John

NPL's are plossls. SLV's are a more sophisticated multi element design that uses lanthanum glass. In your scope standard plossls like the Skywatcher or Vixen NPL's would work well. The BST Starguiders give you a larger field of view (60 degrees vs 50 degrees) than plossls and more eye relief (distance your eye needs to be from the top of the eyepiece). If you want to keep the cost down plossls will do fine and you might be able to get 3/4 of them which will give you more options to exploit the scopes capabilities. These are all a step up from the stock eyepieces supplied with scopes.

I think the idea of the Baader zoom is worth thinking about. Probably better optical quality than the Svbony plossls. I would hang on to either the Meade 26 or the 32 plossl for low power because zooms have a narrower field of view at the long FL end and I might hang on to the 6mm plossl for the highest power viewing under great seeing conditions but otherwise the zoom would cater for all the others and much of your observing needs I think.

As it's visible to the naked eye quite easily when it's dark (hope it still is !) any optical aid is going to show it nicely.

It's used to make find tuning adjustments to the polar alignment of equatorial mounts. There are 2 screws on the mount base which press against either side of the peg and you use those to fine tune the alignment of the mount. On some tripods the north peg unsecrews. On others it's moulded into the metal of the tripod hub so cutting it off is a more permanent change.

I'm very glad that you do this Stu. Thank you

My Opticron 11x70's have provided some stunning views of Comet Neowise including my 1st sighting of it (accompanied by a gasp !) back on the 6th July. It's nice in a 8x56's as well but the 11x70's really show it off.

I've bought a few things recently, mostly out of curiosity / boredom, which have been low cost. Low enough to take a punt on without worrying about it. What has be pleasing is that they work rather well, certainly somewhat better than their cost would suggest they should Sort of feels like I've "beaten the system" a little bit It's also nice to know that you can have a lot of fun in this hobby without splashing much cash about.

Nice days but cloudy nights here for the past couple of days. Forecast for Sunday night looks better though.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/42362-parabolic-v-spherical-mirrors/?p=550918 I suspect Celestron's advice is incorrect in this instance.

Vixen Porta II ? - how does that fare ? I'm thinking of lighweight alt-az mounts with slow motion controls which is the niche that the Scopetech Zero sits within.

The Astromaster 130 uses a parabolic primary mirror. F/5 is too fast for a spherical mirror to produce acceptable results. For a spherical mirror to produce decent images it has to be F/7 - F8. The Skywatcher Explorer 130 I believe does use a spherical mirror but that is F/6.92. I think the Astromaster uses the same mirror set that is use in scopes such as the Heritage 130 and the Skywatcher Explorer 130P. I've observed with a couple of Astromaster 130's and they can produce very good views. The finder scope was the weakest link with the scope. I hope you are happy with your new scope though.

Those thoughts on the mount are very useful Stu. Thanks very much Jeremy's point is a good one in that it raises the issue of other options and, dare I mention it, value for money. The Scopetech Zero is quite an expensive item at £379 for the mount head. Are there lower cost options such as the AZ-5 and maybe others that folks should consider as well ?

If the scope was in collimation and what you were seeing though the eyepiece was consistently no better than those images I would say that something is amiss with the scope. My 60mm refractor gives better images than that. Secondary offset is a normal feature of newtonians with focal ratios of F/6 and faster.

Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way and the rest of it will be visible tomorrow, next week, next month etc, etc. Comet Neowise will not come back for over 6,000 years. Make the most of it

I use the Gorilla tape on my Rigel Quickfinder base. It has worked fine. The finder base has been on my 12 inch dob for 4 years now with no sign of shifting. I agree that the stock stuff supplied is not up to much.

We are still meeting though fortnightly zoom meetings but the virus has bought group and outreach observing sessions to a halt for now. I know Deer Leap but I have not observed from there. I'm fortunate that my garden has reasonably good views

Hi and welcome to the forum One thing I've noticed from the photo you posted is that the latitude scale on the mount is set to around 25 degrees. I don't know where you are located but this scale needs to be set to your latitude for the mount to track accurately. I've marked the scale in this crop of your photo. Apologies if you already know this !

Hi and welcome to the forum I'm from Portishead so not so far away. There are some fine observing sites on the Mendip Hills. Charterhouse has an observatory. Bristol Astronomical Society has an observatory at Failand.

Good suggestion. Just got to sell the idea of 2 early hours sessions in a row to my other half now

I was telescope-less for a few years when my children were born and that included the period when Hale-Bopp was around. I probably got the odd glimpse of it with binoculars but for much of that time my mind was on other things

Probably the surest way to actually see them all would be to use decent sized binoculars. Much more versatile in terms of the stuff that is in awkward postions as well.

Observing Jupiter last night with my TAK 100 it was not atmospheric dispersion that I had to contend with but a very unstable atmosphere generally. It was like observing the planet through a stream of running water, even low power was poor. I don't suppose an ADC would have helped with that ?

For a Mak they should be fine. I recently bought a low cost 25mm eyepiece as a travel eyepiece for my F/14 90mm mak and it is really sharp right across the field in that scope. I doubt it would do well in my F/5.3 dob but thats not the scope it will be used with.

Looks the same as the Skywatcher EQ1: https://www.saxon.com.au/saxon-eq1-mount-with-tripod.html

A solar system feast ! Clear Outside is showing green from 10 pm on Sunday night through to the following morning as well