John

You can still see Comet Neowise with binoculars

A steady tripod does help a lot with these larger binoculars as has been said.

1 hour ago, Pixies said:

 

Does LP from a full moon affect the splitting of doubles?

It can impacts double stars where one component is very, very dim simply because the dim star is washed out. Otherwise, makes no difference.

One "quite interesting" factoid on Epsilon Lyrae is that the gap between the slightly easier pair is 2.4 arc seconds which is about the same as Neptune's apparent diameter at the moment. So when you are admiring the split and that tiny sliver of blackness between the stars you can imagine how small Neptune is in the eyepiece 

Last night I was using a 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom, the Baader 2.25x barlow to get higher magnifications (I used up to 180x lest night) and a 25mm 58 degree Skywatcher eyepiece for low power, wider views. These are my travel / out reach eyepieces rather than my regular ones but they worked well in the refractor last night.

I was observing last night with a 90mm refractor very similar to the Skywatcher one and I could see the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the Andromeda galaxy and also split the "double double" stars Epsilon Lyrae.

I have been observing for many years with many different scopes which makes it easier to find and observe these targets but the 90mm refractor is certainly capable of performing to the limit of it's aperture.

I have only used the Skywatcher 130mm F/7.8 newtonian once or twice (a friends scope) but that worked pretty well too. As @vlaiv says, there is very little to pick between these in terms of capability and performance.

The refractor might be a little more rugged and maintenance free. The reflector will show fainter objects better because of it's larger aperture.

Great report Stu !

"I’m beginning to wonder why I have all this lovely, and expensive kit!...."

The experiences that I've been having with my little 90mm mak-cass and more recently an extremely low cost 90mm F/11 chinese achro refractor have led my thoughts in that direction quite often I'm afraid

Not only do they deliver the goods but they are fun and, dare I say, relatively carefree to use

I had quite a lot of cloud here but in between the seeing was pretty good. Transparency was not so good so getting the 12 inch dob out was not really the right move but I did get some very nice views of Jupiter and Saturn with the lowly 90mm achro refractor. Amazing that the chinese can push out good quality 3.5 inch objectives at the price you can pick these things up for. Seeing the Cassini Division, Great Red Spot etc for the price of a few gallons of fuel

I some ways the scope is more impressive than my Tak and LZOS. For what those things cost you would and should expect them to be top notch but this 90mm F/11 achromat OTA cost somewhat less than the finder on those scopes

On thing you need to watch out for with the older SCT's is mirror flop.

I had one about the age that yours is and it had that issue. Basically the mirror would move slightly as the scope was pointed at different angles which put the scope out of collimation.

Your older one might not have that issue though. Not all of them did.

The William Optic is a good diagonal. You do not have to buy a William Optics one though. These are also good:

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p89_TS-Optics-Optics-2--Star-Diagonal-with-99--Reflection---1-12-lambda.html

5 hours ago, Stardaze said:

Thanks John. I guess I can see where this is going to end up sometime in the future... my dob could have a long ball and short ball companion.

A mak for the planets and an 80ED for this kind of thing?

I find my Vixen ED102SS refractor excellent for these large objects. It's F/6.5 so getting a 3 or 4 degree field of view is not too difficult.

I've just found it with 8x56 binoculars from here. It's glowing softly in Coma Berenices tonight. Not striking but fairly obvious just above the scatter of stars in that constellation:

55 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Saw it a couple of nights ago from my light polluted location with 11x70 binoculars couldn't see it naked eye as it's now a shadow of it's former self.

Dave

Similar here. Most small scopes should show it but it's a case of finding it.

By the way - I've moved this to the comet section. Hope that's OK.

Looks like a Celestron Celestar 8:

http://www.company7.com/celestron/products/sch4.html

1990's I think.

The hand controller is:

Possibly RA only. DEC motor drive was optional.

The 25mm eyepiece should show a lovely view of the moon and many other things.

A diagonal mirror is needed in between the scope focuser and the eyepiece to get the scope to focus though.

From the look of the equipment list, your Father was using the scope for imaging so may not have actually observed with it.

For observing it should look like this:

Over the past few years I've re-bought a few eyepieces that I used to own and enjoy.

In almost all cases they did not prove so good the 2nd time around so I've learned a lesson now

Are you intending to downsize your collection Jeremy (or increase it, maybe ?) or do you feel that you have got to where you want to be now ?

When you folks have another look at the Veil Nebula, here is a handy guide to the various parts of it. See what of this you can see !

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/explore-veil-nebula/

As you can see, there is lots to explore with just this one target under a dark sky

The North American Nebula is around 2 degrees x 2 degrees in size. It took me ages (years) to get a decent view of it. Turns out I was looking right through it all that time !

The Veil Nebula is a bit over 3 degrees overall.

These are large targets

6 minutes ago, dogduck said:

Thank you so many to choose doing my head in but thanks for you.post going have to go shop and talk to someone as there is no one.close.to me.to show and talk to me about different setups but will take note of what you.said

 

My advice is to keep asking questions on here.

There is no such thing as a "silly" question as far as this forum is concerned plus we are totally independant - not trying to sell you anything

Nice report Baz

NA neb is very large. I find that I can only see bits of it with my scopes. The "Gulf of Mexico" part seems to be the best defined. Big binoculars under a really dark sky are probably more effective.

The Pelican is next door to the NA neb and also large with low surface brightness.

The Crescent I do find an O-III helps with and it's not quite as challenging as the above.

I think keeping at it and looking for the darkest, most transparent skies to observe under is the best approach.

7 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

Thanks, John. The cut off age is even higher than I had thought. 

There may well be children of younger age around who can manage observing though a scope OK but I've not come across many of those.

Some grown ups find it more challenging than they thought it might be as well !

20 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

The best scope for £100 is the skywatcher heritage 100p, but you would be better off increasing your budget for a heritage 130p, or even doubling it for a 150p. 

With regards to your granddaughter, I am not sure if 3 will be a little bit young for using a telescope. Others will have experience of children this young looking through telescopes and be better able to advise. 

I've done quite a few outreach sessions with children and I find that the younger ones struggle to see anything through a scope. I would say that 8-10 years and up is where they can adapt to the technique of one eye closed, keep the head still, don't touch the scope which is needed. We usually give the younger children binoculars and they seem to get on well with those.

3 hours ago, NGC 1502 said:

If the Instadjust on Radians is slack it can be user fixed, a bit fiddly but I’ve done several.  There’s an internal spring that runs on indentations, the spring can be closed for a firm action....

 

Thanks Ed. I did that with the Radians and the 22mm Nagler T4 that I used to own and it did help.

I believe the track within which the ISS would be seen to pass across the moon is just 30 miles wide. I must have been pretty much bang in the centre of it luckily.

You can use the extension piece to move the eye cup a bit further away from the eye lens which might help with eye positioning Barry. Try it and see.

I didn't get on with those "winged" eye cups but some people like them.

The Morpheus is a 1.25" eyepiece. Some folks prefer using these larger eyepieces in a 2 inch fitting because they feel more secure which is why some have a hybrid barrel design.

I would guess that the BST Barlow is the weak link in the optical train compared with the Morpheus optics.