John

The moon will have been having quite an impact on the visibility of the Orion Nebula and other similar deep sky objects. For the best views of such targets, wait for a moonless night. As said above, Mars is now receding rapidly. I was observing it at 300x last night and it still was only a small pink disk in the eyepiece with vague hints of the darker surface features. The scope you have chosen is a good one though so no worries there. Deep sky objects will look much better with no moon around. Mars will be back at a better size again but not for a while I'm afraid - Autumn / Winter 2022. Lots to keep you occupied until then though - have fun !

Yes - I reported another yesterday: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/370832-ebay-scam-scope/ Could be another half dozen on there by now !

Double stars where there is a significant brightness difference between the component stars are more difficult to split. The most extreme example is Sirius. The actual gap between Sirius A and Sirus B is currently about 11 arc seconds which is a touch more than the gap between Rigel and it's companion star but the huge brightness difference (Sirius A is 10 magnitudes or 10,000x brighter than Sirius B ) is what makes the pair so hard to split. Unequal brightness doubles with close separations are tough challenges for the seeing conditions, the optical instruments and the observer but satisfying when they are eventually split

I got it setup last Summer and had a couple of sessions with it. It's wobbly on the alt-az mount and the .965 eyepieces seemed minute but the optics are really quite good

My first one (with an old Tasco 60mm refractor) was Algieba (Gamma Leonis). I was really amazed when I saw those two golden yellow disks almost touching at 60x or so. One of those "blink in disbelief" moments I do still enjoy looking at that one and occasionally dust down the old Tasco to re-live my first sighting.

It has been clear again here since my last post but I think sometimes you have to draw a line and do something else.

Hey - it cleared, and I put the scope out again ! Scope got cool, put eyepiece in to look at Sirius. No Sirius. No clear sky ...... again ! Given up now for tonight - fed up with behaving like a yo-yo

Totally agree I owned the much admired Leica ASPH zoom for a while. That one has an apparent field that ranges between 60 and 80 degrees. The focal range is not as much as the Baader and some others at 17.8mm - 8.9mm but it works extremely well with the Baader VIP barlow and various extensions to give a wider range. The Leica ASPH and my current Tele Vue Nagler 2mm-4mm zooms are the only ones that I have used that have truly matched the optical quality of really good fixed focal length equivalents. But then they should do - the Nagler zoom costs £390.00 and the Leica ASPH £750.00 ! The other zoom that I currently use is a clone of the Hyperflex 7.2mm - 21.5mm which I usually use with a Baader 2.25x barlow to create a 9.55mm - 3.2mm high power zoom which competes surprisingly well with quality fixed FL alternatives such as the Pentax XW's. When the chips are down and I want the best views though, I do opt for a fixed FL eyepiece. One of the experienced members here uses a Celestron Regal zoom and gives it the thumbs up for astro use but I can't recall what scope they use it in ? Zooms have come a long way from the awful things that were around a few decades back though.

Clever stuff ! G looks a lot tougher than E & F visually - nice to see that it and the H's actually exist though

Yep - I've now got that cloud that @Zermelo mentioned above I found the 20mm that the ED120 had over the Tak 100 took Tegmine from "heavily notched" to "split". One of the reasons that I have held onto the ED120 despite obtaining the Tak 100 and the LZOS 130 - it's optics are superb and it is a very easy to handle and rugged near-5 inch refractor

Lovely crisp moon this evening through my Tak FC100 refractor. Aristarchus, Schroters Valley and the nearby Marius Dome Field are close to the terminator and really well illuminated. Aristarchus is showing streaks and other textures on it's inner wall surfaces. Great area of the moons surface for the small scope (and large ones !) Just look at the details that the LRO Camera managed to capture http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/592 Just got to try about 10,000x magnification and see if I can get that Taks are good but even they have their limits ......

It's quite nice here just now. How long it will last, we just don't know ! (said in best Sir Patrick Moore voice )

Quite a bit of hazy cloud around here currently. I've put the Tak FC100 out anyway although it hardly needs any cooling time.

I agree that the safety harness could prove useful. I pop my finder on and off my dob quite often though so it would probably get in the way for me.

It's sort of a mixed forecast here tonight. Nice morning but clouded up now. Light clouds though. Might get some time at an eyepiece with a refractor later if we get some clear spells.

This star hop route to M81 and M82 works very well with an optical finder:

Some items come up time and time again. They seem to pick very high status items in the hope to provoke a knee jerk reaction I think Must be frustrating if you are the legitimate owner to see your pride and joy coming up for sale over and over again.

Excellent haul wookie and nice sketches too ! Always great to get a "first" as well

I would also never lift an optical tube using the finder / finder bracket. The only scopes that I know of where where this is designed to be a feature are the Takahashi Mewlons.

All nebulae will look better in a dark sky regardless of whether a filter is used or not. Filters like the UHC and O-III enhance the contrast of emission nebula by permitting the wavelengths of light that they emit while excluding most other wavelengths. So they help to see the nebula a bit more under moonlit conditions but under a dark sky will have even more impact.

Just in case anyone is tempted, the e.bay Nikon refractor below is a scam sale. The real scope is on sale from APM Telescopes in Germany (2nd link): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Telescope-Nikon-100-MM-For-1200-MM-Ed-Apochromatic-Lens-Refractor-Telescoping/143927866091?hash=item2182c4f2eb:g:uHAAAOSwxwZgDoOn https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/offers--lists/secondhand/nikon-100-mm-f-1200-mm-ed-apo-refractor-telescope.html I'll report it when I get time.

You can still be into astronomy without having loads of kit. I sold my scope when our kids came along and had around 10 years without anything other than binoculars , a few books and "Astronomy Now" magazine. No forums back then either. The interest in space and astronomy did not go away though. By the time I was in a position, and had the desire, to buy a decent scope again, the price of equipment had actually come down quite a bit, relatively speaking, so for a relatively modest sum I was able to get a good scope and re-learned how to observe. It is only a hobby. We should never feel trapped by it. People are welcome on SGL armed with nothing other than an interest

After a little initial tweaking I rather like the Tak R&P that my FC100-DL has. It's F/9 though so perhaps dual speed is less essential, at least for the purely visual observer like myself ? I have a Moonlite on my ED120 and a Feathertouch on my LZOS 130 which are also very nice though. If I was to change the focuser on the Tak it would be to a Feathertouch. It makes even the Moonlite seem a little ordinary.