John

8 minutes ago, jetstream said:

Forgot to add- if you want one planetary/lunar eyepiece, find a Televue Nagler zoom 3-6mm.

+1

Pity that the Baader Morpheus range have experienced a price rise recently. If I was in your place I would be looking hard at that range - they seem to offer really top end performance (ie: Tele Vue / Pentax level) for lower cost than those brands. Maybe pre-owned they would be within your budget ?

The ES 82's that I have used were pretty good as well although their eye relief is variable across the range. I liked the 4mm Nirvana very much but the 16mm does not quite seem so good - perhaps not much of a step up from the BST 18mm ?

The SLV's are excellent but their AFoV is smaller than the BST's of course:

3 hours ago, CaptainKingsmill said:

Thank you for such a detailed explanation of the reasoning. 

very interesting indeed! I've read that these EP's perform better with slower scopes, with some claiming they shouldn't go anywhere near anything faster than F5 so I'm interested to see if my amateur eye can tell the difference when I test it in my F5 newt vs my F9.8 refractor. 

I got a very brief window to use them last night for the first time, and the views are simply miles ahead of the my stock lens! 
Beautiful views of Jupiter before the cloud and fog rolled in,

Try observing an extended object such as the double cluster in Perseus at a magnification where both clusters are in the same field of view. This will show up star definition across a wide expanse of the field of view so will show any distortion being added by the eyepiece (eg: astigmatism) or the scope (eg: coma which faster newtonians generate). Sometimes you get a mix of distortion types, which can be hard to diagnose. This link is quite useful:

http://websites.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2007/dscobel.27.html

2 minutes ago, UKDiver said:

... It seems we don't really buy astronomy gear, just rent it long term. 😄

That's often very true !

Most of my equipment was bought 2nd hand. If something has not suited me, I've usually been able to re-sell for more or less what I paid for the item.

After a relatively short while you will notice that certain brands / ranges get favorably mentioned on forums like this quite frequently and for good reason.

Your choice of scope has been excellent so I'm sure you will find your way through the "eyepiece jungle" with similarly excellent results in due course

I agree with @Ian McCallum - It is a Skywatcher Evostar 150. Probably 10-15 years old judging by the colour scheme. That one needs some TLC and a few bits are missing, eg: a diagonal and eyepieces. The finder scope is not the original one but might be a decent replacement.

The key thing with regard to being able to find a prospective buyer for it is the condition of the objective lens - the main lens on the opposite end of the scope to the  finder and focuser.

My guess is that the scope might have some appeal to someone who knows their way around scopes, as a "fixer upper" but the condition of the objective lens is crucial.

Nice report Doug

Lots of cloud here tonight with just the odd small patch of sky showing so not worth putting a scope out.

The Double Cluster is a lovely sight in a decent aperture refractor isn't it

In case you don't want to splurge on a Pentax XW or similar, there are eyepieces around such as the Vixen SLV's that provide similar levels of optical performance at much lower prices

9 minutes ago, UKDiver said:

Thank you John. What EP are you using to get 180x?

Adrian

A 5mm Pentax XW. My FC100 is the DL version so has a focal length of 900mm.

Nice report Mr Spock

I really must dig out my Lunt wedge and have a look at whats going on with the Sun. It's been a long time since I did any solar observing and I believe that things have picked up quite a lot now

28 minutes ago, UKDiver said:

Much better tonight. 😊 Proper first views.

Clear sky, four moons for Jupiter were obvious. Maybe the odd orange stripey smear (wishful thinking?) but mainly fuzzy.

Moon an absolute pleasure.

So I wonder what better eyepieces will do for me.

Definitely need a seat too!

Excellent !

The Takahashi FC100's are really superb performers - they seem to be capable of providing just about as much as any 100mm scope can.

When the conditions are good you should be able to get 6-7 cloud belts on Jupiter plus the Great Red Spot (when on view) and other features too. I find 180x is a very useful magnification for observing Jupiter with my FC100.

95% of my observing is done from my garden. The skies here are quite good, if you avoid targets low down to the north east (where Bristol lights up the sky) and the north (the Newport glow). I have to move the scope around, or be patient, to deal with the surrounding trees and house roof lines but overall there are significant advantages (and a few comforts !) to observing very close to home.

When I do observe somewhere else it is my astro society observatory site which is a few miles from where I live. It is not really darker there but the site does have a nice low, uncluttered southern horizon which helps with low targets. There is also an 18 inch scope at the observatory that I can use now, which is fun

2 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

I was thinking about a Baader Hyperion 24mm or an ES 68° 24mm. The Baader has a slightly bigger field stop (28.5mm) than the ES (27.2mm) so the TFoV is a little wider, but not much. But I'm wondering whether the Baader Hyperion 24mm might be very similar (in construction) to the Hyperion Zoom that I already have and so maybe the ES would provide a more different comparator? Does anyone have a view about the Baader Hyperion 24mm versus the ES 68° 24mm?

I've used both the Hyperion 24mm and the ES 24mm / 68 and found the ES to be noticably sharper in the outer half of the field of view in scopes faster than around F/7-ish.

I moved from the ES 24mm / 68 to the Tele Vue Panoptic 24mm (at some cost !) but really there is precious little to choose between them in performance I found. My scopes vary from F/5.3 to F/9.2.  The 24mm Panoptic is a more compact eyepiece though.

If you are not going to use the eyepiece in scopes faster than F/7 then the Hyperion will probably do fine.

Good to see this section in the observing part of the forum now - makes a lot of sense I think

I really enjoy observing binary stars, especially with my refractors which seem to give such crisp and well defined views of the component stars. I tend mostly towards targets which will stretch me, the seeing conditions and the instrumentation so they tend to be closely separated and / or have unequal brightness components.

I can't recall all my favourites just now but I have a bunch of them as each observing season unfolds. Some stand out ones are Iota Cassiopeia, Pi Aquillae, Mu Bootis, Epsilon Bootis (Izar) Gamma Leonis (the 1st double star I ever split with a telescope !), Gamma Virginis, Zeta Herculis, Rigel, Sigma Orionis, Theta Orionis (including E & F if things are good), 52 and 32 Orionis, Lambda Orionis, Zeta Orionis (Alnitak), Alpha Canis Majoris (Sirius),  Beta Monocerotis, Castor, Delta Cygni, Mu Cygni, and Theta Aurigae  to name but a few 

(I'm sure a whole load more will pop into my brain just after I've posted this ! )

I find the Stella Doppie database a very useful source of information on binary star targets:

https://www.stelledoppie.it/index2.php?section=1

Excellent report on these two ultra-wide eyepieces

I had one of the 4.7mm Explore Scientific 82 degree eyepieces for a few months last year and enjoyed using it. So petite but a lot of performance in the small package and for surprisingly few £'s

6 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

All joking aside, has anybody ever had the chance to look through an observatory class scope like this? 

I've looked at a few but not through them. Roger Vine (Scopeviews.co.uk) has though:

http://www.scopeviews.co.uk/LowellClarkRefractor.htm

I managed a crude image of Mercury a while back using a mobile phone at the eyepiece. It did show the phase (simulation inset to confirm it):

12 minutes ago, Ags said:

@John you must have a good viewing spot - your targets are all over the sky. I have a patch to the east, the zenith and another patch to the south east. Targets seem to fly by!

I have good views in some directions but quite a lot of obstructions (trees and houses, including our own) in others. I usually need to be patient to wait for targets to rise to a decent height above the horizon to get good views and also to rise above the obstructions to the E and S. It's not perfect here by any means but very convenient to be able to observe just a few paces from the dining room.

I'm happy to add a short report to this thread

This evening I have been using my 100mm refractor, initially on Saturn and then on Jupiter to watch most of the Io shadow transit and the moons emergence from the limb of the disk after it's own transit. The seeing was a bit mediocre but there were some good moments.

I've then had a look at some of my favourite double stars of this season. The seeing prevented the views being the highest quality but still it was enjoyable.

I had a look at Uranus which showed a nice grey-green disk at 300x but the 100mm aperture was not capable of showing any of it's moons tonight.

Despite rather milky transparency Messier 81 and 82 showed quite nicely with good contrast.

I then spent around 45 minutes trying to see comet 29/P Schwassmann–Wachmann in Auriga. It is listed at magnitude 10.6 currently but despite using a range of magnifications from 40x to 150x I could not see anything convincing despite checking it's position with 3 reliable sources. Maybe the transparency was just not good enough or the comet is very small indeed or perhaps fainter than the reported magnitude. Still, you can't win them all !

As a consolation I had a nice browse around the open clusters in and around Auriga.

The scope is still out so I may have some more to come.

Interesting to think that my last observing session (3 nights ago) was with a 450mm aperture scope compared to the 100mm this evening 

To @Ags, I think all reports are worth posting and reading but a thread like this might encourage more folks to add their observing experiences so it is nice to have an alternative way to do this. Good idea

7 minutes ago, Ags said:

Did you see sny color in M57?

Maybe some pale green in places but nothing obvious to my 60+ year old eye.

It was the strong contrast and the image scale that was impressive.

Bristol AS outreach event tonight. I got to pilot our JMI NGT 18 inch, which was fun

The scope is around 30 years old but still works pretty well. Moving it around takes a bit of getting used to but the scope has a rotating upper tube assembly with the focuser and finders attached so that helps get the viewing position reasonably accessible. 

Targets were the usual suspects for this season. I stuck to things lower in the sky to avoid too much ladder work for the shorter guests.

Very nice being able to use a large aperture on targets normally observed with my own smaller scopes

Highlight for me was probably Messier 57 at 280x - it was starting to look a bit like the images

Nice night and happy visitors

I got the Pup star back in February this year with my 120mm refractor. Below is a sketch that I made at that time. Around that time I also spotted it a couple of times with my 100mm refractor but it was very dependent on having good and steady seeing conditions with the smaller aperture.

Last night I observed Delta Cygni with my ED120 refractor. A fairly straightforward split with the full aperture as you would expect. I then stopped the scope down to 52mm aperture using the opening in the stock objective end dust cap. The primary star was nice and clear at 225x with this limited aperture but the secondary star was rendered almost invisible. After careful study I concluded that I could just about see the secondary star but I do wonder if I would have managed to do that if I did not know, from the full aperture view, just where it was placed 

So it's a "maybe" at 52mm aperture, at least where my observing eye is concerned.

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Great result @John. Have you ever seen any markings on Uranus?

Not as yet Jeremy. Tonight the disk of Uranus was well defined even at 600x but I could not see any clear contrast variations on it. It appeared as a fairly uniform grey-green disk.

Having spotted Neptune's biggest and brightest moon Triton earlier this evening with my 200mm newtonian I felt that I might be in with half a chance of spotting at least what is currently marginally the brightest Uranian moon, Titania. Once I located Uranus, I found that I could get quite a sharp image of it's disk even at very high magnifications (340x and more) so the seeing is pretty good. I've managed to get consistent sightings of Titania and Oberon and an occasional glimpse of Ariel as well, which is a new observation for me. Last time I saw Titania and Oberon I was using my 300mm scope so it was pleasing to repeat those with the smaller aperture and even more so to get fleeting glimpses (averted vision) of Ariel. This is a Stellarium generated image of the view of the Uranus system with a newtonian scope at high power. Miranda and Umbriel were beyond me this evening.

28 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

Thought I was on CN for a minute 😂

Being told how we must and must not think about a new product ????