all given me great planetary views but I guess the refractor with the greatest potential performance, seeing conditions allowing is my TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet. I generally use Pentax XW or a Tele Vue Nagler zoom eyepieces for high power observing with this scope. The thread title includes "show us your ...." so here are a couple of photos of this scope:

That looks a fantastic scope - congratulations With optical test results like that plus the fit and finish of the scope, you really do wonder why people shell out more than twice as much for one beginning with T that has 5mm more aperture

That's a great spot ! They are tough to see but I really enjoy trying to spot these outer planetary moons

Not where resolution of lunar and planetary detail is concerned. While the light gathering power of the additional aperture is significantly more with the 6 inch, the resolving power increase is somewhat less. With the collimation "sweet spot" of an F/5 scope being quite small compared with the tolerance of a 4 inch mak (which usally around F/12) plus the diffraction efects of the secondary support system of the newt, I can quite see why a slightly miscollimated F/5 6 inch newtonian could be outperformed on lunar sharpness by a 4 inch mak in good optical shape. For observing deep sky objects, where aperture is more important, the 6 inch scope would have an advantage of course.

If the newtonian was out of collimation (F/5 has a small collimation "sweet spot") and the mak in good collimation (much more likely) that might well make the difference.

If you can observe Jupiter when there is still some daylight left in the sky, the contrast and colour tones are really enhanced. I've had some of my best views of the giant planet under such conditions.

I reviewed the Vixen SSW eyepieces for the forum a while back: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/255080-vixen-ssw-ultra-wide-angle-eyepieces-review/ And also some of the SLV's: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/217971-vixen-slv-eyepiece-report-6mm-12mm-and-20mm/ I've also had lots of experience with really good quality ortho's and plossls over the years and posted reports on those here as well. My scopes are all used on undriven, alt azimuth mounts so having a wider, well corrected, field of view when observing at high powers is an advantage I feel but I'm also happy to use narrower field of view eyepieces too. I don't tend to use orthos or plossls much these days because of their tight eye relief and small (often tiny !) eye lenses in the shorter focal lengths. My high power eyepieces currently range from 110 degrees Ethos SX to the 50 degrees Nagler 2mm-4mm zoom with a bunch of Pentax XW's in between and I enjoy using them all. I tend to use the XW's and the Nagler zoom with my refractors and the Ethos / Ethos SX with my 12 inch dobsonian but I don't have any hard and fast rules about that ! I've had plenty of opportunity to compare the views between high quality orthos / plossls and the wide field designs and, for me, I don't feel todays high quality wide field designs give away anything in terms of optical performance over the simpler standard field designs. So I do see the point of them but also I appreciate that others prefer alternatives We are lucky that we have such a lot of choice these days

I always tend to go for option 1 with Jupiter. It's features are defined by subtle tonal differences and seem to stand out more using lower magnifications to get a crisper and more contrasty image. Under my normal range of seeing conditions I find that I get the best contrast on Jupiter using magnifications between 130x and 230x wheres with, say, Saturn or Mars, the range might be 180x-280x. My scopes range from 100mm to 300mm in aperture.

It's not a Stellalyra dob but that is where I have mine:

I regularly use my ED120 F/7.5 refractor on a Skytee II mount and can use 300x with hardly any vibrations at all. No counterweight required either.

You could try using one of these with the lighter 1.25 inch eyepieces: https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/tele-vue-bec-0005-2-125-equalizer-hihat-adapter.html

What you see of deep sky objects will depend heavily on the sort of conditions you observe under. I took a 6 inch scope to the SGL star party at a darkish sky site a few years ago and it showed deep sky objects better than my 10 inch could from my back yard.

Panoptics and Naglers are pretty good "starter" eyepieces For many, they would be great "finisher" ones as well !

With deep sky targets and globular clusters in particular, the more aperture you have, the more resolution you get, the fainter you can see and the more interesting the views are. As your skill and ambition as an observer develop, you will want that additional light gathering power. If your interests were primarily the moon, planets and double stars then I think the 150mmm would be great but for deep sky objects, as much aperture as you can get is the way to go, in my opinion.

Great at F/10. Astigmatic stars in the outer 30% of the field of view in an F/5. Quite "seagully" out towards the field stop.

It's a cloudy evening here currently. Forecast to clear from around 1:00 am but I don't think I'll wait around for that. Enjoy the clear skies, if you have them