John

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.

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 ?

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.

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 !

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

Really great spec for such tasks. Must be a killer planetary and lunar scope as well ?

Excellent - what scope and what magnification ?

I've updated my sketch - this is the 2020 version. Position angle has changed more than I had realised. Split and definition of secondary star is a little clearer now. I observed this at 225x, 257x and 300x with the ED120 using the Nagler 2-4mm zoom eyepiece. The sketch greatly enlarges the image visible at the eyepiece though. Primary star looked a touch yellow tonight but this is a monochrome sketch !

Just manged to get this with my ED120 refractor. Only the 2nd supernova that I've managed to see with that scope ! If I had not observed it already a couple of times with my 12 inch dob I would have really struggled though. Could not see the mag 13 star that is close to the SN though, at least not more than a momentary glimpse of it. The SN was faint in the smaller aperture but definitely there. Had to get used to viewing the area with N at the top - that took a while !

Nice one Paul Quite hard to see visually but your image does a great job.

They sell this in Sainsbury's. I must get a bottle next time I'm in there. It's only £4.50 a bottle so I won't get my hopes up too much:

I've gone for the ED120 refractor this evening so I'll have a gander at some of these and see how it does I'm interested in comparing my 6 year old sketch made with the same scope with the current view of Zeta Herc.

I'm testing a secret design for Tele Vue - it's "cloaked"

Mid August for Saturn and Jupiter to be reasonably placed in the South at around 10:30 pm.

I'm not a great equatorial mount user but I have owned both of those. I would go for the HEQ5 because I think it's more robust, tried and tested and has more capacity. The AVX was pretty good as well but I do think that the HEQ5 is a better overall mount.

There are quite a few that you can see with your scope. You need as dark skies as possible, and no moon in the sky. Low magnification as well. You can't really see them in the finder so you get the scope pointing as close as possible to the right part of the sky then pan around with a low power eyepiece in the scope. Up in Ursa Major there are two close together that I have seen with a 60mm scope - Messier 81 and Messier 82. Here is a chart of how to find them: They might look a bit like this though the scope:

Clear here in the South West. Venus will be unmissable in the West when the light from the Sun has faded a little more.

31mm, 21mm, 17mm (the ES 92), 13mm, 8mm and 6mm. Up to now I have found the ES 17mm 92 a rather frustrating eyepiece. Excellent performance but I have struggled with the eye positioning. Last night however it all fell into place much better and I found it good to use and a fitting companion to the black and green ones Definitely the best ES eyepiece that I've used so far.

Lovely scope ! I used to have one except mine was black and had the Bresser branding. It was a Vixen SP102M underneath though

I have the ED120 setup this evening on the Ercole mount and Berlebach tripod so China meets Germany, so to speak A touch of the USA in the focuser of course !