John

2 hours ago, Xilman said:

....You clearly meant to write "visual observing".

Yes indeed !

Long stacks do have their uses

My original post was really concerned with observing. That's all I have any experience of. Aperture and it's relationship with imaging is likely to throw up a different sort of discussion I would have thought ?

The Antares 1.6x 2 inch barlow gained an excellent reputation for working pretty much seamlessly with the Ethos eyepieces. The newer designs of this barlow do have some issues if you have restricted focuser travel range though. Optically they have not changed. The older design of the Antares Barlow is worth looking out for - no compression ring or filter threads but it does reach focus in a wider range of scopes. The steel set screws can be swapped for nylon ones to protect eyepiece barrels.

The other thing to watch for with all barlows is that they push the eye relief out a bit. With some eyepieces this can be an advantage but the ES 92's already have long eye relief so a barlow may cause some eye positioning challenges.

With the ES 92's being such tall, heavy eyepieces, a lightweight, short barlow, as long as it performs well, is preferred I think.

Sounds like using a barlow or focal extender is likely to be the only way to get a wider range of ES 92 degree eyepieces in the foreseeable future.

Well done Neil.

I've got cloud and light rain here so I've given up for tonight and bought the scope in.

42 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Paul Abel has posted a drawing from this evening showing the dust: https://britastro.org/node/25050

Looks like my "brighter patch" is in the right area area but I could get nowhere near the detail that Paul has drawn there. The darker features on my sketch  do seem to generally match what Paul has captured though, which I'm quite pleased about given the conditions here tonight.

I've nearly given up here - so much cloud about and a gusty wind moving it around fast

Yes - ctrl-shift-H reverses the chart horizontally and ctrl-shift-V does it vertically. You need to do both for a newtonian view, just the horizontal for the refractor / mak-cass / SCT view (assuming normal diagonal is being used).

The problem is, even with a very large aperture scope, magnifications of 300x - 500x are not useful other than very rarely because of the effects that observing through our atmosphere has.

As a device to observe very faint objects, at somewhat lower magnifications, 20 inches is an amazing amount of light gathering power.

4 minutes ago, jock1958 said:

Nice sketch @John was tempted to go out but it keeps clouding over and with high winds decided to bin it for tonight ☹️

Yep, it's a bit wild out there

This comet is just above Orion's right "shoulder" tonight. Might get a chance later to have a look at it if the forecast is to be believed.

I'd better watch out for "Attack ships on fire ....." as well

47 minutes ago, Louis D said:

The APM XWA is available in 9mm and most recently, 7mm, focal lengths.  Yes, not exactly 8mm.

Have you tried the 17mm ES-92 in a telecentric magnifier?  I have with my 2" GSO ED 2x Barlow and TV PBI, and it works really well, as does the 12mm ES-92.  It does make for a very long and heavy optical stack, though.  I'd recommend it only for Dobs with stout focusers.

The Antares 2 inch 1.6x barlow works well with the Ethos's - perhaps it would well with the ES 92's as well ?

29 minutes ago, popeye85 said:

How do these compare to the 30m es82's?

It's a bit of an unfair comparison with the ES 30 being an 82 degree eyepiece @ £276 and the Stellalyra Superview 30mm a 68 degree eyepiece @ £69.

There was some discussion on these on another forum. The Zhumell 30mm referred to is another branding of the Superview 30mm:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/562728-zhumell-30mm-vs-es-82-30mm/

11 hours ago, pav428 said:

Thank you!  Why do you say the celestron 6SE is the most versatile?  I'm kind of tempted to have more field of view with the reflector.

If a wider field of view is important then by all means go for the reflector.

2 hours ago, WiltsStarGazer said:

Thanks for the replies and the advise, upgraded clamps will be the next purchase. Back to looking at the 'For Sale' ads then.😀

When you say they aren't good enough, do you mean they will break or they do not grip the dovetail enough to prevent it slipping at extreme angles? If so would a bolts with protruding heads in the back of the dovetail on either side of the clamp work as a temporary measure?

Looking back on the forums, these clamps have been declared not good enough since this mount came out. Does anyone know if the standard clamps have been improved over the years? I got the Skytee secondhand but I don't believe it is very old, it's in 'as new' condition.

The tripod is an old Manfrotto Art  351 which I don't know anything else about as I was fortunate enough to be given it by a friend. It came with a gimbal head attached but luckily the Skytee fits straight on.

The problem with the stock clamps is that the threads on the tension knob of the clamp have a tendency to strip rather easily under load. The knobs are made of rather soft aluminum. They also used a steel threaded rod with a cross cut in the top which the knob screws onto to tighten the clamp. This cross cut has the effect of wearing away the threading within the knob rather effectively, being made of harder metal.

Maybe the more recent versions of the mount have knobs which are made of harder metal and the threaded rod design altered ?

The scope is still listed for sale on the APM website. Currently at 7,990 Euros.

I've often looked at the APM site so as soon as I saw the ad on e.bay I recognised the scope. It's not as if there are many of them about !

I'm pleased that e.bay acted quickly. That does not always happen.

The Starseeker reflector will potentially show a maximum true field of view twice as large as the Celestron 6SE.

Of the three types of scopes you mention, Schmidt-Cassegrain (6SE), Maksutov-Cassegrain (Starseeker 150 mak-cass), and Newtonian (Starseeker 150 Relector), I think the most versatile is the Celestron 6SE though.

For both the 6SE and the mak-cass some dew prevention additions, such as a dew shield extension, will be needed.

There are a number of good ranges of eyepieces around today that will do well in your scope. The Tele Vue ranges are designed to work well in fast scopes but there are less expensive alternatives from brands such as Explore Scientific, APM and others that are also very good.

I would not rush into this. You will quickly spend more than the scope has cost you if you are not careful !

A decent eyepiece range at a more modest cost are these called BST Starguiders:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bst-starguider-eyepieces.html

While not quite as good as Naglers or with a field of view quite as wide, for their cost they perform well in most scopes

You can get 6 of them for the cost of one Nagler as well !

I have some old Will's cigarette cards from the 1920's and they label a galaxy as a "Spiral Nebula". The text on the reverse shows how little was understood about the nature of these objects then:

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Your scope is a good one - well worth getting to know how it works. It has great potential as an observing instrument.

There will always be a range of opinions on a forum like this but all are given in good faith and occasionally we all agree

I don't currently have a Celestron 8SE but I have come across this movie on setting up one of the smaller models on the same mount so that might help you:

This is a scam listing. This scope is genuinely being sold by APM Telescopes in Germany and on E.Bay at 10x this starting price. This advert has cut and pasted the APM photos and description. Just in case anyone was tempted:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Telescope-Nikon-100-MM-For-1200-MM-Ed-Apochromatic-Lens-Refractor-Telescoping/174523109853?hash=item28a26351dd:g:2E0AAOSwEvJftDtk

I have reported it to E.Bay.

Looks like Mordor !

The top mount of the Skytee II really only works with small scopes. If you start adding a lot of counterweighting to the downward facing counterweight bar, it starts to foul the mount body. I hardly ever use the top mounting on my Skytee II. Some folks have modded theirs to add a 2nd side mounting point.

Are those the stock dove tail clamps ?.  I would be a little wary of mounting a heavy scope on those. Upgrading to an ADM or similar clamp is a good plan, unless the stock clamps have been improved.

With upgraded clamps and using the side mounting point, the Skytee II will handle quite a load. This is a 9.5kg 130mm F/9.2 refractor:

The Ethos 21 is 1020g so the ES 17 / 92 is the heaviest that I own.

2 minutes ago, Pixies said:

How is the hyperion in your fast scope? A friend has an f5 and says the Baaders suffer from a lot of distortion.

The OP says that he has not used it or the scope yet.

I found that Hyperions (not the zoom) do show quite a bit of outer field astigmatism in faster scopes. 

Some find this more bothersome than others.