John

Personally I don't find filters make a big difference to the Cat's Eye or Blinking planetary nebulae. They can make the central star in those nebulae harder to see though !

The Veil Nebula is becoming better and better placed now and that's where the O-III will really earn it's keep.

19 hours ago, HollyHound said:

.... See how I get on and then maybe garner some opinions on filling that gap if necessary...

I'm sure that there will be no shortage of opinions when you are ready

13 hours ago, Robindonne said:

Thats why all the warnings constant.  Never seen the results of damaged instruments before.  

46 minutes ago, GazOC said:

That sort of test is always going to show the difference in handling colour in between a good triplet and a good doublet and ties in with both the ED120's I've owned but I've seen plenty of reviews of the scope that mentioned comments such as "no false colour either in or out of focus" which I tend to put down to people getting a bit carried away with their new telescope.

I've seen the same written about achromats, even quite fast ones

It gets worse when the popular media get hold of it

Similarly "supermoons" etc, etc.

With a small scope and depending on the levels of light pollution M31 might look something like this:

You need to use your lowest magnification.

This time of year is not great for observing galaxies - it does not get properly dark.

I hope this is not going to descend into a CN type thread ???? - if we are going to start dredging out old test results I think I'll bow out ......

My eye tells me that the Skywatcher ED120 objective is excellent and I've had the TMB/LZOS and Tak FC100 to compare it against for the past 4 years.

I keep intending to post something on this, having owned both the Tak FC100-DL and a Skywatcher ED120 for 4 years now.

At some point I am intending to downsize my equipment stocks but I will find it very difficult to pick which of these scopes stays and which goes

The double double would be an easy split when the conditions are half decent.

Shows that they were not and probably accounts for the mediocre views with the 5mm BST Starguider as well.

The difference between your 200mm F/5.9 and the 300mm F/4.9 should not result in a "cliff edge" drop in the BST Starguiders performance. It will be more subtle than that and only really discernable in the outer 20% of the field of view really.

While eyepieces such as the Morpheus are a bit better you are into the law of diminishing returns from the Starguiders upwards I think. The big step is from the stock EP's to the Starguiders.

Yes. I've seen it with my 6x30mm finder scope.

It is a very small disk though - even at 200x you will only see it as a tiny blue/green spot. Clearly not a star though, when observed at those magnifications.

I have even managed to see Neptune's brightest moon, Triton with a scope. Generally it needs my 12 inch dobsonian but I have managed to spot this faint little point of light with my 130mm refractor as well. Lots and lots of magnification needed for that challenge !

1 hour ago, Robindonne said:

....  So the light centers on that lens, what gets immense hot, and melts the housing?

Or the collimation is off to the extent that the light cone hits the plastic surround ?

1 hour ago, Alan White said:

@John did you align this report with the For Sale section and @carastro 😉

Nice report by the way, perhaps the next size scope should be 120-130mm for me.

For a crazy few minutes I was thinking of buying @carastro's scope and then making a pair of giant binoculars from the two scopes

But, divorce is very expensive I hear .........

The trouble is Baz, you get a sort of "domino effect" when you get one particularly nice eyepiece in your collection ........ it's a slippery slope

With F/5 scopes I rarely use anything longer than 31mm in focal length. More often it's a 21mm which seems to do better on DSO's from my back garden.

Of course things go the other way if you get a taste for a 100 degree field of view

1 hour ago, HollyHound said:

Thanks, that's good to know... 5mm on the StellaMira would give me the theoretical maximum magnification of x160, but I reckon I can use 4mm for x200 on the moon and maybe more... will give it a go.

Crikey, that Type 1 is enormous! I have 32 and 38 PanaViews, but I didn't realise the shorter focal lengths could also be big eyepieces. I suppose it helps the eye relief, quality etc.

It's amazing what Tele Vue have been able to do with the size of the Nagler 13mm Type 6 compared with the original Type 1. Likewise they shrunk the 20mm T5 from the massive original Type 2 20mm:

3 hours ago, F15Rules said:

...I'm impressed that you could see the mag 13 star close to M57 with direct vision..I have always struggled with it (I know my eyes aren't as good as they once were), but I haven't attempted it so far this season. Can I ask what ep/magnification you found worked best for you to see it?.....

Thanks Dave,

I was using the 7.2mm setting of my 7.2-21.5 zoom so 125x. At the longer focal lengths the nebula was clear but the mag 13 star needed that power boost to get it clearly. With my 100mm / 102mm fracs I just get occasional suggested glimpses of this star but with the 120mm it is noticeably easier to pick up.

I am increasingly finding the zoom eyepiece very useful when observing deep sky objects from my back garden. Add that to its usefulness when barlowed for lunar / planetary / double stars and I'm going to wear it out at this rate

12-13mm is a nice general purpose focal length for a quality widefield eyepiece. I think that is why 13mm was the focal length that the first Nagler came out in and years later the first Ethos as well.

I've had a lovely evening with my old Skywatcher ED120

Started with some double stars as the sky darkened. Zeta Herculis, Delta Cygni, Izar, Epsilon Lyrae, etc, etc. The old favourites. Did try to split Antares as it peeked between a gap in the the nearby rooftops but it was a rather ill-defined, sparkling orange and blue / green spot so no joy with that.

Then had a happy 45 minutes on the Messier globular clusters in Ophiuchus, M12, M10, M107 and M14. Some lovely settings amongst star fields with these, especially M12.

Popped up to Hercules for M13 of course - fabulous view for just 12 cm of aperture - masses of stars resolved across the face of the cluster at 120x or so.

With the sky quite dark now I had a look at M57 in Lyra and, as well as a really nicely defined ring structure, I could see the magnitude 13 star close to the nebula with direct vision.

By now Cygnus was well up and just a smear of the milky way was showing through it so I sought my favourite Summer target, the Veil Nebula. I experimented with 3 eyepieces - 40mm and 30mm 2 inch 68 degree Aero ED's and the 24mm Panoptic, and 4 filters, the Lumicon and Astronomik O-III filters and the ES UHC and Meade 4000 Nebular Narrowband.

Without a filter at all even the brighter Eastern Veil segment was virtually invisible. Swapping around eyepieces and filters I got the best results with the 30mm and 24mm eyepieces. The 40mm showed the most sky of course but the sections of nebulosity were just not as distinct against the lighter background.

Of the O-III filters, I felt that the Lumicon was a touch more effective than the Astronomik tonight but both did a good job of teasing out both the East and Western portions of the Veil and the elongated chevron of Pickerings / Flemings Wisp in between. Of the UHC type filters I felt the rather old Meade 4000 Narrowband put in a better performance than the Explore Scientific with the ED120.

All the filters made a noticeable difference to the visibility of the Veil nebula though. Without them, there was little to see apart from star fields.

I finished my session with M27, the Dumbbell Nebula which had just risen above the trees. With this object I usually prefer the filter less view but tonight the UHC's just added to the contrast of the "hour glass" portion of the nebula and drew out the surrounding fainter halo that frames it rather well.

A bight meteor that streaked down though Serpens and Scutum was a nice additional touch. I did wonder if it was one of the "Scutids" which is an active shower from 2nd June ?

The forecast this evening was very mixed to say the least so getting a nice 3 hour session with my trusty ED120 was a real bonus  

Very good report Gary

I'm a bit further south than yourself and Mark but not too far away - Portishead in North Somerset.

Good to hear that such an attractive scope has performance to match it's fine looks.

Pity that there are not more Nirvana's in the range - something between the 16mm and the 7mm and the 4mm would be very nice. They are super eyepieces for their cost.

It will be interesting to hear what you make of the Nagler 3-6mm zoom. I have the 2-4mm and use it a lot more than I thought I would !

8 hours ago, wookie1965 said:

What did you think of the focuser in the Meade 127mm and I'm pretty sure mine is not collimateable saying that I have checked it and it's very near spot on. 

The Meade focuser was basic but did the job OK.

To be honest I'm not all that fussy about focusers. If they move the eyepiece in and out reasonably smoothly and then hold it nice and steady where you want it to be, that will do for me

If yours is in good collimation then you won't need the collimation adjustments. As you can see, of these 3, only the Bresser 127L had them. I did find that I needed to collimate a Meade AR6 that I had later. That scope was a bit of a monster as well:

Meow-lon ?

I'm sure others will give you good advice Barry - I don't use the Morpheus eyepieces but they do seem to have quickly gathered a lot of fans.

I think you are right that the middle focal lengths are the best ones in the BST Starguider range.

I'm glad you are impressed with the views through your 300P. Wait until you see Messier 13 at around 150x !!!

21 minutes ago, Natwooddraws said:

Yeah I think I'll have to keep an eye out for a second hand one - I had no idea choosing a mount would be just as tricky as the scope!

Once imaging becomes the aim, the mount becomes more important than the scope in many ways.

The forecast is not too good tonight but I thought that I would put my ED120 out anyway, just in case