John

I'm 61 and use low power eyepieces with exit pupils of 3.96mm (21mm) and (less often) 5.85mm (31mm) with my F/5.3 12 inch dobsonian. Under my skies (Bortle 5) the smaller exit pupil is generally the more effective one. Both have their uses though.

1 hour ago, lunator said:

This will be a real challenge. I will be interested to see what can be achieved.

just to give some insight, the latest info from WDS on the pair is primary is magnitude 2.02, secondary is magnitude 4.95. Separation 0.8.

Based on the MacEvoy  rule of thumb you would need about x425 magnification on a 150mm scope.

To give you some hope on a night of excellent seeing it might be do-able at x250-300.

Cheers

Ian

I've got the 130mm refractor out cooling and I'll give it a go with that tonight. More in hope than expectation though

3 minutes ago, Ags said:

@John I believe there was a W70 line that were just rebadged generic 66 degree models. The WALER line ran up to 17 mm, but only covered 78 degrees at that length.

The W70's were basically re-packaged 66 degree ones, agreed:

I think the W70 25mm might have been something else but these are not in the same league as the Speers-WALER's.

My SW 24.7mm looked like this:

1 hour ago, Ags said:

 

@John I have heard that the SW 82 are a cut above the SW 70's. No way of knowing if that is true...

 

I've read that the shorter focal length SW's (which are the 82's) are quite a lot better than the 70's as well.

My 24.7mm was my very first wide angle eyepiece. It worked fine in the F/10 scopes that I had back then but when I tried it in an F/6 150mm newtonian, the outer 30% of the field of view showed noticeable astigmatism.

Stick to the 82's I think. The SW zoom had quite a reputation as well.

5 minutes ago, Ags said:

I have had the orange lettering 10 mm Speer WALER for over a decade. Today it is joined by 4.9 and 13.4 mm siblings (sadly not orange lettering first editions).

Interesting eyepieces

I used to have the SW 24.7mm with orange engraving on it. That one was a 1.25 inch eyepiece so around 70 degrees AFoV.

Interesting host galaxy as well !

Thanks Michael

Nice setup !

You can turn the finder in it's mount so that the eyepiece lines up with that of the scope - personally I find that works well. Apologies if you already know that !

Excellent report of what sounds like a superb Summer session

Lets hope for more over the coming nights !

Nice report and heads up on Iapetus

I can't help thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey when I observe Iapetus as in "Oh my God, it's full of stars"

I find Enceladus an interesting challenge as well but for the opposite reason really - it's close in to Saturn so needs to be positioned favourably to pick it out of the glare of the planet.

Thanks for the reminder - I'd forgotten about trying this one when I next have my 12 inch dob or 130mm out

The 130mm split the .91 arc second Lambda Cygni a few days back it might show some signs that Dubhe is a double at least.

5 minutes ago, Kon said:

I do not want to jinx it, but the skies are looking clear tonight! Maybe a long session after a long time? Dob will be on its way out to cool down soon.

About 90% cloud cover here tonight so I won't bother but quite hopeful as the week goes on so I'm sure I will get some observing in sometime soon.

I was on holiday in darkest mid-Wales a week or so ago but having looked at the forecast, I didn't take a scope. Turned out I was right - nice sunny days but cloudy nights !

Perhaps you will get some clear patches later in the week ?

What focal ratio is your 6 inch newtonian ?

The length of the scope tube can put the mount under pressure / strain even if the actual weight is well within the stated capacity I've found

I suspect the single arm AZ5 is just not up to the job of holding the scopes steady at higher magnifications ?

I tried putting my old AZ4 (which I think is a little stronger than the AZ5) on a 2 inch steel tubed tripod (EQ6 type) but it was still not up to the task of holding my ED120 F/7.5 refractor steady at anything above medium magnifications.

You probably need something like a Skytee II or a Giro / Sabre mount to hold these scopes really steadily.

2 hours ago, Pixies said:

Can it be true? 

Yes - it's looking similar here as well

Now what we want is a really bright comet .......

6 hours ago, Stu said:

😱😱

https://www.astroshop.de/teleskope/agema-optics-apochromatischer-refraktor-ap-130-1040-sd-130-f8-ota/p,52871

That's about £1K more than the APM/LZOS 130 F/9.2 triplet I think.

That looks a lovely scope !

Interesting that they seem to manufacture the objectives themselves. Not many manufacturers actually working with fluorite these days. Takahashi and Vixen have replied on Canon Optron for their fluorites.

A comparison between the Agema 120 and the Tak TSA 120 would be very interesting - I wonder if anyone has done one yet ?

I don't think I'd ever done more than quickly glanced at M52 before Nova Cas showed up. Over the past 4 months I've probably observed it more than most other DSO's !

It is a delicate and pleasing cluster. Quite dense, once you start to pick out it's faint stars.

20 minutes ago, Voyager 3 said:

After reading a post of you flaunting (😉) the noctilucent cloud , I've decided to search it . My roadmap was using July 11 as the date as you've mentioned it yesterday . I very much like to compare what I was doing a year before on the same day !!

 

A good nova probably won't substitute the comet but it is still putting off a good show . 

Re-reading my posts earlier in this thread, I recall now just how good that night, a year ago, actually was. By the time I turned in, dawn was starting to break, the eastern sky had brightened and the stars and comet were beginning to fade.

Nice looking back to that "Neowise" period though

8 hours ago, mtminnesota said:

After months of research (mostly reading what the eyepiece gurus at CN say), I decided on the following accessories for my FS-60CB:  TV Plossl 32 (mainly as a finder), TV Nagler Type 6 13, Tak Abbe ortho 12.5, Nagler zoom 3-6, Tak prism, and Nikon 1.6 Barlow....

 

 

They are all very nice eyepieces.

Just out of curiosity, why the Nagler T6 13mm AND the Tak Abbe ortho 12.5mm ?

Edit: I see that JeremyS has asked the same !

14 minutes ago, Tiny Clanger said:

Assuming I'm  looking at the correct refractor : Skymax 127 £319, Skywatcher  120ED pro £1399

The second image is better, but is it £1000 better ?

Heather

We were not asked to put a value on it were we ?

Astronomers always seek the best optical performance that they can afford in my experience

If you took hundreds of planetary images over the life of the scope, with similar performance gains, the price difference would soon become forgotten I think.

There is a "snap" to the ED120 image that is lacking in the mak 127 one. The ED120 did quite well compared with a Mewlon I seem to recall from another post from @Fedele ?

Skywatcher put a lot of effort into getting their 120mm ED doublet objective right.

I had a quick look last night with the 130mm frac. It looked similar to the last time I saw it - still mag 7 ish I think.

3 hours ago, IB20 said:

Got my first views of Saturn last night with the 3” frac. I must say, was pleasantly surprised in the size and brightness of the image with no CA. The 10mm BCO, 8mm BST, 6mm Starbase ortho and 5mm BST all presented lovely images. Some nice beige/brown/orange colouration and banding detectable on the northern hemisphere and on occasion dark separation of the Cassini division would pop out. Titan nice and visible even with fairly light horizon skies. Managed to view Saturn at about 11° which would be impossible with the 8” dob from my garden.

Also managed to split a 1.4” double in Pi Aquilae too which I think is good going for an 80mm. 

Turning out to be a lovely solar system scope which I’m thrilled about. If I’d stayed out another 40 mins or so I’d have been able to view Jupiter but I’ll save that for another session, but with the recent weather who knows when that will be!

Excellent result !

I think the Dawes limit for an 80mm scope is 1.45 arc seconds so a clear split of Pi Aquilae is a really superb achievement for the scope, observer and the seeing conditions.

I agree entirely that refractors on tallish mounts make getting low targets in the eyepiece a lot easier.

2 hours ago, Stardaze said:

Grabbed an hour, but it’s been so bad, for so long. Haven’t viewed anything properly for well over a month. Contrast that to this time last year, although no darkness, was out an awful lot.

This time last year (to the day) we had this to keep our attention

Thanks folks !

I'm glad I got out last night - sort of re-charged the enthusiasm for observing