John

I agree with the above,

Blemishes or dirt on the corrector will have little or no effect on image quality.

Did you take the scope apart to clean the mirrors and the corrector ?

15 minutes ago, jetstream said:

Congrats!

In the image of M13 do you see the "propeller"? another great feature in this fantastic spray of stars.

Hint: it is a dark feature

I used to look for a pattern made of stars until I realised that !

Some fine views of Venus with the old frac this evening but thin cloud has limited what I could go on to observe.

1 hour ago, Stardaze said:

I’m thinking of additional bits that I’ll be needing soon enough, as you do, and a filter or two will be on there. I’d like a  nebulae  filter to begin with, so should my first filter be an OIII? Quality over quantity so wouldn’t scrimp.

The usual advice is that UHC is a bit more versatile than O-III but both types will eventually become very useful to have for enhancing a range of nebulae types.

The best quality and performance visual filters are by Astronomik and Tele Vue (the Bandmate II's) but there are less expensive options by brands such as Explore Scientific which give you a good feel for what these filters can do. Lumicon can also be very good but there has been some quality variation with this brand recently.

The other thing you need to consider is whether to go for the 2 inch or 1.25" filter size. You can use 1.25" eyepieces with a 2 inch filter but not vice versa really. Of course the 2 inch size are more expensive - no surprise there !

22 minutes ago, mikeyjm26 said:

Thanks for the replies. What I find confusing is that you have telescopes for specific purposes. How much of a difference is there in what you can view when looking at planet from a telescope that is designed for it and one not, also when looking at nebula. Can the one that is able to view DSO not focus as well on say the moon or any other planet?

Thanks for any comments, really appreciated.

Each design has it's strengths and weaknesses but all of them can observe the full range of astro targets.

As Geoff says above, to all intents and purposes all astro targets are at infinity for focusing purposes.

People end up having more than one scope as they develop in the hobby and want something particularly good at something specific but all the designs are actually quite versatile.

I've managed to get some very nice views of the crescent Venus this evening with my ancient 60mm Tasco refractor. First time I've used it for 16 years. Even with the very basic .965 inch eyepieces I've had nice views up to 200x. Just a touch of false colour either side of the crescent but nothing distracting.

Not bad for a 50+ year old scope that cost me 45 quid !

10 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

I wasn't disputing it's  quality John, just it's suitability to my requirements at present. I am in the process of over hauling some of my equipment, currently on the list are my filters.

Sorry Steve - I misinterpreted your reference to "research into quality".

I can quite understand why you might feel that you want to move on from the UHC-S

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Celestron, Skywatcher, Bresser and Meade are all around the same quality.

Some of their models have features which make them more attractive and some prefer this brands compterised GOTO system over that one but broadly these brands occupy the same quality sector.

Celestron and Skywatcher are actually owned and made by the same company now.

So look for the model that has the specification and features that you feel you might need and that hits your price point.

Remember to allow enough budget for accessories such as dew shields, and additional eyepieces and maybe a finder scope upgrade. These seem to be the first additions people make to scopes. Dew shields are important with scopes such as the mak-cassegrains (ie: the Celestron 4E) and schmidt-cassegrains.

23 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Your obviously young and your eyes still accomodate well, unlike mine.

It takes a few minutes each morning before I can read the paper on my tablet.

Regards Andrew 

I'm 60 so not too young !

The UHC-C is good quality - it does exactly what Baader designed it to do.

29 minutes ago, heliumstar said:

How did this play out in the end?

I have the same issue with side play and in all honesty I think focuser on my Tak is not really up to standard overall. It's just ok in comparison to ES Hex one and the standard 2 speed Chinese one that comes with Altair 80ED-R.

My FC-100 DL focuser is spot on for me now. I don't feel the need to add either the Tak or FT micro focuser. The adjustments that I made above seem to have lasted. It is better than my Vixen ED102SS R&P and I don't notice any disadvantages when using the Tak to the Moonlite on my ED120 or FT on my LZOS/TMB 130.

I'm not terribly fussy about my focusers though so others may feel differently. I do like them to work efficiently though and not to "slop" in any way.

3 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

Have you ever used the Baader UHC-S filter John. I just wondered how they compared to Astronomik also?

The Baader UHS-C was the 1st "deep sky" filter that I ever owned Steve.

It showed me the Veil Nebula for the 1st time with a 100mm refractor. I bought it because it was billed as being optimised for smaller aperture scopes and that it was.

As the aperture of my scopes increased though I found that the UHC-S was not as effective as a "full blown" UHC and later an O-III

Looking at your scopes I think you would get more benefit from a "full strength" UHC. The ES is closer to that as is the Orion Ultrablock although the latter can be a bit variable. Astronomik or the DGM NBP filter are a touch more effective again.

All these filters work and are of decent quality but some have better optimised band pass profiles than others, and those seem to be the most effective.

There is a trade off between band pass width and star dimming. Sometimes it is nice to see quite a lot of background stars to set the nebula in context. Other times you want the maximum nebulosity enhancement and to hell with the stars !

My silly humour Dave - I thought astroturf was a nice term, given our hobby 

It must be nice not to have to mow it - my lawn needs doing !

2 minutes ago, SparkyVRA said:

Is it worth me looking at the 12.5 next or a Barlow, if Barlow what would be good one to get?

I think you would need to get a 2 inch barlow to avoid loosing some of the field of view of the Morpheus 17.5. So that would also mean a 2 inch diagonal.

There are some good barlows about but personally, with an eyepiece like the Morpheus (good quality, big field stop, lots of glass and rather tall !) I would go for another eyepiece.

Is astroturf a particularly good surface to observe from ?

3 minutes ago, jetstream said:

Well it does work sometimes but there are many many cases where it doesn't...there is zero chance I'd be the tester on a grizzly. I truly hope I don't ever have to try mine out either!

Sometimes I'm glad that I observe from my garden in the UK even if my skies are not all that dark.

A hedgehog or a bat are my biggest wildlife risks !

40 minutes ago, SparkyVRA said:

Thanks I have the 17.5 Morpheus in my basket, just working up the nerve to click buy lol.

How would you guys rate the cheaper x-cels? Is it really that much difference in quality? Ok silly question but interested in opinions anyway.

There won't be much of a difference between the Morpheus and the X-Cell LX's or BST Starguiders. The Morpheus has a larger apparent field of view of course but optically they will all be quite close, especially in the central part of the field of view. I compared the 8mm BST Starguider (£47) to my Tele Vue 8mm Ethos (£500+) a few years back and there was not much difference in performance apart from the massive field of view of the Ethos.

The Morpheus are clearly very nice eyepieces though so I'm sure you won't be dissappointed at all. You can start saving for the rest of the series then 

It's so easy to spend more on eyepieces than the scope had cost !

2 hours ago, jetstream said:

Yes, I have bear spray- works if their not mad- doesn't work on grizzlys,....

 

I wonder how they find that out ????

I just have this picture of some guys in lab coats with clipboards saying to a nervous colleague "Ok, now go in there and annoy the bear while we make notes. After that you can try it on the grizzly"

29 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

.... Shows in simple stuff like the focuser knobs being solid ally rather than the plastic type you get on later ones.

Thats true Dave. The only plastic things are the dust caps and the  azimuth slow motion knob.

Years ago I removed a plastic baffle from behind the finder objective which reduced the effective aperture to about 10mm. So now I have 25mm of not very well corrected lens, but at least it has a little light more grasp.

Looking over the scope, the double drawtube arrangement (pictured below) has reminded me of my 1st light with this scope all those years ago.

After sweet talking my fiancee over why I had bought the scope, I took it out for 1st light that evening only to find that I simply could not get the thing to focus on anything

I had used a similar scope before (borrowed from a friend) so I knew that I should get sharp focus on the Moon and the stars as pinpoints rather than the disks that I was getting.

I honestly thought that I had bought a "pig in a poke" and would have to either fake using the thing to keep my intended on side or, worse, admit that I had made a bad purchase and face the wrath

Then I spotted the inner drawtube, slid it out a few inches and all of a sudden, things came into sharp focus. Phew !!!! - I was saved from embarrassment !!!

I guess this was yesterdays equivalent of todays Skywatcher  "both adapters in the focuser at once" problem which crops up quite often.

Hoping for a view of Venus at least this evening but there are a lot of clouds about - even unboxing old scopes attracts them

While the step from the stock eyepieces to something like the BST Starguider or Celestron X-Cell LX is quite big in performance terms, the steps after that are quite a bit smaller, especially with a "slow" scope such as and SCT.

Some eyepieces are eye wateringly expensive - there are some that top £1K each now. The Morpheus are "middle of the road" in cost terms but seem to perform as well as some that cost twice as much.

Well, its assembled. There is quite a bit of play in the fork alt-az mount but at least it does have slow motions on both axis.

I've forgotten how small .965" accessories are !

The finder, while aligned with the scope OK, is poor.

I want to try it initially with the original mount and eyepieces to re-capture my early views. 

My other half has just reminded me that I bought the scope (used of course) when we were engaged and saving for a mortgage deposit. She thought I was nuts ! - 45 quid down the drain just when we needed to be prudent. If only she had realised then what the thing would lead to ......

That was 37 years ago so the scope was about 20 years old even then. I recall now that the last time that I actually used it was the transit of Venus in 2004. I projected the image of the Sun onto the screen provided with the scope and showed my kids and their friends as they went on their way to school that morning.

27 minutes ago, Stu said:

There's almost a Captain Oates quote in there somewhere John 😉

Good luck, hope you find it.

Somewhere I have three 60mm f15 ish scopes which I bought as a lot for £15 off eBay. They are a bit ropey but I was trying to see what was the cheapest way of splitting the Double Double. I could dig them out and try them at some point.

Found it quite easily

Inspired by Stu's threads on his smaller scopes, eg:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/353976-three-old-dames-two-doubles-and-one-full-moon/?tab=comments#comment-3854590

I've dug my first scope out of the loft with the intention of seeing if it can still be useful in some way.

It is a 1960's vintage Tasco model 12TE-5 - a 60mm F/13.3 achromat refractor. The label on the focuser has the (T) logo and Japan so made by Towa perhaps ?

I'm looking forward to getting this thing up and running. It must be 20+ years since I last looked through it. It's nearly as old as I am !

All the bits and pieces seem to be present. I've just got to remember how they fit together !