John

Gorgeous refractors Neil

I'm wondering the same as Jeremy re: the 152 mount .....

The CNC TMB's were something else ! - heavy I believe but superbly built.

13 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

Quick question: what do you think the limitation, in magnitude, would be with the 10” Bresser. Let’s say under reasonable viewing conditions, bortle 4-5..

It depends on quite a lot of factors. With my 12 inch OO I can get down to mag 14.7 at the zenith. Similar skies to you I guess. At least that is the faintest star that I have seen so far. Extended objects (ie: galaxies, nebulae) would be not quite as faint as that.

I reckon you might be able to get down to mag 14.5 maybe ?

The theoretical limit of a 10 inch is dimmer of course - something like mag 15 I think.

There are observing techniques that can help push things such as averted vision and a sort of "1000 yard stare" thing that I try sometimes where you deliberately try and defocus the eye. That one is difficult to describe !

I got this one through the Tak 100 a few days ago. My phone is an ancient Samsung S3 mini and the clamp is a cheapo 6 quid e.bay one

That's looking a very handsome scope

9 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Ahh that explains it then. Did you do any spotting last night John? 

Not last night.  We had my Astro Society "Zoom" virtual meeting which took until 9:00 pm by which time it was pretty cloudy.

Looks like if might be clear from around 10:00 pm this evening for a while.

The good thing about astronomy is that the Universe is not going anywhere so you can have a break for while and it's all still there when the clouds clear again

Great stuff Stu

I'm glad my sketch was reasonably accurate - its easy to find yourself doubting what you saw at this game, particularly as we all have to observe on our own just now.

56 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Wow you was up early star spotting wasn’t you. Okay thanks very much 

@Nerf_Caching is in Hong Kong.

In the UK the early hours are when Jupiter and Saturn can currently be seen.

Tele Vue eyepieces seem to do OK without being purged with anything

The Mizar-Alcor pair are pretty straightforward under any reasonable sky with the naked eye. The separation between them is 12 arc minutes.

To split Mizar into it's 2 components, Mizar A and Mizar B, requires a scope. The separation between these is 14 arc seconds.

1st time I observed it I reckoned around mag 14.5. 2nd time (couple of nights back) I reckoned it might have brightened to 14.0 or even the high 13's. Latest estimates have it still around that.

The bottom one is nearly in focus. Just a bit more adjustment.

That's as big as its going to get really.

It should look like this when at focus. I've enlarged the image a bit over the eyepiece view:

Looks superb Garry

3 hours ago, timwetherell said:

Thought I'd seen it in the 7" but looking at my sketch it's possibly a bit low. In my photo the two foreground stars below look of similar magnitude so if you saw those too, you almost certainly bagged it! Might have another go tonight

Here is the diagram that Mark mentions in case it is any help. I look for the right angle (green lines) between the top star, the galactic core and the SN (red circle). Cloudy here now though

Todays high quality wide field eyepieces using the latest glass types and coatings give little away to simpler designs I find 

They do cost quite a lot though

Fullerscopes reminded me of TAL scopes from Russia. Robust, slightly "agricultural", a touch over-engineered, a bit quirky but they worked well.

I still have one of their early catalogues:

Rob Miller went over to the USA to work with Roland Christen at Astro Physics on their mounts I believe. Also worked with Software Bisque on the Paramount. I have an Astro Systems catalogue somewhere as well. Rather sad probably ......

Yep - I've seen it a couple of times now with my 12 inch dobsonian. Quite a tough one for me - needed high magnification (265x) to be sure of it. I could see the two stars below it in the above pic but not the dimmer one above it.

The one in NGC 3643 is brighter but the galaxy is much, much dimmer than M61. I spotted that one last night with my ED120 refractor.

24 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Ok I will try that. Thankyou. One more question. Im

mot really sure how to align my scope to Polaris so. If I just set the latitude to 53.3 would that not be suffice? 

I find that setting the mount to my latitude (one off task) and then pointing the Right Ascension axis towards the North when I set the scope up, is usually good enough for visual observing. One of the tripod legs might have a "N" sticker on it to indicate that one needs to point north.

The seeing has been excellent recently and, unusually, so has the transparency on some nights.

Last night I was going up to 450x with my ED120 refractor on double stars and still getting good, tight star shapes.

Challenging to track with an undriven alt-az mount at those powers though and even more so with the 50 degree field of the Nagler zoom !

Nice report Chris.

I found that I needed to use an O-III filter the night before last to allow the position and angle of "the eyes" to be seen with my 12 inch dob. The mak-cass will have excellent contrast so should do well on many DSO's.

M108 becomes very hard to see with the filter in though so it is definitely worth observing this target filterless as well.

We have had some splendid nights lately

I wonder if things will go downhill when commuting starts up again in earnest ?

30 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

I’m going to look into buying more expensive bits and bobs if I can get into it properly. I’m not

giving up yet

No don't give up. I spent quite a few years with my old scope. Despite it's drawbacks it did show me enough to get me hooked on the hobby.

Joining an astro society is an excellent idea. There are a list of them down the left hand side of the front page of the UK Astro Buy & Sell website (scroll down):

https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/

As suggested earlier in this thread the BST Starguiders provide good performance and comfort for their price:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bst-starguider-eyepieces.html

A significant step up from the stock eyepieces supplied with scopes.

You will see them mentioned quite a bit on this forum for good reason !

What Timbandit says is very true. Some of my best planetary views have come when there is still plenty of light in the sky or even through a thin, high layer of cloud.

2 hours ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

I am now considering one of these light shields for the 200p. I really like the contrast gains from the astro zap dew shield, but I am starting to find that at low to medium altitude its weighing the front of the scope down and taking me of target. The only thing putting me off the light shield is the price.

baz

 

You could probably make one from an old foam camping mat and some vecro tape. You could have the design that suits you then.

I've used a cardboard shield before and it did the job. Just didn't look too smart but who cares in the dark !

1 hour ago, Nerf_Caching said:

I don't think these finderscopes have the rubber ring. I know skywatcher 6x30 finderscopes do but these don't based on experience.

That might be why they are awkward to use then !

I had a very similar finder on my old (very old) 60mm Tasco and I found that adding some tape around the finder body, where it is held by the front end of the holder, helped a lot in making sure that it stayed aimed where I aimed it. I was hoping that they might have improved the design 50 years on but obviously not

It's still not a good finder by any standards - just about adequate for the brighter targets. If I used the scope more than very occasionally, I would replace the finder with something better.

Had some fun under decent skies with my ED120 refractor tonight.

Managed to see with direct vision supernova 2020hvf in NGC 3643 which is currently reported at magnitude 12.4

With averted vision I caught, a couple of times, the magnitude 13.15 (Stellarium figure) star just north of the supernova.

Very nice view of Messier 57 - the Ring Nebula.

With averted vision I managed to spot the star close to the edge of the nebula which is magnitude 13.0 according to the chart below.

Looking at the theory, the limiting magnitude of a 120mm aperture telescope is given at between magnitude 13.1 and 14.1.

I found that using high magnifications enabled me to see close to the magnitude limit of the scope. Tonight 200x - 300x were used with the ED120 when observing these faint point sources of light.

My skies are probably average for a location on the edge of a large town. Limiting naked eye magnitude at the zenith tonight was around 5.5. According to "Clear Outside" I am in a Bortle Class 5 area.

I probably have not quite reached the limit of the scope on point sources but I reckon I'm coming quite close to it

What I could not see however, was the magnitude 11.4 central star in the Cats Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) in Draco. I think this is possibly because the star is set against a nebulous background which reduces it's contrast and therefore it's visibility in smaller apertures.

On the next clear night I will use my 130mm refractor and see what, if any, differences there are in it's limits on the same targets