John

That does look a really nice scope !

Did they also do a version with a LZOS objective in it ?

I'm sure I saw one many years back with a LZOS lens.

7 minutes ago, faulksy said:

john, your 8mm and 21mm need to go down the case a couple of millimeters, n ever thought you would be that un tidy 🤣

I'll get right onto that Mike

Just off to find my set square and spirit level !

Nova Delphini got to magnitude 4.3 in 2013 and was a naked eye nova. Has there been a naked eye one since then ?

I wonder if it could be done with a 50mm ?

Theoretically the 50mm limit is 2.32 arc seconds and the Izar split is 2.8. But the component stars are unequal brightness so that adds a degree of trickiness

I can easily stop my ED120 down to a 52mm F/17.3 using the aperture in the dust cap. I feel the urge to experiment on the next clear night

Very cloudy here - no chance to see anything astro-wise.

Hope others get a look at it. I wonder how bright it will get ?

@JeremyS said earlier in the thread that the previous brightness plateau was thought to be a "premaximum halt" phase so is this the final surge of brightening ?.

Time and observation will tell 

5 minutes ago, IB20 said:

Wow, this got super visible! I’d say it’s looking brighter than HD220819 which SkySafari has at mag 6.6.

Yes, I thought it was very close to that stars brightness last night (I think HD220819 is the same as SAO 20626).

I used to have a 40mm Aero ED - very nice eyepiece. I just didn't find it effective for me though because the background sky was just too bright with it. The 31mm Nagler is better in this respect but even that suffers a little so the 21mm Ethos and more recently the 17mm ES / 92 and the 13mm Ethos are my most used DSO eyepieces with my F/5.3 12 inch dob.

The 31mm Nagler works better with my F/6.5 102mm refractor where the exit pupil is under 5mm.

Well that's what I've found anyway

YMMV as they say  

Without a filter even the brightest segments of the Veil nebula are at best very faint, even with a decent aperture scope. A UHC helps to see them better but an O-III filter is a game changer on this target.

Ouch !

We have had quite a few hail showers over the past week but the hailstones were the size of peas, nothing larger. The largest I've seen in the UK would be maybe as large as small grapes.

My wife has a cousin who lives in Australia (Sydney suburbs) and they occasionally get huge hail there - some sones as big as your fist.

Good stuff Andy !

Twas a nice one, tonight

I've not yet managed to convincingly see the central star of M57 with my 12 inch scope, even when it's more or less overhead. I'd certainly like to though !

I've wrapped up for the night now but had some lovely "easy win" views of Messier 51 more or less at zenith with some subtle spiral structure showing and the Cats Eye nebula which I did think was showing a faint yellow / green tint but that might have been my mind playing tricks on me !.

I then the plugged in an 8mm eyepiece to gaze at the lovely globular cluster Messier 92 for a while at 199x, a real beauty in it's own right. Then switched to the hyper-wide 17mm eyepiece to take in one of my favourite spring deep sky views - a fully resolved globular cluster Messier 13 with the galaxy NGC 6207 sitting in the same 1 degree circle of sky. Messier 13 is far off at 22,000 light years away but NGC 6207 is a massive jump further again at 30 million light years. Great way to end a session  

1 hour ago, Space Hopper said:

This is my midrange widefield.

I'm not sure, but i've read somewhere they've been discontinued ?

It impresses me every time i use it.

 

Sadly I believe they are no longer in production. They do have a wonderful reputation though

My mid-range is a 13mm Ethos and a 14mm Delos.

Pretty nice night here to have a 12 inch scope out

After getting some good views of the nova in Cassiopeia, v1405, which has definitely brightened and is about magnitude 7 I felt, I moved on to see if I could find the couple of "bright" supernovae that I have been observing lately in Virgo and Draco.

In Virgo we have SN 2021 hiz which resides within the faint galaxy IC 3322A. Last time I observed this one it was around magnitude 13 and I even managed to spot it with a mere 100mm refractor on the 17th April. This SN is fading now and I reckon is around magnitude 14 as of this evening. Somewhat harder to spot even with the 12 inch scope but once acquired it was just about visible with direct vision at 198x magnification.

In Draco there is SN 2021 hpr sitting in the outer regions of galaxy NGC 3147. A brighter host galaxy this one and quite easy to find. The SN though has never quite got as bright as 2021 hiz and tonight seems also to be gradually fading. I had to work hard and use high magnification (338x) and needed a combination of averted vision and the "1000 yard stare" to pick it out. It's currently estimated at magnitude 14.5 I think and it certainly seemed just as dim to me !. Magnitude 14.7 is the dimmest point source that I've managed to see so far with my 12 inch scope so this target was pushing things. Pleased to see it again though.

Probably the last views I will get of these distant, catastrophic supernovae, unless they flare up again. It's nice to have had 2 to observe at the same time for a while though. There is another SN currently shining at magnitude 12.9, SN 2021 jad in NGC 1964 but that is in Lepus which is well below my horizon here.

Phew !!! - I think I need to take in some easy stuff for a bit - plenty about with these nice skies

Hope others are having some fun as well

6 minutes ago, John said:

Just observing this nova now with the 12 inch dob.

Definitely brighter now. Not far off the brightness of nearby mag 6.7 star SAO 20626. Around mag 7 I'd say. Easily visible in the 50mm finder.

 

And not too difficult with 8x30 binoculars, when you know where to look

Just observing this nova now with the 12 inch dob.

Definitely brighter now. Not far off the brightness of nearby mag 6.7 star SAO 20626. Around mag 7 I'd say. Easily visible in the 50mm finder.

Oh for younger eyes and darker skies !

Looks like some of the button tops are missing from the controller. The flashing sequence of the LED on the hand controller means low power / batteries about to give up I think.

19 minutes ago, Size9Hex said:

...I find it interesting that you haven't equated longer eye relief with being easier to use. I had assumed, probably wrongly in retrospect, that more eye relief in the ES92 would automatically be more comfortable. And in fact, I should have known better. A couple of long focal length EPs I've used have very generous eye relief, but it extends further out than rubber eye cup - and they took quite a bit of getting used to. One of these was absolutely transformed by fitting an extended eye cup. Other long eye relief eye pieces I've used have the eye cup absolutely spot on, and have been brilliant....

.

You raise a very good point. From my experience with the 17mm and 12mm ES 92's I think it would be worth having a look through them yourself if possible before committing. I have found the eye positioning quite challenging on the 17mm but I am now getting the hang of it but the 12mm I just could not get used to so I let that one go to a new home.

I can see for the glasses wearer that the eye relief of these would be very useful but it is almost too much of a good thing for the non-glasses wearer (like me) perhaps ?

Optically they are excellent though.

46 minutes ago, John said:

Similar experiences here. Very, very occasionally I've seen a touch of pink in M42 as well.

I'm going to take a close look at the Cats Eye Nebula tonight with my 12 inch dob. I think that might have a colour tint of some sort as well

By way of apology to the original poster for diverting onto ancient units of measurement, I came across these extracts from the 1980's Fullerscopes catalogue which are relevant:

I'm going back to using the barleycorn as a unit of measure. 3 barleycorns = 1 inch.

My largest aperture scope is a 36 barleycorn newtonian with a focal length of 191 barleycorns.

Apparently the barleycorn still forms the basis of shoe sizes in English speaking countries.

I do hope this catches on

8 hours ago, Stu said:

I do see some colour in the brighter ones. I’ve seen greenish tints to M42 definitely, in scopes down to 4”. Actually this is easier to see when not fully dark adapted as your cones remain stimulated. The blinking planetary is greenish, the blue snowball is, errrr bluish 🤣.

Similar experiences here. Very, very occasionally I've seen a touch of pink in M42 as well.

Congrats on the "2 comet" session Neil

When I observed these two a few nights back I found Palomar a lot smaller than Atlas but not as faint as the then billed magnitude 12 would have me believe.

Hoping to observe tonight so I'll probably have another look at them.

For what it's worth I've never seen any colour in the Veil nebula but the largest aperture scope I've observed it with is 12 inches. Plus I'm 60+ now so colour perception might not be my forte now !

I bought my ED120 Pro (an older, "gold tube" one) from an experienced SGL member many years back and also, from the same member, purchased an excellent Intes made MN61 6 inch F/5.9 maksutov-newtonian. I owned these two scopes for some months comparing them carefully on a range of target types. Eventually I concluded that on the moon and planets both scopes were pretty much equal in capability. On deep sky objects the additional aperture of the mak-newtonian showed a little more but there was not a lot in it.

Eventually I decided to stick with the ED120 because it cooled down quite a bit more quickly than the mak-newtonian and was lighter and therefore required a less solid mount.

I would imagine (I've not used one) that a good quality 6 inch F/8 newtonian would perform similarly to the 6 inch F/5.9 mak-newt with it's tiny central obstruction but the newt will cool down more quickly.

I've been, and continue to be, very happy and impressed my my example of an ED120 refractor as I'm sure I've mentioned many times on the forum. Mine does have a Moonlite focuser upgrade which is a very nice addition. Otherwise it's "stock".