John

Great report Nick ! It was lovely to be out last night

Some excellent catches there with the big mak !

You are absolutely right - it does take lots of time to build up the skills and experience. You seem to be going about things the right way though so my suggestion is simply to keep at it. You will have ups and downs, successes and failures but that is the way of it I think. Try and give yourself an "easy win"at the end of each session so that you end on a high note 😀

I've packed the scopes in now. It's still clear but it has got a little "milky". I was finding mag 9.5 galaxies none too easy and then I noticed a fine fogging on my primary mirror as well as a milkiness in the sky. The galaxy with the SN in is a mag fainter so I figured that tonight was not really a good one for that challenge, all in all. Plus I'm cold and fancy a glass of warm Shiraz before turning in

I guess we can't complain - the theoretical resolution limit (Dawes) for a 4 inch scope is 1.14 arc seconds. The Zeta2 pair are 1.11 arc seconds I think so our scopes are doing pretty well in the probably-not-too-perfect UK January seeing

I'm observing Tegmine with my Tak FC100-DL tonight. I can't quite split the close pair (Zeta2, 1.11 arc seconds I think) consistently and convincingly but I am getting a heavily "notched" pair as per the illustration below. Maybe a split during moments of best seeing ?. The split between Zeta1 and Zeta2 is no problem at all. I was using magnifications from 225x to 360x. 300x was probably the optimum.

I'm still out there. I've got the Tak 100 out as well to give the dob some company. It's fun comparing the views of targets with such a difference in aperture. The seeing is not too bad here but is not 100%. The dob is splitting stars down to an arc second separation but the star images are not tight and text book like the Tak refractor shows. Both scopes showed the Eskimo Nebula rather well, the dob at 338x and the refractor at 225x. The central star and "layered" structure of the nebula was visible in both scopes but the contrast between the central zone of the nebula and the outer layer (the Eskimo's parka hood) was more marked with the 12 inch scope as you would expect. The 12 was showing Sirius B intermittently as the seeing fluctuated but the 100mm Tak didn't although the view of Sirius A through the refractor was much tidier. Trapezium E & F very obvious with the big dob but just E tonight with the smaller refractor. The challenging triple star Tegmine (Zeta Cancri) showed as a single star plus a touching pair with the refractor whereas the 12 inch dob split the close pair clearly. Good fun and nice to be out

I don't but the forum software just just been upgraded (about an hour ago) and hovering over that hand gives me the message that you "joined recently" so I guess it is a new feature ?

Ok - that's not the same as the one I was talking about but it is a very good accessory to have with the Baader Zoom.

I use the Baader 2.25x Q-Turret barlow. Mostly with a 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom to give a high power zoom eyepiece (9.5mm - 3.2mm). This combination works pretty well. I don't tend to use barlows / telextenders / Powermate's with my other eyepieces now though, just with the zoom. The Baader 2.25x does seem a nice optic. They kept the body work simple though. No compression ring fitting, just a set screw.

Just exploring some of the nice crater chains close to the terminator before the Moon goes behind our house. Fascinating features. This one is in the walled plain of Deslandres, to the south of the Rupes Recta:

Sorry to hear that Mark. I have a scope cover on standby but it looks OK at the moment here. Uranus is just 1.4 degrees from Mars so easy to find tonight - just go "down" a bit from Mars. Both easily fitting into the field of view of my 9x50 finder and I can just about fit the pair in the same field with the 12 inch dob if I use the 31mm Nagler. Uranus disk looks bluer tonight than last time I observed it. Perhaps that is the proximity of the bright Moon having an effect ? Got to have a break for supper now. Fingers crossed for more of this later 🤞

Clearish night forecast tonight and it does indeed look that way As my 12 inch dob cools down I've been catching some early views of Mars and the Moon with a 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom eyepiece so that I can adjust the magnification to suit. The seeing seems steady currently. Mars 8.6 arc second disk clearly defined at 221x with some dark areas showing across the southern hemisphere of the planet. The Moon's phase is really nice just now. The Rupes Recta (Straight Wall) and the Birt craters are very close to the terminator with strong shadows strongly emphasizing the rugged folds and clefts in the lunar landscape. The Apollo 15 landing site in the Lunar Apennines is also really well placed and illuminated. The sinuous form of the Hadley Rillle can be traced as it wriggles through the foothills and crosses the plain in front of Mount Hadley which Scott and Irwin explored in the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The Lunar Alpine Valley is very nicely presented as well. The illumination looks suitable for spotting that elusive rille that runs down the valley floor perhaps ? Hopefully this will continue for a few hours yet to make up for the past 10 days or so of unremitting cloud cover here ! If it stays clear, as well as the usual Orion favourites and some Leo galaxies I'd like to try and see that supernova in NGC 4414 while it still has some brightness in it: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/369912-supernova-2021j-in-ngc-4414/?tab=comments#comment-4023877

That's a very thorough and analytical approach I have a spreadsheet set up with my scope specs loaded and can then plug in any other eyepieces that I am thinking about to get the basic figures on what they deliver in terms of magnification and true field of view. One snag with that approach is that the specs supplied by the manufacturers are sometimes wide of the mark, occasionally well wide What they actually deliver in terms of image sharpness across the field of view, field flatness or otherwise, eye relief accessibility, ergonomics, etc, etc seems to be a more qualitative business for which there seems to be no alternative but to try them out and see how they fare I was very lucky that FLO kindly provided me with a regular stream of eyepieces on loan to try out and report back on I hope you reach a satisfying conclusion in the not to distant future By the way, I have recently owned one of the Extra Flat 27mm eyepieces. Mine was branded "Orion" but it was the same as the other clones of this eyepiece. The AFoV did seem to be around 53 degrees as stated. The eyepiece was nice to use in a 90mm mak-cassegrain and 70mm F/6.8 refractor but even in the latter the stars in the outer part of the field were looking astigmatic and I was not keen on the eyepiece in my F/5.3 12 inch dobsonian at all really. But for what it cost me (used) the eyepiece was well made and good to use in the slower scopes.

Clear sky forecast tonight so I may have a chance of this one

I've done a bit of imaging using a phone held over the eyepiece and found, as Stu says, that the positioning of the phone camera over the eyepiece lens is really critical to the results. A tiny movement or tilt and the image is skewed or over exposed, out of focus or all three ! I now use a low cost phone holder which helps keep the "sweet spot" positioning. I find that I use the "zoom" feature on the phone camera combined with a zoom eyepiece which together give some room for framing and increasing or decreasing the image scale. The phone software actually does quite a good job of getting a decent exposure and sharp focus if you can get things lined up and keep them there.

Hello, I'm not sure that I have actually tried with the Tak 100 since I posted that report. Cancer will be getting more favourably placed for me over the next month so I will remember to give it a try next time that I have that scope out It should make a fine challenge if the seeing is good.

I think you are probably correct. I have a Celestron branded (same as the SW) 90/1000 (F/11.1) optical tube which also looks exactly the same but longer. Same objective cell, dew cap design and same focuser design. The F/11.1 version would be too much for the AZ-Pronto though. The F/7.3 version might be OK though - maybe thats why they introduced the shorter tube version, to give lighter mounts a chance ?

Tegmine is a fun challenge with smaller scopes:

It looks lovely - congratulations !

I find this a great online resource for data on double stars: https://www.stelledoppie.it/index2.php?section=1

I think I would be trying to remove the fork part of the mount and replacing that with a post with a robust pan / tilt head mounted on it. The binocular mounting bracket would then go on top of that. If you have an old photo tripod the central post and pan / tilt head can usually be removed and you might find that would then fit into the socket where the fork mount head had been ?

I agree that is a Skywatcher or Celestron branded EQ5 mount. William Optics do have an alt-azimuth mount with their branding on it (the EZ Touch) and an equatorial mount (the EQ35) but the one in those links is not one of those.

It seems an interesting idea, to me, to carefully capture and process photons that have travelled many light years to reach here and then to add an optical effect created by unncessary hardware added a metre or so away from the imaging chip But, I'm not an imager, so what do I know

I'm not sure that dobsonians are suited to observatories. A roll-off shed where the whole shed moves is probably a better idea: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/273274-roll-off-dob-shed/ Anything with walls more than a couple of feet high is going to impede the way that the dobsonian mount works. The dob works best when it is out in the open.