John

The 3.2mm is of similar optical quality to the 5mm but the magnification that these eyepieces produce in your scope is what makes the difference. 240x (the 5mm) is a useful magnification on the planets, moon and double stars quite often. 375x (the 3.2mm) would rarely be useful.

Nice report Kerry You should be able to see Triton, Neptunes largest moon with the Mewlon I would think. It's around magnitude 12 and at max 16 arc seconds from Neptune. Cartes du Ciel shows the position quite accurately. High magnification helps but the Mewlon is fully capable of that I'm sure

That would help. Some scopes don't have collimation adjustment on the primary now so those 3 screws could just be holding the primary mirror cell into the scope. Sometimes the 3 screws hold a cover on which needs to be removed to get to the collimation screws. Most collimation screws come in 3 pairs - an adjusting screw and a locking screw x 3. A photo of the back end of your scope would help a lot.

Very true. I was just thinking of the best chance for you to find what you need quickly will be through your local market. There are a lot of amateur astronomers in the USA and also the costs of carriage across the Atlantic can make buying small / lower cost items quite expensive.

Nice report M31 can be seen with the naked eye from a moderately dark site and with 10x50 binoculars from practically anywhere so it will certainly be within the grasp of the ST80 even under light polluted skies. Don't expect too much though - a fuzzy oval is about as much as it will amount to. Low magnification is what to use. Good luck with it !

I have just posted this link in your thread about the lens cap for the C8. It is the "Cloudynights" forum classifieds section which is USA based: https://www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/ The forum is free to join.

As you are in the USA, the classifieds section of the Cloudynights forum (which is USA based) might be worth looking at. It is free to join the forum: https://www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/

There is some nebulosity around Merope in the Pleiades: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/the-merope-nebula-and-its-well-kept-secret/

Just what I found this evening Stu Some of the nicest for me came using the 24mm Panoptic at just 28x with the Vixen frac. The essential characteristics of each planet were still clear and very sharp

Either. Personally I'm happy with single and I don't need tracking or GOTO or push-to. Slow motion controls are nice. I splashed out on a pre-owned T-Rex mount earlier this year so I'm sorted really but I still think there is a market for something else that is sub-1K with all the bits. I heard from Rowan (Derek) that they have been kicking ideas around for a mid-range mount but currently, as a small company, they are having to put most of their resources into the AZ100. They are picking up quite a bit of interest from overseas judging by the conversations on another forum that I frequent

Gradually clouding over here. I've been looking at Mars plus a few doubles with the Vixen and the seeing is not too bad. Mars does seem small now though, even at 265x Some darker areas still visible. I suspect that's it for me here this evening but the scope is still out, though covered.

We are forecast to get that tomorrow

I tried some higher magnification views (166x) but the seeing is not great when you boost the image scale. They look nice and sharp at 50x-80x though and to see them both hanging there against a deepening blue sky is a real treat You would never know that they are actually over 700 million km apart ! I'll leave the scope out for Mars later and maybe other stuff although the forecast is for clouds from mid-evening onwards.

I still strongly feel that there is a niche for a decent quality, high capacity alt-az mount somewhere between the Skytee II / Ercole and the higher end AZ100 / APM Maxload. Something around £500 perhaps ? I had originally hoped that the AZ100 might be that mount but, understandably, that product can't be produced at that sort price point. So the niche remains.

I thought that when I saw the webpage that FLO have put together

Galilean moons just popped into view now. No sign yet of Titan though. @Mark at Beaufort - hope you don't mind me piggybacking on your thread ?

Some scope observing going on at the moment:

Switched to the 8mm Ethos again (83x / 1.2 degree true field) and they are both visible with a little sky each side of them if I get their position angles right in the field of view. According to Cartes du Ciel the planets are separated by almost exactly 1 degree in the sky just now.

I've just picked them up with my Vixen ED102 from my back garden. They were right against the field stop edges in the 8mm Ethos but easily framed by the 13mm Ethos @ 51x magnification. Jupiter a small slightly flattened disk with vague hints of equatorial belts and Saturn showing it's ring system but no moons against the light sky. Nice to see

On the bonus side, the nature of the sunlight in winter here, as it falls across the landscape, can be rather lovely. I've just come in from a rather nice, if muddy, rural hike having really enjoyed extensive views across to Wales and in the other direction the Mendip Hills and Somerset Levels The most distant hill is Glastonbury Tor:

I don't think I've ever bought a new achromat other than the TAL100R back in 1999 which at £250 with a mount and good eyepieces, delivered from Siberia was quite a bargain I think.

It should look something like this at around 150x with a small scope. The darker areas can be difficult to discern depending on conditions. Smaller than a lentil probably !:

I bought one of these 32mm Erfles once, believing the magazine advert that they would deliver a 60 degree AFoV ! Of course they are limited to around 50 degrees by the 1.25 inch barrel. In fact the one that I had showed a slightly smaller AFoV than the 32mm plossl that I already had and it was not quite as well corrected Another blooper was a 55mm ex-military plossl in the 1.25 inch format. No field stop in that one but still like looking down a drinking straw of course.

Nice report Mark. I just used 11x70 binoculars to observe the pair this evening - too many clouds about to set a scope up. A touch over 1 degree between them tonight I think. Tomorrow evening might be OK here in which case I'm going to get the Vixen 102 ED with the 8mm Ethos onto the pair should be able to comfortably fit both into the FoV

6mm, 5mm or even 4mm will be much more use. I rarely use 400x with my 12 inch scope.