John

3 hours ago, tomato said:

The other alternative is to build a permanent observatory, then complex kit can be up and running in 5 minutes. Or more likely, you can watch the rain dripping off the roof...

I wish I had room. My other half has a greenhouse which takes up the space that an observatory ought to be sat in. If we move somewhere one day with a longer garden then a proper dome will be an early addition.

I used to have a Skyliner 200P dob. I found it an excellent scope

I'm sure you will really enjoy yours !

I don't have this now but it was a nice 70mm frac setup:

I do still have this one though. My first telescope - 1960's Tasco 60mm F/13.3:

The Skywatcher EQ5 GOTO kit, mentioned above, should fit the mount. I had a Skywatcher dual axis drive system on my GP and it fitted and worked just fine.

You might also need to fit a pole finder scope if your GP does not already have one fitted.

If you want to be braver and at (possibly) less cost, you might look out for an old Meade LXD55 motor / controller set, which can also be made to fit the GP.

50 minutes ago, AlexK said:

This concept is known as GAG: "Grab and Go".

For some that's a small refractor, for others (me) it's a 12" classic Dobsonian thanks to my Dolly (short range GAG) and Cradle (long range GAG).

Yes, a familiar and much discussed concept here

Fortunately my 12 inch dobsonian weighs around the same as most 10 inch dobs so is pretty quick and easy to setup for a 12 inch aperture scope. 

As well as the setup and tear down, I need to be able to move the scope around during a session to avoid light sources, trees, neighbours rooflines etc so that is a factor in the scopes and mounts that I use.

Can't escape the impact of clouds though

Evenings like this are rather trying

Clear late afternoon so I set the 12 inch dob up.

Got the scope cooled and had about 45 minutes observing Mars plus a few of the brighter galaxies.

In for supper. Out again around 18:45 to find cloud layer spreading across the sky and thickening. After a further 30 minutes all clouded out and looking to stay that way, so I bought the dob back in.

Around 21:30 the sky was clearing fast with Orion starting to show nicely. I put out a refractor this time and had some nice low power views of the Auriga clusters while it cooled. Mars by now was scintillating but not in a good way. Lots of heating plumes around. The bottom right corner of Orion was showing in a better part of the sky so had about 20 minutes on the double stars in that area. Quite nice.

But what's this ? - more tendrils of cloud and also a bank of fog rolling slowing in. Soon just the odd glimpses of clear sky were showing, almost as if the sky was taunting the hapless astronomer 

Gave things another 20 minutes but no joy so the refractor came in from the cold.

On the positive side, it is evenings like this that remind me why I have scopes that are simple and quick to setup and to tear down and bring in. If I used more complex scopes with longer setup and alignment routines I probably would not have seen the sky at all tonight.

Now what is the betting that it's clear again an hour from now ?  According to "Clear Outside" I may get a break in the clouds / fog at 2:00 am for an hour. Not sure I'll wait up though

18 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

I went out early as the forecast said it was going to cloud over at 18:00, just looked out now at 21:30 and it’s still clear 😱

Here it did cloud over at around 18:00 but it has now cleared again. The seeing is a bit iffy though. I now have the ED120 refractor out instead of the big dob. Sticking to low to medium power on the Auriga open clusters at the moment.

Cold night so lots of central heating plumes around - including ours which Mars seems to be "bathing in" currently

43 minutes ago, CedricTheBrave said:

it will go on the neq6 for now until I have saved up enough for the cem70

it will also be going in an obsy when I get the time to build it

 

On an EQ mount that will be a pretty huge setup. Hope you have fun with it

If it was just one then probably a 6mm Tele Vue Ethos.

Ideally I would want a range of high power options though.

Postie delivered one of these nice Geoptik EQ6 - HEQ5 tripod adapters. Both my heavier duty tripods are EQ6 fitting so this gives me the option to use the Giro Ercole or the Skytee II on those. While I do like the wood finish of the Berlebach Uni 28, I must say that the Ercole also looks rather smart on the EQ6 with the adapter. Pretty solid as well

Yes, I was observing Mars with the 12 inch dob until a layer of cloud crept in.

Through the dob optics the darker features, including the Syrtis Major, seemed to form a "Y" shape. Like a huge dusky pair of "Y" fronts were draped across the disk

23 minutes ago, rl said:

.... It's worth making a drawing with companion stars in the field...in the future you can actually see the orbital rotation over a couple of years if you have a reference point. 

I did that with Zeta Herculis. Enlarged image scale so no other stars in the field but the change in PA over the 4 year period is obvious:

Great stuff Doug - I love fracs for double stars !

5 minutes ago, CedricTheBrave said:

I already have a pier so hopefully it shouldnt need moving often!

weatabix also on order

Ahh - so you have bought a 14 inch optical tube ?

I assumed that you had bought the full dobsonian scope

The eyepiece advice is all still valid of course !

Will you be putting the 14 inch on the NEQ6 ?

2 hours ago, Moonshed said:

Your school had a telescope! In an observatory! My goodness you must have gone to a very posh school....
 

Nope, it was just a normal state comprehensive school, as they were called back then.

It had a good science dept though and a keen local volunteer who got the scope / dome setup and also a planetarium in a small shed. I joined the after school astronomy club when I was 11 along with a couple of friends.

Granted, I expect that this was unusual but also lucky for me. I could build on the interest in space that following the Apollo missions had given me

My school had an 8.5 inch Frank's newtonian in a nice dome. 1st proper telescope that I ever looked through.

The illustrations in the Frank's Book of the Telescope remind me a bit of those in the book All About Telescopes by Sam Brown:

15 minutes ago, CedricTheBrave said:

yeah i know hence the question really as i want to make the most of what it can deliver.

the statement ref cost difference was purely that there is quite a difference! are the less pricy ones less so in quality etc.

i am leaning towards the Baader starter set atm I think it looks like a good medium at £375 for 4 

but then there is the zoom!

The Baader Hyperions don't do so well in an F/4.5 scope. They show quite a lot of astigmatism (distorted stars) in the outer half of the field of view.

The Morpheus is a much better range for such scopes.

The zoom is not bad but it's field of view at the 24mm end is quite narrow at 46 degrees. You will want at least one other low power / wide field eyepiece, ideally in the 2 inch format to make the most of the scopes potential.

This is the challenge with a big aperture and reasonably fast scope - you think the purchase price of the scope is quite high and then find out that you can spend as much again or even more on eyepieces plus a coma corrector to get the best out of it

And we have not even started on filters for deep sky observing ......

16 minutes ago, SMF said:

You’ve just dobbed in over 2.5k on a first class scope. It deserves a couple of high end eyepieces whatever the make. It’s taken me an age to get my set of XWs. I went through loads of others getting here but I’ve a lot of grey hairs and all the kids have flown so easier for me to be a little frivolous. In the real world we watch the pennies but it’s a hobby after all and at my age not meant to be rational. I’m not Televue frivolous though. That’s an expense and rationale to far 😉 Sorry to all you TV fans. 

The XW's do work very well in a big dobsonian.

I'm even more irrational / frivolous than you though - I use a Panoptic / Delos / Pentax XW / Nagler zoom set for my refractors and have a Nagler / Ethos / ES 92 set for my 12 inch dob

I guess a lot hinges on the budget that @CedricTheBrave has for eyepieces though. At £250 a pop the XW's are not exactly cheapies.

At the other end of the scale, the 8mm BST Starguider suggested by @Zermelo is actually a pretty good eyepiece for it's < £50 price tag. On a tight budget it would do a decent job and is not so wide that it makes a coma corrector mandatory.

There are lots of options in between as well these days: Explore Scientific 68's or 82's, Baader Morpheus etc, etc. 

On 28/11/2020 at 22:38, Luminated said:

Evening John- hoping you could let me the know the dovetail your using? Would the skywatcher ones work for instance?

Eg; there’s on offer this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/offers/offer_celestron-cg5-vixen-style-dovetail-bars_153906.html
 

Flo suggested this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/takahashi-other-accessories/takahashi-tkp71423-dove-tail-male-for-mewlon-210.html

 but seems overpriced, so hoping to find a generic alternative - getting confused on which ones would be compatible with the Tak cradle/clamshell. Would be good also if I could temporarily attach to our ST80 for an upcoming Xmas holiday to darker skies...but that might be too optimistic 

Thanks!

Really sorry that I missed your question.

I use an Altair 180mm dovetail bar:

https://www.altairastro.com/altair-tms---vixen-synta-dovetail-bar-clear-silver-182-p.asp

I'm sure that other brands will work as well. I use two M8 bolts to hold the bar in place using pre-threaded holes in the Takahashi tube clamp.

With the planets low down (eg: Saturn and Jupiter currently) I've found that my refractors "cut through" the unsteady seeing better than my 12 inch dob does.

45 quid for getting your 1st views of these amazing objects is a bargain

and it will show you plenty more besides !

1 hour ago, dweller25 said:

Well John,

We both have some great scopes, but perhaps the question is.....

How much astronomy can you do with a 4” Frac ? 😁

Well, the past few times I've observed, the "window of opportunity" has been short lived thanks to the UK weather. And so it was tonight with pretty solid cloud cover arriving about  half an hour after I observed Mars. If the scope had not been quick to set up and cool down (ie: a 4 inch frac) I don't think I would have done any practical astronomy at all recently. So currently, I'm very glad that I have such scopes

The analysis of that material should prove very interesting

Not my scope but this one belonged to the Lowell Observatory. A quick spot of solar H-a observing during our visit there in 2019. I think the scope was a Lunt LS100 - the largest aperture H-a scope that I've looked though

4 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Nice report. Sadly for me Jupiter and Saturn are below the rooftops 😭

Thanks Michael,

I'm only catching them in the gap between two large trees. I suspect I'm going to have to be more mobile when it gets to their closest approach later this month.