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John

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Posts posted by John

  1. Sorry it's me again 🙄

    I've seen Triton visually several times with my 12 inch dobsonian and a couple of times under very good conditions with my 130mm refractor. 

    I was hoping to see it with my 120mm refractor at the last opposition but that didn't happen, or at least not conclusively, mostly due to poor weather. I still think it's possible with that scope though. Maybe even with a 100/102mm if things fall into place.

    When I had the 12 inch dob I also managed to see Oberon and Titania, Uranus's brightest moons. I've not managed that with a smaller aperture as yet though.

    Triton is quite magical to see visually. It's just a faint dot of course but it is the most distant rock and ice world that I've managed to see.

    I seem to specialise in faint dots of light 🙄

     

    • Like 9
    • Thanks 2
  2. 1 hour ago, Rob said:

    I have 5, but also have 2 more on my radar!.. not suggesting getting 2 more, but you never know!

    I've tried to switch my radar off from time to time but it's just to hard too avoid peeking at UK Astro Buy & Sell and the classifieds on SGL a couple of times a day. It's a bad habit - I've just seen a C8 that I fancy but my other scopes are hardly getting used lately 🙄

    • Like 3
    • Haha 1
  3. If I was in your position now I would be looking very seriously at the Stellamira 125 ED doublet as well. When I was (quite a few years back) a good 125/127 mm refractor was not within my budget so I ended up with an ED120 instead. That was excellent and I use it a lot. 

    The Stellamira 125 should be handled by your HEQ5 without any drama.

     

     

    • Like 2
  4. Hello and welcome to the forum 🙂

    Of those that you list, I would only recommend the Skywatcher 200P Classic. It is tried and tested and there are many happy owners of it on this forum. The Visionking branded scopes do not look impressive to me. The scopes numbered 4. and 5 on your list would appear to be of the bird-jones reflector type which are generally best avoided.

    I have owned 2 Skywatcher 200P dobsonians, one quite recently, and they were both very good scopes.

     

     

    • Thanks 1
  5. 45 minutes ago, Stu said:

    🤣🤣

    I am well aware that it is ludicrously unjustifiable, and that I do not need them all. I do just enjoy owning them, some are fairly rare but excellent examples which would be hard to replace such as the Genesis and Vixen FL102S. The TAL Alkor is a lovely little thing. I don’t use it much but it’s not worth much either (about the price of a used Ortho!) so I keep it 👍

    I gave up trying to justify (to myself and others) why I own many scopes and eyepieces.

    If I'm asked I just sort of mumble something now and change the subject 🙄

     

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  6. 16 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

    John did you not recently acquire a used 8" SW dob? Or am mistaken. I think I can recall you commenting on the Azimuth stiction mod you carried out.....

    I did and I got the azimuth motion sorted with a single "milk carton washer". It was a very good scope but, probably influenced by the rather poor weather we have had over the past few months, it was not getting used enough so I let it go to a new home.

     

     

    • Like 1
  7. I have 6 scopes currently, all refractors:

    - Tasco 60mm F/13.3 achromat

    - Altair Starwave 70mm F/6 ED doublet

    - Takahashi FC100-DL F/9 Fluorite doublet

    - Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 ED doublet

    - Skywatcher ED120 Pro F/7.5 ED doublet

    - APM/TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet

    When I get the urge for some more aperture again it will probably be a reflector. I'm not sure I want to deal with a refractor larger than 130mm now 🤔

    • Like 12
  8. 5 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

    Thats fantastic John! A great pic from a history, and a lovely old scope too. I honestly think these old small aperture scopes are better than we've been led to believe. That photo of Venus in transit deserves framing!!  Do you still have your Tasco?

    Thanks Mike, Yes, I still have the Tasco in it's wooden box complete with the rather wobbly alt-az yoke mount and .965" eyepieces. Every now and then I set it up and have a look at something for old times sake 🙂

    • Like 4
  9. 17 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

    It's really interesting that this object seems so elusive or faint in relatively large 10-12" reflectors, but is visible in relatively (compared to the former) "small" 4" refractors.

    Why would that be?🤔 - better contrast in the refractors? Or something else?

    This isn't a "Refractors vs Reflectors" loaded question..I'm genuinely intrigued by this and keen to hear opinions on this😊..

    Thanks!

    Dave

    I don't know the answer to this Dave. It's much easier to see this dim target with a 12 inch scope but I have found it possible to at least glimpse it with much smaller apertures.

    Refractors are well known for their contrast and do seem to exceed expectations on DSO's quite often.

     

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  10. 1 hour ago, mikeDnight said:

    I may very well have posted this before. If so I apologise!

    Very early morning at Huddersfield astro society where my wife and I set up my FS128 in readiness for the much anticipated 2004 Transit of Venus. My younger son Daniel spent the day with us rather than wasting his time in school, and after eating his apple, followed along with his StarTravel 102. Both scopes had home grown Mylar filters.  Despite early cloud hindering the view as first contact was seen, it soon cleared and the day ended up being a great success.  There were many visitors, some thrilled at the spectacle, while others wondered what all the fuss was about. One woman looking through my telescope commented "Is that it"? I was most disgruntled, as a little over a year earlier I'd spent almost £4000 on this telescope plus a new mount, the best mount I've ever owned, a Celestron German equatorial made by Losmandy. Wish I'd never parted with it!!! Obviously some people have little appreciation for fine optics and how well defined a transiting black dot can be to a nutter like me! There's nowt as queer as folk!!

    My FS128 observing the transit of Venus, June 8 2004, along with dad & lad.

    2023-05-0814_57_42.jpg.60aec8e96484c4051b9814352a5cf3b4.jpg

    What did we see? 

    2024-03-0913_42_06.thumb.jpg.8d32059767e55204bb4b7284fc4d8757.jpg2024-03-0913_41_30.thumb.jpg.deb5065d6f244d9e39e5a0d0f09d2693.jpg2024-03-0913_40_49.thumb.jpg.76e2f02f2e4ba1c9fba13f8cd4ac1ee3.jpg

     

    That was a memorable event. My only scope at that time was my little 60mm Tasco from the 1960's. I projected the sun's image onto a piece of card and managed to snap a few (rather crude) photos with my Pentax K1000 35mm SLR. As my children and their friends went to school (which was just across the road from where we live) I was able to show them and their parents some views of the transit.

    A lot of fun though 🙂

    000120.jpg.5878beacb61dc04ff13d2205eee8ef82.jpg

    This was the "mighty beast" that I used that day:

    tasco01.JPG.08cced0a52103c133f57fc00c3c6df60.JPG

     

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 1
  11. 10 minutes ago, LondonNeil said:

    Or the Helios hyperflex? same 40⁰-60⁰ fov and 18mm eye relief.  Are these 2 budget options flawed, decent for the money or.....an svbony 3-8 like little known gem?  Well.... probably not the later or the forum would be awash will l with praise for them,  but you know what I mean. 

    I owned a Hyperflex 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom for quite a while. It's optical quality was pretty good but the AFoV was narrower than the spec says - more like 36 degrees to 53 degrees perhaps ? (my estimations). I used it with the Baader Q-Turret 2.25x barlow and the high power performance in it's barlowed 9.5mm - 3.2mm zoom range was surprisingly good. 

    I feel that the Hyperion 8-24 zoom (Mk IV) is a bit better (certainly noticeably wider AFoV) and the SVbony 3-8mm quite a lot better but the zoom range on that latter one only overlaps the un-barlowed zoom by a small amount of course.

     

     

    • Like 2
  12. 1 minute ago, bosun21 said:

    ..... Does anyone else appear to have this streak?

    I seem to 🙄

    I really enjoy searching out faint targets with rather small aperture scopes. Stuff that is at the edge of what the aperture / conditions / observer can see. Usually it's that last component that is the weak one !

    Next clear and dark night I'll be trying to spot the quasar 3C 273 in Virgo with 130mm or smaller apertures 🙂

     

    • Like 2
  13. I agree with the comments regarding the visibility of M31 above. 

    Taking a different type of deep sky object, with the brighter globular clusters, these aperture increases will show noticeable differences in the resolution of stars within the cluster and the depth towards the core that is resolved. With a 10 inch and upwards aperture, M13 starts to look like some of the images you see of it. Quite splendid 🙂 

     

    • Like 2
  14. The Askar 140mm triplet does look very appealing for it's cost. I'm a little wary about being an "early adopter" though. I'm going to wait for a larger body of considered feedback from owners covering a number of examples of the scope before considering it myself.

    There have been low cost triplets that have actually shown more CA than ED doublets in the past. I'm not saying the Askar is one of those but I'm just cautious.

    • Like 5
  15. 1 hour ago, Flame Nebula said:

    So, I read the Roger Vine article. Interestingly, the 100DC came out well. I checked the DZ version on FLO, and it's a grand more! I really do like sharp images, but not prepared to pay 50% more. I also  wonder how much more the SW 150ED would give me for the same price as the 100DC. In theory I'd get 250-300 x on jupiter with good image quality, compared to 200ish for the 4". 

    Jupiter rarely responds well to really high magnifications, whatever the capabilities of the scope.

    In all the scopes that I've owned (up to 12 inch in aperture) around 200x is about the highest magnification that I've found really useful when observing Jupiter. 

    Saturn, Mars, Venus etc are a different proposition. You seem to be able to throw more magnification at them and get decent results. Not Jupiter though.

    • Like 7
  16. 32 minutes ago, Flame Nebula said:

    Thanks Deadlake, 

    Interesting point on the mtf. When you say Apo, do you include SW 120ed, which I understand is not a full Apo? The C11 and C9.25 are primarily AP scopes, where lower apertures can't compete, as I understand (and supported by astrobin) 

    Mark 

    Can any doublet be a "full apo" ?

    Thats the subject of many long threads on another forum I can think of !

     

  17. There have been a few newtonians where the secondary mirror was positioned away from the optical axis of the primary mirror, on the side of the tube. Off-axis newtonians. No secondary support vanes of course. Here is a review of a DGM 5.5 inch off-axis dob by Ed Ting:

    Telescope Reviews, Page 7

    It impressed the reviewer but there are a number of drawbacks with the design (cost being one of them).

    Orion (USA) even had one in their catalogue for a while but the design was not popular so it didn't last.

    I imagine that collimation is an interesting process 🤔

     

  18. 1 hour ago, Stu said:

    .... I recall there were some packaging issues which led to review scopes being out of collimation. That was all rectified, not sure if any changes were made to the scope, I think it was mostly better packaging.

    Yes, the packaging was improved substantially by Skywatcher. 

    In the USA the Skywatcher rep on CN also claimed that the objective lens retaining ring was made more substantial which makes sense because that ring (which did seem rather thin) had shifted in the 2nd example that I was sent, allowing the objective elements to get out of alignment.  

    I've never been able to get any confirmation on whether a similar change was implemented on scopes destined for the UK / EU.

    Despite my 2 unfortunate experiences I always felt that the ED150 had a lot of potential and from reading reports since from those who now own and use them, that optimism seems to have been borne out 🙂

    • Like 1
  19. We saw a Space-X launch from Kennedy Space Centre back in 2017. We were positioned a couple of miles away from the pad and had a good view. The whole thing seemed quite calm and uneventful really. The rocket just moved smoothly upwards from the pad eventually disappearing into the cloud base. The sound took a surprising amount of time to reach us and that crackle (like tearing calico as it has been described !) was very noticeable. A few minutes later we heard a sonic boom as the bottom part of the rocket came back down to earth - it was the first time that the lower section had landed on terra firma I recall and from later footage that was successful.

    I wish I had seen a shuttle go up but maybe I'll get a chance to see one of the heavy lifters go up one day.

    • Like 1
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