John

1 minute ago, Dantooine said:

That lens looks such a long way down in there, is it an illusion?

It's a 14mm Delos with the eye guard section in the upper most position. As a non-glasses wearer, that suits me the best.

Huge eye lens with the Delos.

I have seen M33 with a 7x35 binoculars on a really good night here. It does help, as usual, to know where it is and roughly what to look for. That is a challenge for first time searchers of these more subtle deep sky objects - not quite knowing what to expect or look out for. Certainly not what the images look like generally !

I've not yet managed to see M1 with binoculars although I know others have. Quite often through scopes though. M1 (the Crab Nebula) is a lot smaller than M33. Considering it's fame, it's not a striking object in small and medium sized apertures, not even larger ones if the transparency of the sky is mediocre.

Just to be clear, are you looking at eyepieces for your current 5 inch / 127mm mak-cassegrain scope or those for a future 10 inch scope, or eyepieces suitable for both ?

What eyepieces do you currently have as a starting point ?

M33 is a low surface brightness galaxy. It is a lot fainter and harder to see than M31. Your scope will be able to see it with a very low power eyepiece if the skies are dark and transparent.

M101 is in a similar category to M33 - harder to actually see than you might at first think from the published magnitude figures.

It is worth persevering with M33 on a dark night - there is a star forming nebula within the galaxy known as NGC 604 which can also be glimpsed with moderate aperture scopes.

To start with you will only see M33 as a vague patch of light between 4 stars - almost a subtle lightening of the background sky.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/paradoxical-messier-33/

1 hour ago, johninderby said:

I used to have the AstroPhysics diagonal. An absolute work of art but in truth similar in performance to the WO and Revelation.

Nicer to look at though. 😁

The AP was the joint best performing mirror diagonal in BilP's mega test of diagonals.

Why not have lovely build quality and that great name as well ? 

Just now, Victor Boesen said:

The everbrights look like beautiful diagonals John, but I think they're perhaps a little too expensive You have had quite good experiences with the WO diagonal haven't you? Or am I wrong.

I have had a WO and the Revelation / GSO and they were about the same in peformance terms as each other. The Revelation / GSO is lighter as @johninderby says.

I have a couple of the Tele Vue Everbrights which are superbly made things (machined out of a single block of alloy) and even the heavy eyepieces such as the Nagler 31 and Ethos 21 are held very securely in them. My Astro Physics Maxbright is none to shabby either. These gems are rather expensive though and the lower cost diagonals do perform pretty well too

I currently use a Baader T2 Zeiss prism diagonal in 1.25 inch mode with my Takahashi FC100-DL. I'm thinking of moving to one of the Baader 2 inch Zeiss prism diagonals with this scope so that I can use my 2 inch eyepieces such as the Ethos with the Takahashi.

Is there any discernible difference in the optical performance of these two prism diagonals ?

BillP had the T2 Prism fractionally ahead of the 2 inch in this report:

https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/mirror-vs-dielectric-vs-prism-diagonal-comparison-r2877

But I'm interested to see if that is the experience of other observers ?

I realise that I could use a 2 inch adapter and 2 inch barrel with the T2 Prism but the aperture is restricted to 34-35mm and I would like to use eyepieces with larger field stops than that if possible.

Thanks

I find 6mm an extremely useful focal length but it's probably not as useful in a 127mm mak with a focal length of 1500mm.

Mine is a 6mm Ethos.

1 minute ago, Nik271 said:

Thanks, John, the sketch is very helpful! I had no problem seeing the further stars, so it's really about seeing through the glare of the primary. Knowing where to look makes it much easier.

No problem.

The view is the newtonian one so S at the top and W to the left.

The Pup star trails Sirius as it drifts across an undriven field of view.

10 minutes ago, Philip R said:

I use the Baader Optical Wonder fluid and cloth on 99.99% of my optical glass.

Me too !

1 minute ago, SpaceFinatic said:

Yes! That has happend a couple of times. Usually I clean the lens with a glasses cloth and it helps. No I don’t use a light shroud, does it help with viewing?

I'd be careful about rubbing eyepieces or mirrors with a cloth if they are dewy. Better  let them dry naturally or use a hair dryer on them.

I found that a light shroud produced a number of benefits:

- kept stray light off the secondary and primary mirrors which gave me much better contrast on deep sky object. I have a fair amount of stray light my back garden !

- kept my body heat out of the light path of the scope

- kept dust / debris off the primary mirror of the scope

It made a lot of difference in the performance of the scope in my circumstances.

1 hour ago, David J H said:

Thanks - I will have a look at these suggestions. I will probably see how the Baader Zoom performs, and whether I need anything more than that. 

You might find that adding a decent 2 inch 30-32mm eyepiece and, say, a 6mm, to the zoom would give you a 3 piece set that would cover most observing situations quite well. 

Is this seeing related rather than aperture related ?

I'm not a frequent solar observer so I'm interested in the answer to this as well.

This is a sketch I made of Sirius and the Pup star showing how it appeared though the eyepiece. As I said, it's not quite like resolving other double stars:

I can't recall the views I had back in 2003 but some of the views this opposition have been memorable. I've got far better equipment and much more experience now than I had back then (and the benefit of SGL) so perhaps that is not surprising.

The thing I learned a long time ago is to keep my setups very, very simple. Therefore I don't image, I just observe with a range of very simple, low or no tech, setups.

4 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

What is your budget? I would go for something from the Skywatcher Heritage range over your current choices, even if you have to save up/increase your budget to do so.

Me too 100%

That's sounds like the effect you get when one or more of your optical surfaces has become fogged or misted up. Either one of the mirrors or the eye lens of the eyepiece ?

If you keep eyepieces in a cold place, they can fog / mist up really quickly as the warmth of your eye approaches the eye lens.

Do you use a light shroud with your scope ?

I found one more or less essential when I has a Lightbridge 12.

3 hours ago, newbie alert said:

So you're saying that a APM,  LZOS, LOMO, TEC, astrophysics ,televue  etc aren't any better than a TS branded product? So what are you paying for, and quite a substantial amount more?

The only one of those that I have personal experience of is my TMB/APM/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 and that is a superb optic.

My experience does suggest though that other "non premium" manufacturers have narrowed the gap between their products and the very best so the value for money factor has shifted in their direction more.

Something similar has happened with eyepiece optics over the past 5 years or so.

Nice report !

It took me ages to find a combination that would split Sirius. In the end my 12 inch dob plus a 6mm ortho eyepiece did it. Since then I've manged to split it lots of times (easier after the first time like most things !) with scopes down to 100mm.

I generally find that I need to use 250x or so to get the split and you don't see it like a normal double star - the Pup star glimmers out from from the glare that surrounds Sirius, sometimes only popping into view now and then.

Your scope and eyepiece selection makes sense - you just need to keep at it and when the seeing is decent, it will come though.

The separation is similar to Rigel but the brightness difference is so much more and of course it's low down from the UK.

Folks who observe where Sirius is higher in the sky wonder what all the fuss is about I think !

Both will give you a noticeable step up in performance on deep sky objects, less so on the planets.

The 250 is F/4.7 wheras the 200 is F/5.9 so the latter is a bit easier on lower cost eyepieces than the former and a little less fussy over collimation.

If the deep sky is a big priority for you then I would definitely go for the 250PX.

I've owned them both and liked them both though

The X-Cel LX are much better than the older X-Cel's in an F/5 scope. Those might be the ones that Neil was referring to though ?

When I had a Lightbridge 12 I used mostly Tele Vue Nagler's but they are very expensive now. The Meade 26mm QX (the supplied eyepiece) is really not very good though so you will be replacing that in due course with a better 2 inch eyepiece.

In the F/5 optics you want something quite well corrected if you go to wider angle eyepieces. The Explore Scientific 68 and 82 degree range perhaps ?

Perhaps use what you have for a while plus the zoom and see how your opinion on what you like to use develops ?

17 minutes ago, wulfrun said:

.... Out of curiosity, is there a technical reason you say that the 18-25mm BST/X-Cel LX would be awful or is that purely experience-based? I am not doubting you but if there's a technical explanation I'd like to understand it - I have that kind of mind and it's useful knowledge....

 

I don't know about the 18mm but the 25mm BST Starguider is not particularly well corrected in faster scopes, which means that stars will look more like seagulls in the outer half of the view. The challenge with the 114mm F/4.4 newtonian is that it is a rather fast scope and therefore it creates optical challenges for lower cost eyepieces with wider than average fields of view.

If you are not careful you can invest 2x - 3x as much as the scope has cost on decent quality eyepieces when you could have actually bought a scope with much more performance for the same overall investment.

As you don't actually have the scope yet, I'd be tempted to say don't buy any additional accessories for it until you have used it with what it comes with a few times. After that at least any future investments will be influenced by some of your own personal experiences

Hi Dave and welcome to the forum

I don't image so I can't really help with scope suggestions. Your budget should be able to get you something decent though.

The challenge at the current time is finding what you decide on, actually in stock somewhere !