John

Those Celestron "Halloween" plossls are very hard to get in the .965 inch fitting. All of those are made in Taiwan I think. The "diamond Z" 6mm ortho is made by Tanzutsu in Japan I think. The Kellner 25mm might be of Vixen manufacture, again in Japan. I used to have one branded Vixen and it looked just the same. Similarly the Celestron branded barlow lens. Hard to find these decent quality .965 inch items these days.

What a great report - good to share your enjoyment You know what ? - I think I prefer observing M42 without a filter as well !

Can't compete with this entry

Lets keep off the politics shall we ?

I think facial shape and eye socket shape have something to do with this as well. Soft, foldable rubber eye cups also help. What people find works for them is a very personal thing I think, having read many reports on the same eyepieces and seen very substantial variation in their reception. Some folks like to be able to hold their eye a little off the eye cup. Some folks like to bury their eye into it. Some folks like very wide views, some folks don't. I've never read a thread on eyepieces where all posters share the same opinion of the eyepiece in question and I doubt I ever will

Another vote for both here In my case I use the Rigel Quikfinder instead of the Telrad but I agree with John (above) that having both is really useful.

I've just sold an ES 82 4.7mm. Nice little eyepiece I thought. Very sharp indeed. It's only drawback for me was that I found the eye relief quite tight so accessing the full AFoV was more of a struggle than I thought it might be from the published ER. I guess it looses a few mm due to the recessed eye lens ? Nice quality little eyepiece though for under £100.

Or is it a Sea Devil ?

I think that is a good motive for many observers

Most definitely. You can see that Jupiter has moons and that Saturn is not quite a round shape with binoculars but to see any more detail a telescope is required.

Yes, that is the dew shield for the 150mm mak-cassegrain. It wraps around to form a tube that extends in front of the front lens of the scope. Without it that lens has a habit of dewing up rather quickly. Another thing to remember with this design of scope is that it takes time to cool down to the outside temperature if the scope has been kept inside. These really need 30-40 minutes to cool down before they will work well at high magnifications. Here is a pic of a mak-cassegrain 150 with a dew shield fitted:

This is the mount head: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/alt-azimuth-astronomy-mounts/skywatcher-skytee-2-alt-azimuth-mount.html This is the pillar mount: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-mount-accessories/skywatcher-pillar-mount-support-for-heq5-eq6-series-mounts.html To give you an idea of size, each leg on the bottom of the pillar mount is 42cm long and the pillar top is 81cm high. With the scope, it is quite an expensive setup at around £1,000 including a dew shield which you will need for the maksutov-cassegrain scope. There are other options as have been discussed by others and you might be able to get those to work for you as well for a smaller investment, possibly much smaller. I suggested the equipment above because it seemed to me to be the best fit for your available space and viewing interests. Maybe take some more time to think things though ?. Given the supply situation with astro equipment currently, you may have to be patient anyway.

The link posted by Ade earlier in this thread goes down to magnitude 18:

That's why I suggested a pillar mount for the Skytee II - smaller footprint.

I use both O-III and UHC (and occasionally H-Beta) filters on M42 but I would call their impact on that particular target subtle and interesting rather than dramatic. On other targets such as the Veil and Owl Nebulae, the impact of the O-III in particular is somewhat more dramatic:

I have tried various filters to reduce the glare from Sirius A and they do help with that. Unfortunately they also seem to dim the B star down to the point where it is not visible as well. Or at least I have not seen the Pup when I've been trying with a filter. I've also tried fitting an occulting bar to an ortho eyepiece, a method which I read about. I used a short section of a steel pin held across the across the field stop of the eyepiece with blu-tak. I could see that this method might work if you have a well aligned driven mount so you can position Sirius A behind the bar and have it stay there while you examine the area immediately adjacent to the star. My problem was that I use undriven, alt-az mounts so trying to keep Sirius behind the bar while manually tracking at 250x or so AND carefully observing needed the patience of a saint and the dexterity of, er, a very dexterous person. I'm neither It's worth trying these and other methods though. Fun as well

It won't affect the performance but it should not be there on a new scope. All the new ones that I've bought were delivered with pristine optics. Pristine all over in fact. Under normal circumstances I would ask the vendor for a replacement but things are far from normal currently

The scope is the one that I suggested. Not sure about the equatorial mount though in your situation. The spread of the tripod legs and the awkward positions that the scope can be in when observing some parts of the sky could make life tricky.

Happy New Year to you and yours as well Dave

Thanks Alan - best wishes to you and yours for a better 2021 too !

The ideal setup on a narrow balcony would be a short scope with the eyepiece at the inward end (ie: an SCT or a Mak-Cassegrain) mounted on an alt-azimuth mount on a pillar. For the mount, a Skytee II mounted on a pillar mount would allow SCT's / Mak-Cassegrain's in the 150mm or even 200mm aperture range to be used in a relatively confined space without having to hang off the outside edge of the balcony to get to the eyepiece. Also the SCT or Mak-Cassegrain design is good for solar system observing, which seems to be your primary interest So one of these (with uprated clamps): On one of these: With perhaps one of these on the mount ?:

Really excellent series of drawings

Synta make and own the Skywatcher brand. Also Celestron now. Also make stuff for Orion (USA) and occasionally Vixen. Also Konus, some Meade, Danubia, and others as well. Much of the stuff we use comes out of just a few manufacturers in the far east.

With a 2x barlow lens you would get the equivalent of a 13mm and a 4.85mm eyepiece. The 4.85mm would be giving you a magnification of 123x (focal length of the scope divided by the focal length of the eyepiece) which is a reasonable step up in magnification over what you have now.

'Tis the season that Sirius is getting reasonably well positioned (well, as good as it gets here in the UK) and it is a good time to take on the challenge of splitting it and seeing the elusive "Pup" star, Sirius B. This season I'd like to crack this with my ED120 and Tak FC100 refractors having previously achieved it reasonably often with my 12 inch dobsonian and a few times with my 130mm triplet refractor. For those observing further south, I guess you wonder what all the fuss is about but here, at latitude 51.4 degrees north, this brightest of stars (Sol excepted) is never that far above the horizon so catching a glimpse of the Pup, 10,000 times dimmer than Sirius itself and currently 11 arc seconds from it's much brighter neighbour, can be a real challenge The separation between the stars is currently approaching as wide as it gets though and after all, it's only 8.6 light years away ....... I find as steady seeing as possible and somewhere between 200x and 300x magnification is the way to go for this. For me the pair have never looked like a "text book" binary. Sirius shows flaring because it is so bright and the Pup star is seen as a faint point of light glimmering through the fringes of the glare from the massively brighter primary star. When the seeing is steady that is. When it's not, Sirius just seems to spray stray light all around and the shy Pup is nowhere to be seen. Dry runs on Rigel in Orion are a good way to test the seeing conditions. The the separation between Rigel and it's dimmer companion is approximately the same so you get an idea how far apart Sirius A and B will be. The position angle and the challenge of Rigel are both quite different though but at least you get some idea of whether it's worth going after a split of the "Dog Star". It really is a fine winter challenge, if frustrating at times, and a good test of the seeing, the optical equipment and the observer And even if you don't get Sirius, be sure not to miss the splendid nearby triple star of Beta Monocerotis. An easy win stunner in practically any scope Sirius A & B relative positioning: Sirius B is a White Dwarf star and is actually a little smaller than the Earth: Image by Giuseppe Donatiello :