John

1 hour ago, Moonlit Night said:

Well there you go. So the question is why aren’t refractors made in the UK? 

 

It's off topic but there is / was I R Poyser:

IR Poyser – Telescope Makers | Makers of fine Brass Telescopes in the traditional style

And also we had Moonraker Telescopes:

Moonraker Telescopes - Home

And, again in the past, Skylight Telescopes.

All niche instruments, I guess. 

A topic for another thread perhaps ?

18 minutes ago, radiofm74 said:

Speaking of Naglers… ;D

My dratted C8 weights in at 6.2 kgs complete with its finders and diagonal. So in one of my applications (C8 on tracking Advanced Polaris), I'm ever so slightly above payload and every gram counts. 

I might still take the UFF 24 + Morpheus route, or I might take the Pan + ES82° route. Night will bring counsel.

But since "light and quality" is the name of the game, and assuming I could negotiate a good discount for the whole package from a dealer I know, what would you think of an "all TV" set?

- Panoptic 24
- Nagler T5 16 or T6 13 (which would be your suggestion?)
- Nagler T6 9
- Nagler T6 5

I've seen that eye relief on these is 12mm. For an observer that does not use glasses would it be uncomfortable? It's the last option I'll explore, promised…

PS: concerning the shorter focal lengths. I usually use a reducer on my SCTs so I don't think that a 4.5-5mm EP would be redundant. And it would be positively precious with my 420, 625 and 920 focal length refractors all the while respecting a minimum 0.5 eye pupil. 

I used to have that set - with the T6 13mm instead of the T5 16mm. Because my scopes were shorter focal length than the C8 I also had the T6 7mm, 3.5mm and for a time the T6 2.5mm but that did not get much use. 

Very fine eyepieces in my opinion. I don't wear glasses and found the eye relief OK for me. Others may vary in that though.

46 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

.... So the sketch and star placements are just roughly executed......

 

Your rough ones are around 10x better than my finished works Mike 👍

12 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

It would be great if someone has an APM UFF 30mm or equivalent to compare it against. I love the APM but will sometimes wonder whether one of these would be worth it for the extra FOV

Jon Issacs posted these thoughts last year on the CN forum:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/888547-question-regarding-30mm-eps/?p=12895994

Al Nagler kindly loaned me this a few years back to trial - I must give it a go sometime, when I'm feeling strong 😉

(I should have posted this in a months time !)

22 hours ago, JeremyS said:

I seem to remember someone on here saying these aren’t too shabby, so thought I’d try

They are a bit special - it feels like a little "event" just carrying it out and putting it in the scope ! 😁

20 minutes ago, Moonlit Night said:

I used to enjoy a 25 mm Tal plossl with my 100 R

Cracking eyepiece, those TAL 25mm's 👍

Best stock eyepiece ever supplied with a scope I shouldn't wonder.

Lightweight 70mm setup this evening because of the uncertain conditions. 

In between the clouds the scope showed some nice views of various targets in and around Orion, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Ursa Major.

In particular I was pleased with a nice display of the 3 stars of Beta Mon at 105x, M81 and M82 showing clearly at a paltry 14x, Rigel's companion at 100x and I even managed a glimpse of NGC 2903 in Leo so that is around 30 million light years away. 

The 70mm F/6 ED objective seems well figured. Although the Pup stayed in it's kennel (quelle surprise !) Sirius showed some nice diffraction rings and a clear airy disk rather than the blaze of light that you sometimes get.

Looking forward to taking this setup away to dark skies later in the year 🙂

Uncertainty over the conditions tonight has led to a very lightweight approach. I can carry this 70mm setup in and out with one hand 🙂

In between the clouds, the views are rather nice 👍

I tried all the Vixen SSW's a few years back. They were good but had some flaws particularly with regards to eye positioning and outer field performance I thought. Your mileage may vary of course 🙂

Vixen SSW Ultra Wide Angle Eyepieces: Review - Member Equipment Reviews - Stargazers Lounge

I had the ES 24 / 68 before I had the Panoptic 24. Not a lot between them in all honesty. 

This is the Messier list from the Deep Sky Corner website:

Messier Catalogue / Object Descriptions | Deep⋆Sky Corner (deepskycorner.ch)

Clicking on an object gives observing tips, finder charts and illustrations of many can look in an eyepiece as well as the more spectacular images.

Quite a while back I had an LS50 with the FT upgrade. My 1st experience of FT focusing excellence. The original helical focuser was also supplied but that looked rather basic to say the least.

At least that old mantra "low cost / wide field / sharp across the field in fast scopes = pick any two" is to some extent being challenged by some of todays eyepieces. 

Many years ago, when I had F/10 scopes, I indulged my taste for ultra-wide fields of view with these Japanese made Widescan III eyepieces. I really enjoyed them at F/10 but the outer field became distorted at F/8 and they were not very nice at all when I tried them in my newly aquired Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 - astigmatism galore !!!

The design is still around through chinese clones but I believe their behaviour is just as unruly in faster scopes than F/10 🙄

Around that time I also invested quite a lot in the 13.8mm, 18mm and 24.5mm Meade 4000 SWA eyepieces, again Japanese made back then. These proved nice at F/10 (doesn't almost everything ?) but the edge sharpness fell apart once you got to F/8 and faster. Given their cost and that they were being touted as Panoptic rivals, I was pretty disappointed in them as my scopes got faster.

When I have owned cassegrain type scopes (not Mewlons alas) I have felt that they had the potential to show excellent star definition, sharpness and contrast but the designs, with their relatively large central obstruction, needed to be accurately collimated to enable this. Even small misalignment of the mirrors can scrub a noticeable edge off performance. There is a well known web page somewhere illustrating this but I can't recall where just now.

I know that the Mewlon secondary obstruction is not quite as large as an SCT's or the primary as fast but they are still instruments with relatively large CO's and relatively fast (F/3 ?) primary mirrors so I would think that accurate collimation is still quite important to getting the best from them, as is cool down of course.

I've read quite a few reviews of the 180 and 210 Mewlons (I may well be interested in one someday 🙂) and I think they all mentioned both the need to tweak collimation following some initial slight concerns with the quality of views and to allow quite long cool down periods, depending where the scope has been stored prior to observing. Once these issues had been addressed the reports are consistently of excellent performance I'm pleased to say 🙂 

My choices are usually either Tele Vue or Pentax although lately I've added the excellent Svbony 3mm-8mm zoom to my 1.25 inch selection and it certainly seems to keep pace with the more expensive brands in that set. These are my 1.25 inch options:

24mm Panoptic, 19mm Panoptic

14mm Delos

10mm, 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm Pentax XW

Svbony 3mm=8mm zoom

Nagler 2mm-4mm zoom

I'm very happy with this set now - mostly bought from the used market to make the £'s go a bit further !

I don't wear glasses when observing and I'm comfortable with eye relief down to around 8mm but a little more is nice.

There is some focal length duplication within the set so it could be reduced in number - I am a bit of an "ocularholic" 🙄

I know Skywatchers but I've not actually seen a Saxon or a Bintel over here in the UK.

Looking at the photos of them, I would day that the Saxon was identical to the Skywatcher, probably made by the same manufacturer, Synta. The Bintel looks to me to be a GSO made scope so the same as the Stellalyra branded dobsonians sold here by First Light Optics:

StellaLyra 12" f/5 Dobsonian | First Light Optics

Plenty of discussions on the forum along the lines of Skywatcher vs Stellalyra / GSO. Generally, optically they seem to be equal but the GSO made scopes seem better equipped.

9 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

I've seen it a few times with the 4". Usually the problem is seeing conditions here that low down.

I suspect that folks who observe in more southerly latitudes wonder what all the fuss is about !

I fitted the Vixen GP and the GP-DX to my EQ5/HEQ5 compatible Uni 28 without any issues. That has an M10 screw.

The EQ5 was more or less a copy of the GP so probably not a surprise.

Dust cap for the eyepiece of a Skywatcher finder scope. Lost in the dark and in long grass at my society observatory. I'll manage without it, I guess ........

The Stelle Doppie database has a tab which gives a number of list options. Populars (10K of them) is the default but there are other options / selections down the left hand side of the webpage including filters and export options:

Populars - Stelle Doppie - Double Star Database

Wonderful colours 👍

I started this thread in the observing section last year with some more tips in:

It's that season again - the hunt for "the Pup Star" - Sirius B - Page 2 - Observing - Discussion - Stargazers Lounge

Lots of times over the past decade or so. Starting out with a 12 inch dob and gradually working my way down, eventually, to being able to see it under really good conditions with my 100mm refractor. No filters or occulting bars although I have tried them from time to time. Just steady seeing.

I find around 200x - 250x is the optimum magnification. Eyepieces / optics with low levels of light scatter preferred. 

It's a good time now because the separation is about as much as it gets - around 11 arc seconds. The secondary star is still usually immersed in the glare from the primary though and that's the trick - spotting the "Pup" amongst Sirius A's halo of light.