John

Great reports and sketches 👍 I love to try and pick out NGC 6207. Widefield eyepieces help to frame both it and Messier 13 in the same field while maintaining enough magnification to tease to galaxy out. I've seen NGC 6207 with my ED120 refractor on a decently dark night here.

I agree. This is from the original Tele Vue patent documentation:

I've moved onto Hercules now and it's 3 globular clusters. The very famous Messier 13, the nearly as well known Messier 92 and the more obscure NGC 6229. The latter globular cluster is 4 times further away than M13 and M92 and correspondingly fainter. I posted a little report on this interesting object back in 2021: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/378625-hercules-3rd-globular-ngc-6229/

A few rogue clouds around but generally clear here tonight. I've just been looking at Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Virgo. It's a small faint elongated patch of light with the ED120 refractor at 64x. Could be taken for a galaxy in this region of the sky. Glad to see it though 🙂

Caught Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with my ED120 refractor this evening. Seems to be around magnitude 10 and situated in Virgo around 2/3rds of the way between Porrima and Heze, close to a faint triangle of stars. Does not jump out with this aperture at 64x and could be mistaken for a galaxy, especially in this part of the sky. A faint, rather small fuzzy elongated patch of light. Nice to see it though 🙂

I had the TMB Supermoncentric 5mm for a while. Superb high power eyepiece but with a ~30 degree AFoV and around 3.5mm of eye relief, challenging to use with my undriven scopes. The University Optics HD 5mm ortho that I also had at that time was as good under moderate to normal skies but the TMB SM showed just a little more under better skies, which means around 15% of the time. These days I'm happy to sacrifice a little in performance for comfort 🙄

Interesting report 🙂 Smoothside TV plossls were the 1st 1.25 inch eyepieces that I ever bought - when I migrated from .965" ones way back in the late 1980's The TAL 25mm is no slouch though so it shows that TV was doing something right with their version of the plossl design.

The odd thing is that you don't hear any complaints about eye relief from owners of Zeiss ZAO ortho, TMB Supermonocentric or Pentax XO eyepieces, which are very tight in the shorter focal lengths. Presumably the optical performance of these legends is so good that the effort required to use them is worthwhile 🙂

We will call it a dead heat then 🙂 https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/421727-telescope-setting-up-time/?do=findComment&comment=4482814

NPL's are plossls. Plossls and orthos have eye relief that is around 75% of their focal length. Luckily for us today there are plenty of designs that offer much longer eye relief but there are usually additional glass lens elements involved in achieving that, so additional weight. I have a 4mm HD ortho which has eye relief of 2.7mm I believe. I do use it very occasionally but never for long to be honest. Optically it's excellent but I soon get tired of trying to hold that tiny exit pupil while tracking and the AFoV is just 40 degrees. Even the Nagler 4mm-2mm zoom seems comfy after using the 4mm ortho !

Meade used plastic dew shields and objective counter cells on some of their refractors so I guess balance plays a part in the choice of materials used. Meade made their refractor dew shields generally a bit on the short side though. Maybe that was also a weight saving move ? All the Skywatcher fracs I've owned have used metal dew shields. With my ED120 it screws off but I need to add an Astrozap dew shield extension in dewy conditions and fortunately those are quite light. Interesting what we start mulling over when it's cloudy 🤔

Some good advice on collimation above. My advice is initially to concentrate on getting the finder scope accurately aligned with the view through the main scope, fully extending and locking the flextube rods and ensuring that the correct adapter is being used in the focuser (earlier posts cover all these things).

It's a 3 inch F/16 achromat. The objective is a Carton from Japan. The scope was one of the final batch made by Ernie Elliott of Broadhurst, Clarkson and Fuller at Telescope House in the Farringdon Road, London in 1992. The design has been used for around 250 years I think 🙂

About 3 minutes but I don't image, don't use GOTO and use alt-az mounts 😁

Zeta Herculis is a candidate for this. I posted a rough sketch and an update of it, made 4 years apart, in this thread that @Nik271 started in 2020: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/362978-zeta-herculis-at-last/?do=findComment&comment=3955182 Time for another update to this sketch now - a further 4 years have passed and Hercules is again rising into a favourable position for observing 🙂

Great setup Neil 🙂 Do you leave the Tak tube clamp bolted onto the side of the mount and lift the scope tube in and out of it ? I've just realised that I could take that approach with my FC100-DL and the Skytee II but wonder if it's more or less hassle than using a DT bar bolted to the Tak clamp, as I do now 🤔

Really nice sketches - they capture the look of these binary stars through a quality refractor perfectly !

Thats a great list Paul 🙂 While on Mars, I believe the clouds that accumulate over the Olympus Mons volcano are visible in amateur scopes under favourable conditions. Is the volcano itself I wonder ? - not sure but it's the biggest in the solar system, I think !

Hi Joe, Yes, back in spring last year. It was a great scope and I had a lot of fun with it for over a decade but now having grandchildren running around the place, the big old dob was likely to prove too tempting for little hands to explore. It's easier to keep my refractors out of harms way so I decided to let the dob go to a new home. I may well get some larger aperture again in due course. If we start to get some nice clear, dark nights again the urge will grow !

I completely forgot to look out for Comet Tsuchinsham-Atlas when I was browsing around Virgo last night 🙄 I'll have to pop a post it note on my eyepiece case to remind me to look for it next time out !

We have a 12 inch Meade ACF in our society observatory. I've not used it myself but those that have (primarily the imagers) seem pleased with it.

There is a considerable amount of difference in the focal plane position with eyepieces of different designs and brands. I usually use a Pentax XW before stepping down to the Svbony 3-8 zoom and there is some further inwards focuser movement needed - maybe 4mm or so ? If I need to step down further than the Svbony 3-8 goes I generally go to the Nagler zoom 2-4mm which needs around 10-12mm outwards focus movement. I find that slightly annoying, but, having always had a wide range of eyepieces in my case, I'm kind of used to it 🙂 Maybe I should move to TV Delos's from the Pentax XW's and then I could have a set that is totally par focal from 24mm (Panoptic) to 2mm (Nagler zoom) 🤔 Hint: don't try an APM super zoom in 1.25 inch mode - that really will annoy you 😉

I found mine excellent again tonight. Very nearly par-focal from 8mm to 5mm I felt with a small adjustment moving to 4 and 3mm (3.5mm really). The Nagler 2-4mm is almost perfectly par-focal across it's range but the Svbony is not far off, IMHO. That was in an F/7.5 120mm refractor. Still, it's not going to suit everybody, granted. I did like the 4mm Nirvana when I had one a while back.

Still very nice here but I'm a bit tired so I've packed in now. Finished my very pleasant session with a 3rd planetary nebula, NGC 6826, the "Blinking" planetary in Cygnus. It wasn't blinking this evening so the transparency must be quite good. Central star nicely seen. Still got a touch of aperture fever though - it would be a good Virgo / Coma galaxy night here with 10/12 inches of aperture 🙄

Still nice and clear here 🙂 1st decent view of M57 this season, which was nice. Pleased to catch M13 and the mag 11.8 galaxy NGC 6207 in the same field of view with the ED120. Galaxy rather challenging but M13 is well resolved (for the aperture) at 150x. The "Cats Eye" planetary nebula NGC 6543 was looking quite bright in Draco. Had a few glimpses of the brighter Markarian Chain galaxies in Virgo as well. Caught a touch of aperture fever with those, recalling the views I used to get with my 12 inch dob of the chain - 10/11 galaxies in a single field. Still, the 120's doing it's best 🙂