John

Clear night and another brightness estimate data point from me, this time using a 102mm refractor at 28x magnification. I feel that the nova is really quite close to the brightness of the star HD 220057 which is magnitude 6.9. So I'd say mag 7.0 for the nova ?

That's a thought - I'll keep a pair handy where ever we happen to end up.

As a non-glasses wearer I found the soft foldable eyecup of the ES 24mm / 68 more comfortable and more effective at blocking out stray light than the hard flat, wide, top of the Maxvision 24 / 68. I enjoyed using both eyepieces and their optical performance was comparable (I owned both for a while) but I did ultimately prefer the egonomics of the ES. Eyepiece ergonomics are an area subject very much to personal preferences though. Some of it may well be affected by the shape of your face, depth of eye sockets etc, etc. We all vary to some extent on such things.

I was looking at doublets that use FPL-53 rather than triplets. The above and the one that Stu links to are certainly options though.

The ED102SS weighs around 4kg with tube rings and a diagonal fitted. Today's nearest equivalent is the 102mm F/7 FPL-53 doublet refractors of which there seem to be versions by Telescope Services, Altair, Technosky etc.

I use either a Skytee II or the Giro Ercole. The Ercole needs the axis lock to be used when switching heavy eyepieces. The Skytee II has enough "sticktion" in it's axis to handle the changeover without the need to lock the movement.

Nice report Jonathan I used to have an Intes 6 inch mak-newtonian. It was a really excellent performer. As good as a 5 inch apochromat refractor on the planets and the moon I reckon and better on deep sky targets.

I didn't mean to alarm you. I hope everything works out really well

I'm not a regular solar observer but when I do some white light observing with my Lunt HW I've noticed that the views of the solar surface are very sharp with my Tak 100 so I agree with Stu that having good optical quality throughout, pays dividends.

That looks good. Couple of points but it might be me not understanding: - the hex bolt that holds the adapter onto the top of the tripod hub needs to be flush with, or below the top surface of the adapter. It looks a little proud of that in the photo but that might be the angle ? - you will need to remove the Geoptik M12 - M10 thread adapter as well I think. Apologies if I've misinterpreted the photo and / or what you are saying

Forecast looks good here. Downside is that we have family commitments now which are likely to make observing the thing difficult / impractical Oh, well, fortunately I've seen a few other ones !

That is an interesting upgrade for the ST80. I hope the focuser can reach focus on astro targets - sometimes the 3rd party add-on focusers struggle with the ST80's with regards to inwards focuser movement. I'd also be interesting to know what % of the field of view is sharp with the 31mm Aspheric eyepiece in the F/5 refractor. Looking forward to your feedback from under a night sky

I've owned and used one of the TS 1.25 inch dielectric diagonals and it was both much better constructed than the stock item and, I felt, gave slightly better views - a little brighter and with a little less light scatter. Worth having at the price they are selling for. I'm unsure whether moving to using a 2 inch diagonal (such as the Baader click-lock) is going to be worthwhile with a C6 scope though

It's a Meade LXD 55: You can download the manual for it from here: https://www.meade.com/lxd55-manual-size-1-1-mb/

In the 2 inch format, the stack can be quite tall and heavy. This ES 20mm / 100 + 2x Powermate combo weighed close to 1,500 grams:

Good point Stu. I was assuming that we were talking about ~4 inch scopes in my earlier post.

It depends how much true field you want. 3.5 - 4 degrees of true field will show the whole of the Veil Nebula. I get 3.8 degrees with the Vixen and the Nagler 31. Some folks like to go as far as 5 degrees so you need a faster scope for that - something around F/5.5 or faster ?

I can bring my Ethos 21 and Nagler 31 to focus with my FC100-DL using a 2 inch diagonal. It's not the optimum wide field scope though because of the focal ratio. I have a Vixen ED102SS (F/6.5) which is my widefield frac. These eyepieces also come to focus in that with around 15mm of inwards focuser travel to spare.

NASA announces two missions to Venus: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57339355 Not launching until 2028 and 2030 though. Great movie of the landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars included at the end of the piece

Nothing wrong with the english at all - it was only the colour that I found hard to see Nice and clear now !

I'm sure this is very interesting but the black on dark grey text is very hard to make out. Could you change that colour scheme ?

I have a 130mm F/9.2 LZOS triplet refractor and a Tak FC100-DL and the difference in performance between the two is quite obvious. Both excellent but 30mm more excellence certainly shows itself. The ease of setup and use is also very different though with the 100mm refractor being much more of a "grab and go" affair. I need to plan sessions with the 130mm F/9.2 somewhat more. I can imagine circumstances where a person might make the step from a 140mm refractor to a 100mm but the motives there would be more about ease of use, portability, lighter mounting requirements etc. If the step was to something like the Tak TSA120 then the performance reduction might not be as marked and maybe marginal on many targets.

The only "barlow" that I've used that seemed totally invisible in the optical train is the Tele Vue Powermate. As noted already though, invisibility comes at some cost.

Glad you enjoyed the views.

I can completely understand why those who have not seen them will make the effort. I did the same nearly 40 years ago to get my 1st glimpse of Saturn in the early hours. Those of us with a few years under our belts might prefer to wait until they are more favourably placed.