John

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:

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 !

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 !!!

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

My old Orion Optics 10 inch F/4.8 on the Ambermille alt-az mount. Nice alternative to a dob mount

Pretty good summary of the options there from Louis A 35mm would give you a 3 degree true field compared to the 2 degrees that the 25mm X-Cel LX delivers. Quite a gain.

If both component stars were the same brightness, Zeta Herc would be a relatively easy split but with the primary at mag 2.95 and the secondary at mag 5.4 it becomes a much tougher challenge. Similarly with Sirius - the separation there is a pretty straightforward 10 arc seconds but the brightness difference between Sirius and "The Pup" is massive, the latter being 10,000 times dimmer than the primary.

I had a DGM NBP filter for quite a while. It was very effective as I recall. I just found that I was using an O-III much more often so I let the NBP go. Then I missed having a UHC of course So I got a couple of lower cost ones (ES UHC and Meade 4000 Narrowband) which are not bad but don't have quite the impact that the NBP had. If I find myself reaching for UHC more often I'll have to get another NBP.

Yes, I think that is correct Mark.

They look very good Stu

I didn't know about this phenomenon which is unique to Mercury, until this link was posted on my society forum by Nigel Wakefield. I found it very interesting so I thought I would share it here - hope that is OK Nigel ? https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=163365 Andrea Alessandrini has done really well to capture this. Looking further into this I came across this NASA web page on it: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/mercurys-sodium-tail I'm sure there is plenty more out there on this. It's good to learn new stuff - thanks Nigel

Does averted vision bring rods or cones into play ? It certainly works !

Meade did two versions of their AR5 - one with collimation facilities on the objective cell and one without. The Bresser 127L has the latter and is a clone of the Meade AR5 LXD75 tubes. I've actually owned both the Meade and the Bresser versions. If you want a "big" refractor experience I agree that these 127mm F/9ish achromats deliver that. Strangely, in a way that a 120mm doesn't quite manage ? The earlier 127's could do with longer dew shields though which it looks as if Bresser have sorted now. 150mm F/8 - 127mm F/9.3 - 102mm F/6.5

PS: you don't really get a "snowman" or "peanut" effect with this one. The secondary star looks rather like a tiny blob of dirty blu-tak stuck onto the diffraction ring !

I first managed Zeta Herc back in 2013 with my ED120. Kerry has kindly posted the 2016 version above and below is a re-vamp from May this year. As you can see the position angle has changed a bit. I think the gap is a touch wider now as well but it is still a challenging split:

Orion (USA) is a re-brander. Today a lot (but not all) of their stuff is made by Synta who also own the Skywatcher brand and Celestron now as well. Orion branded stuff tends to be on the expensive side in the UK compared to the same product under Skywatcher or Celestron branding. In the past Orion have carried products made by Vixen in Japan and Intes in Russia. Below is a maksutov-newtonian that I used to own. It was made by Intes in Russia, their name for it is the MN61 but my example was re-branded a black livery by Orion and called "The Argonaut". I've owned a couple of their filters, the Skyglow broadband which I found did not make much difference and the Ultrablock UHC type which I found quite effective. I understand that the Ultrablocks can be very variable in their transmission ranging from the pretty good to the rather mediocre. Who would have thought that the subject of deep sky filters was as complicated ?

Depends on the focal length of the barlow I think. Not a spec that is regularly published

A "bigger refractor"

"little set up"