John

I just use a single polarising filter with my Lunt 1.25 inch Herschel wedge. On the bottom of the eyepiece, you can control the brightness of the image by rotating the eyepiece. The light comes through the wedge polarised in one plane so you just need the single polarising filter between it and the eyepiece.

I've been having a clear out and have come across my very early observing notes and sketches. Most of these date back to the 1983-85 period when I had just got my first scope - a 1960's Tasco 60mm refractor !

It is interesting to re-read my "early discoveries" and to re-capture just a touch of the excitement that I was feeling back then. I had forgotten the sketches that I used to do so I thought it worthwhile to scan a few for posterity.

This first one was done in my pre-telescope days when I was just using mum and dads 8x30 binoculars (Prinz branded I seem to recall). Funny how I added the diffraction spikes to the stars in this one . It shows the comet Iras-Iraki-Alcock moving between Ursa Minor and Ursa Major over a period of 24 hours between the 9th and 10th of May 1983. This comet came closer to the Earth than any other had for 200 years at that time.

The next sketches were all made using my 60mm Tasco refractor using the stock eyepieces at 45x, 66x or 133x. I'm surprised that I managed to capture some features on Mars with that small scope. I remember trying like anything to see the Cassini Division but never managed it with that scope, no matter how much I used "averted imagination"

The Sun was clearly quite active back then. Like a good boy, I threw away the dangerous solar filter that came with the scope and used eyepiece projection onto a card screen selotaped to the projection screen that was provided with the scope. The details seen were pretty good for this basic equipment and inexperienced observer I guess. Quite enough to get me hooked and 37 years on I'm still doing this stuff. I really ought to do some more sketching though

2 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

I like this option, seems the morpheus are very popular. I would like to try one out to see if they are as good as the reports suggest. Never noticed the APM 100 series before, have you tried one out @John

The nearest that I have used are the Myriad 100's Steve, which Don Pensack assures me are the same optics as the APM / LUNT 100's but with a differently designed top / eye cup section. I was quite impressed with those. I ought to point out though, for completeness, that I was not using a coma corrector for the testing with my dobsonian and no field flattener with the refractors used

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/236613-skywatcher-myriad-100-110-degree-apparent-field-eyepieces/

I thought the 20mm was the most enjoyable to use.

This is a USA based TAL vendor. They might be able to help:

http://talteleoptics.com/

I tend to feel that an interactive, iterative process involving questions and responses from both the enquirer and from experienced members is likely to result, ultimately, in better tailored options than a more structured, formulaic, approach.

Yes, a number of the questions asked and answers given will involve some repetition but that process also provides the opportunity for the enquirer to learn about why certain choices have certain implications and also to build their relationship with the existing forum membership.

SGL is after all an astronomy discussion forum 

I've never used them but I would probably go for some of the Baader Morpheus as well because I've heard so many good things about them. I'd select 4 from the Morpheus range (14mm, 9mm, 6.5mm and 4.5mm perhaps)  and also an APM / LUNT 20mm / 100 which could just be squeezed out of the budget I think.

Hi Ron,

Very nice to hear from you again !

Today and this evening have been a total washout here as predicted

Very glad that we been able to observe the pair quite a few times as they approached each other.

Just as well that this is an event that unfolds over a period of time - more chances for us astronomers under highly variable winter skies to get some views in

11 minutes ago, HollyHound said:

It's been quite a shame this year that the opportunities to meet with other astronomers has been hampered by the crisis, as I'm sure that getting to experience other setups, views and experience, is very useful to help decide in which direction to go 🤔

That's very true. 

18 minutes ago, HollyHound said:

No, in all seriousness I am very happy with the 70(ish) degree FoV, as I find it very relaxing to view for long periods, and the eyepieces I have for that work well now in both the dob and refractor... so I am more than content 😃

I was serious as well - after a while on forums you can sort of tell

Just now, HollyHound said:

Yet... 🤣

I certainly have no interest whatsoever in an Ethos of any kind this year either 😬

I'm not sure that they would be your "cup of tea" to be honest with you 

"try before you buy"

No window to view them today - solid cloud and rain all day and on into the night.

Glad I saw them yesterday: 9 arc minutes vs 6 arc minutes - not a lot of difference ?

4 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Hi John , the scope has a long black dovetail . Not sure if thats what they used to put on them .

The scope will have a longish dovetail bar. The mounts use dovetail clamps but the stock clamps on the Skytee II are not very well made which is why most folks upgrade them. 

Nice scopes - I've owned a couple in the past

The EQ5 is OK for visual observing (steel tripod though). A Skytee II would hold it OK if you go alt-azimuth. Need to upgrade the dovetail clamp though, for a heavy scope like that.

Yes, in some cases the 2 inch "skirt" is there as a convenience to enable a 2 inch scope connection to be used for a heavy eyepiece. The optics in these cases are still 1.25"

When the field stop of the eyepiece needs to be over 27mm, the 2 inch format barrel is required to accommodate that and the eyepiece is a "true" 2 inch one.

This graph sets out the limits for the 1.25 inch barrel :

I did an outreach session at a school last year. We did some solar viewing in h-alpha and also tried an exercise with the children to try and demonstrate the scale of the solar system. Not a video or an app but something practical.

We used a basketball to represent the Sun and a small bead to represent the Earth which were about the right relative sizes. We asked the children to think how far the Earth / bead might be from the Sun / Basketball on the same scale and they had some guesses by running off around the playground in small groups with beads (dropping their Earths a few times I might add - just as well that we had some spares !). We then positioned it at about the correct distance (about 20 metres away I think ?). We then produced a golf ball to act as Jupiter and they went running off again trying to work out where it would be relative to the Sun and Earth. The answer was somewhat further off than they expected - it was towards the edge of the school playing fields I seem to recall - a bit over 100 metres away. And finally we produced a cricket ball to represent the nearest star - Proxima Centauri and asked for guesses where that would need to be placed. The children knew that the nearest star would be a lot further away so came up with suggestions of nearby towns or even Scotland in one case. The answer did rather surprise them as it did us when we worked it out - the cricket ball would need to be in the middle of Africa to be on a similar scale and we would all need to get on an airplane to take it there !

Now the exact sizes of our representative objects might only be approximately right and similarly with the distances that we reckoned that they needed to be placed but the overall but I think that the whole exercise did at least start to illustrate the sort of scales that we are considering in astronomy. And, most importantly, it kept 8 and 9 year olds interested and active for the 30 minutes or so that it took to complete the exercise. We really enjoyed it as well 

Your scope will work quite well with a 40mm eyepiece in terms of exit pupil size but in the 1.25 inch fitting, a 40mm eyepiece will not show show any more sky than a 32mm can and the view can seem rather restricted with a 40mm 1.25 inch eyepiece. The barrel size restricts the size of the field of view that can be shown.

Fortunately, at F/10, your scope is not too fussy over the optical correction of an eyepiece so the lower cost wide angles will work quite well too. It you try them in an F/5 scope they won't do so well though.

8 minutes ago, Tiny Clanger said:

Do not fall into thinking that anyone has a more enthralling time with the night sky than you do, simply because they spent more on their kit !

Knowledge and understanding are free (what with the internet, public libraries and this forum ) and anyone willing to expend some time and effort on them will make the best of whatever tools they have , whether they cost £100 or twenty times that.

Heather

Very good point !

All your "firsts" will come with this scope and, no matter how expensive equipment you might eventually own, you can never quite re-capture the magic of those early discoveries in the hobby - the first Saturn and Jupiter, early double star catches, your first Messier objects, etc, etc.

These views are etched into your memory forever and a 90mm refractor is a great way to get acquainted with the wonders of the Universe

Honey, I shrunk the Explore Scientific

4.7mm UWA vs 17mm 92: David and Goliath:

22 minutes ago, bish said:

My 8mm ep is around .32 degree fov. The planets separation was roughly half this (or a little over). I make it about 9 arc min separation last night.

That is what Cartes du Ciel indicated as well.

My zoom at 7.2mm plus the 2.25x barlow was giving 281x in my Tak 100mm F/9 and I reckon the AfoV of the zoom plus barlow at that focal length is around 55 degrees and the true field of about .20 degree. Result: both planets easily fitted in the field of view 

That sort of power was not doing either planet, and especially Jupiter, any favours though, with them being just on the tree line here so throttling back to 150x -180x gave crisper views and enabled a little Jovian and Saturnian detail to be picked up.

It was seeing both these fabulous worlds and some of their moons in the same high power view that was the fascination though

Looking at the forecasts, the next 3 days look pretty hopeless but Christmas Eve looks hopeful with the planets still just 20 arc minutes apart, If I can get a "pass" from the boss that is !

Good report and a nice sketch

M1 can be hard to spot even with quite large apertures. You did well with your 80mm

You would laugh out loud at what I call audio gear, believe me !

I must be lucky that coma is not something that I have found bothersome even with my Ethos eyepieces and even when I used to have an F/4.8 10 inch newtonian

I feel as if I should go back through my reviews though and add the health warning that "no coma correction was used with the newtonians involved".

Your experiences echo what @Piero has been posting recently though so there must be something in it

Interesting report.

Being a perfectionist can be quite expensive can't it ?

Another thought springs to mind - should we place much credibility on any reports on eyepiece performance that are based on their use in newtonians where a Paracorr or other suitable coma corrector is not being used ?

That one has bothered me for some time

My first proper scope was a UK made 6" F/6 newtonian. It had a good quality primary mirror (made by David Hinds). I thought that was an excellent "all rounder" scope. Mine was on an equatorial mount but it was possible to get the newtonian on an alt-az mount:

The one disadvantage with that model was that it came with a 1.25 inch only focuser. Later ones might have had 2 inch capability though ?

51 minutes ago, MercianDabbler said:

If at first... Tonight the clouds dispersed instead of getting bigger. Flippin windy though.

Took my ST80 back out to the field and mounted on my camera tropod. Not ideal but anything more would have been too much to carry.

First (cropped) pic with the EOS 70D at prime focus of the ST80. This was one of the first ones I took and looked wayyy underexposed at the time. ISO 1600, 1/100 second. The sky was a lot lighter than it looks in the photo. Longer exposures looked more like the actual light level but all failed due to the wind shaking the scope. This was about as good as things got visually too - could see the ring gap but never could quite manage 4 Jovian moons or do more than suspect any bands on Jupiter. The 10mm eyepiece from the ST80 bundle was about the best.

The other two showing the view over Warwickshire with the Canon 18/55 kit lens.

Personally, I think the 3rd photo you posted particularly sums up what the great conjunction is all about