John

12 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

Oh, please don't YOU start, John!!.. 😱🥵😭..

..you're supposed to be the sensible one!! 😂😄

Sorry Dave - getting a bit "stir crazy" here 🤪

24 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

I'll answer that question by quoting directly from a post I made on the Astro Lounge New Years Resolutions thread.  

 

"this year my list of Astro resolutions is short! -

- enjoy every session possible (and I now have a great little 60mm refractor for those short 20 minute "windows" of opportunity).

- avoid wherever possible the use of the word "handle" in any posts I make, however hard @Jeremy tries to tempt me!

Clear skies to everyone!

Dave"

I keep my resolutions..😇

Dave

You need to get a grip on yourself Dave .......

41 minutes ago, HutchStar said:

I'm trying with an 8 inch reflector. 48 times magnification. Do I need more magnification or less?

Less. It may be easier to see M33 in a 50mm finder scope than in your main 8 inch scope, ironically.

It appears as a faint hazy patch framed by a rhomboid formed by 4 faintish stars. This is M33 at 27x with a 130mm newtonian, drawing by Martijn Straub:

I tend to avoid electrics and tech associated with astro equipment. My DIY skills and tools are limited as well. My gear is off the peg and manually operated. I am very curious about the sky though so enjoy hunting for targets using star charts, finder scopes and low power eyepieces.

I have learned to collimate a scope reasonably well I think and I know when I see a good star test. I have learned how to star hop and have a reasonable repertoir of objects that I can find from memory now.

Not much of a list really

34 minutes ago, HutchStar said:

I found M1 relatively easily but I can see why people struggle. Think it was a fluke I found it because calling it a smudge would be overstating it. It was a whisp of a smudge which I just happened to catch a glimpse of in the corner of my eye.

The messier object thats driving me nuts at the moment is M33, pinwheel galaxy. I feel like it should be easy-ish to see but I've tried for hours without luck.

M33 is another where the stated magnitude is very misleading as a guide to potential visibility because it is an extended object and the actual surface brightness of the galaxy is much lower than the integrated magnitude figure of 5.7. As a face on spiral it does have a core but the brightness of that area is not much greater than that of the spiral arms that surround it.

I have never seen M33 naked eye but I have seen it with 7x35 binoculars on a dark night here. Through scopes quite often and it is worth finding because it is one of the very few galaxies that contain deep sky objects (nebulae in this case) that can be seen fairly readily with amateur scopes, the star forming HII region NGC 604 in particular. The trick is to find M33 in the first place though !

Here are my two cases - the 1.25 inch set and the 2 inch set. I've edited out the case handles because it's a family forum

I'm impressed by those who have managed to get down to minimalist collections. I have tried but I'm weak where eyepieces are concerned

I have a gap in the top left of the 1.25 inch case as well - that's going to have to be filled with something

Where you notice additional aperture is the resolution of deep sky objects such as globular clusters (actually particularly those). On high resolution targets such as the moon, planets and double stars, the difference will be less and the 200P with it's F/6 focal ratio and smaller secondary might even have the edge.

I've owned and used lots of the Skywatcher dobs. Optically they are very good. I doubt the Bresser is any better in terms of optical performance. What the Bresser does have though is a better designed mounting arrangement and a better quality focuser.

The finder mounts on the Bressers are not as good as the Skywatchers in my opinion.

I have owned a couple of the EQ5 Skywatcher 200P's as well. These are F/5 rather than the F/6 of the dobsonian so need a little more care in collimation and are harsher on lower cost eyepieces. Being a visual only observer, I don't find the equatorial mounts provide any benefits and the viewing angles and portability are impacted negatively. Form imaging though, the equatorial mount has big advantages over the dobsonian.

These are all decent, well tried and tested scopes though, with their own strengths and weaknesses, as all scopes have. Unless you have access to extremely dark skies I'm not sure the views of most deep sky objects will "blow you away". They will be slightly brighter and more extensive smudges of light than smaller aperture scopes show (being realistic here !). Jupiter and Saturn can be very nice with such scopes - when they are conveniently placed in the sky (which they are not really, currently).

Pick the one that fits your budget best I would suggest

Thanks for the update. Good to know that you now have a nice clean scope to enjoy and be proud of

When I've compared my Vixen ED102SS (which was the predecessor to the ED103S I think and F/6.5 rather than F/7.7) to my Tak FC100-DL the main differences that I've noted are:

- The star test of the Vixen shows a slightly brighter and thicker 1st diffraction ring around mag 3 and brighter stars than the Tak does. One practical upshot of this is that the Tak handles very close, uneven brightness double stars a little more easily. 

- The Vixen takes quite a bit longer to cool down fully than the Tak does.

- The Tak images remain sharp at higher magnifications than with the Vixen. The Vixen generally seems to be maxed out at around 225x whereas the Tak stays sharp up to 280x and even 300x on a good night.

I would be interested to see how the F/7.7 ED103S compares with the F/8 Tak FC100-DZ

I had a nice view of M1 a couple of nights back with my 12 inch dob. I was using a 17mm 92 degree eyepiece (94x) and an Astronomik UHC filter. Some hints of that filamentary structure were starting to show against the more nebulous areas and that "S" slightly on it's side shape was subtly indicated. This is not my sketch but shows the structure:

3 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Probably something like an AP1200 or AP1600 mount or a Parallax HD300C would do nicely. 😉

Pretty much as I thought - many times more than the scope cost me

11 minutes ago, Tyson M said:

My favorite scope to date- 9" Istar f7.7!

It is massive but the views are worth it.

Amazing looking scope !

Is that the 228mm achromat objective ?

The DM6 mount by the look of it - they are strong !

Not specifying the glass types ?????

Oh, they won't like that on another forum that I can think of

But I guess it does provided the excuse for long threads making guesses !

The seeing was quite good here (North Somerset) last night despite the cold. There can be very local issues that can spoil that though and it's when you try and use higher magnifications that you notice where the "drop off" occurs.

Lots of central heating plumes in a certain direction, for example, can cause localised poor seeing.

Your collimation looks a little off but not by much.

I usually check and collimate my scope at a 45 degree angle rather than horizontal.

I find that collimation is not affected particularly by the cold but eyepieces that get cold can mist up very quickly from the body heat from your eye. This is not apparent until you try and view something and it is frustrating when suddenly what was clear can't be bought to sharp focus.

For this reason I keep my eyepieces a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature. If I leave one in the scope for a while I try and remember to pop it back in the case to warm up for a bit.

26 minutes ago, Spile said:

True but with an EP you might be lucky enough to find M32 or even M110. I know I found one of them last night when looking at the fuzzy centre of M31. Now remind me - which is up and which is right a bit?

Yep - you can get a "3 for 1" deal with a low power eyepiece

M110 is quite a bit fainter than M31 and M32 though, especially if there is some light pollution around. Nice triple galaxy possibility though.

Nice shots folks. Interesting object.

I managed to track it down visually with my 100mm refractor a while back. Quite hard work with that aperture, visually !:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/350271-ngc-2419-a-very-very-distant-globular-cluster/

13 minutes ago, Jasonb said:

Well that all makes sense and is well explained, thanks!

So basically, as long as the threads of the Barlow can get enough 'grip' (let's say a few turns) in an eyepiece, you can still use it even if it's not fully screwed in? Assuming that the Barlow barrel above the threads has enough room inside the eyepiece and the eyepiece lenses etc. don't get in the way? And all of that assuming you can still get a decent focus point and eye relief distance?

Sounds fine to me, looking forward to trying it out now!

 

Yes, as long as the barlow element is able to be securely screwed in and it does not contact the lower eyepiece optical element, you should get some form of amplification of the eyepiece. Probably somewhere between 1.2x and 1.5x ?

I tried it with a 4mm non-Baader ortho eyepiece and it worked quite well.

I ought to add that using the lens element set of this barlow screwed directly into an eyepiece barrel needs a good 15mm or so clearance up inside the eyepiece barrel to get it to fit. Many eyepiece designs today have lower lens sets within the 1.25 inch barrels which reduce the amount of clearance quite considerably so you just cant fit the barlow lens in. The thread that screws into the filter thread of the eyepiece barrel is on the lower end of the barlow optical set so you have to be able to insert the whole of what is quite a thick lens set before the thread engages. Also you do not want the barlow lens set to contact the lower lens of the eyepiece.

Generally orthos and plossls and work OK with this but not more complex designs. The amplification might vary from 1.3x depending on the eyepiece used. I suspect 1.3x refers to using it with the Baader Classic eyepieces.

Hope that all makes some sense !

I have one of those and use it a lot.

The optical element of a barlow lens has a focal length like an eyepiece does. The distance between the lowest lens element in an eyepiece and the barlow lens together with the focal length of the barlow lens determines the amplification that you get, ie: 1.3x, 1.5x, 2x etc, etc. The further that the eyepiece lower element and the barlow lens elements are apart, the larger the amplification factor.

This works Ok within a certain range and you can actually get a variable barlow lens (Meade made one in the past) where the barlow element could be slid along the tube and locked to vary the amplification given. Quite a lot of zoom eyepieces work on a similar principle with a sliding amplification element situated below a fixed upper element both built into the body of the eyepiece with a twist mechanism to vary the distance between them.

The thing you have to watch for as you change the spacing between the eyepiece optics and the barlow optics is that the focal position of the combination tends to change as the spacing increases with the impact being that bringing the combination to focus in a scope can get awkward if the scope focuser does not have enough travel. Also the eye relief of the eyepiece can get extended to the point where finding and holding the correct eye position can get tricky. 

So that's why I said it works OK within a certain range. 

The Baader VIP modular barlow lens works on this principle with quite a wide range of amplifications being possible using various spacers. It uses a higher optical quality lens than the Q-Turret 2.25x barlow, and better fitments generally, hence the higher price:

 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/barlow-eyepieces/baader-vip-modular-2x-barlow-lens-125-and-2.html

Personally I use my Q-Turret 2.25x barlow in it's 2.25x mode with a zoom eyepiece and the whole combination works really rather well as a 9.55x - 3.2x zoom

12 hours ago, Gazereths said:

..I do remember my grandad left me a pair of Zeiss binoculars but can't lay my hands on them at the moment. Has the quality of lenses and coatings made the vintage ones obsolete nowdays?  Or are high quality vintage still good?....

 

 

I have a couple of pairs of the Zeiss Jena 8x30's one of which is about 40 years old and also a pair of 8x30's made by Swarovski in Austria which are a similar age. The body condition reflects their age and a lot of use but optically the views are really crisp and bright.

Another good quality if a little old fashioned make are the Russian Komz or Tento branded ones. They are rugged, usually reasonably priced and optically very sound.

Very nice report !

It was a lovely clear, if cold, night here as well.

Once you have had a break from observing it is very nice to get back into it and re-visit "old friends"

First chance tonight since I posted this thread.

I took the "sledgehammer to crack a nut" approach with the 12 inch dobsonian. I didn't think the seeing was that great but E & F Trapezium were showing fairly easily so I gave Sirius a go when it rose above the rooftops.

Once my eye had adjusted to the glare from the star, I found that I could spot the Pup star fairly readily as a point of light gleaming shyly though the outer "skirts" of the glare from it's far brighter companion using 268x (6mm eyepiece). The Pup star was trailing Sirius A as it drifted across the field of view. I was able to repeat this at 199x (8mm EP0 and 338x (4.7mm EP) but I think that the 6mm made things just a touch easier.

Pleased to see the Pup again for the first time this season

Nice report !

I visited Australia for a month in 2018. We had great weather but mostly cloudy nights. I did manage to use my 8x56 binoculars a few times and observed the Magellanic Clouds and also the wonderful globular cluster 47 Tucanae close to the SMC (in line of sight terms). Wonderful sights

Wish I'd been able to spend more time observing while down there

We will have to come back again !