John

Sounds excellent Stu. We are using Zoom for our society meetings and have the 3rd one using this system tomorrow night. The speaker who was booked to visit us has agreed to do his presentation "live" over Zoom so that should be interesting. The past couple of sessions have been a social 10-15 minutes then a pre-recorded presentation which we all watch "together" as it were - Zoom allows text comments as we go along. Doing some "live" viewing would be great if we can set it up. I'll give that some thought - thanks for the info on what you have done. We are getting about 40 folks logging on to our sessions so a live broadcast of views though a scope would be a lot of fun !

I honestly can't recall that advice but I have made quite a lot of posts here over the past 15 years so perhaps thats not surprising ! It might be worth starting another thread on the differences between a C5 and a 100mm or 120mm apo / ED doublet refractor. I'm probably biased now because I do have an ED120 and I've not owned a C5 for quite a while The C5+ if I recall was a particularly nice version of the C5 with a table top motorised mount. A sort of complete portable and compact instrument. An ED120 is a great scope but can't match the C5 for compactness and portability.

I don't think I've read the manual that came with my Tak I'll have to dig it out and have a look though it - might pick up some useful tips !

The Telrad would look fine on the 10" dob. I feel that they are an iconic design despite their size. I've enjoyed the ones that I've owned but with my current dob I want the smaller "footprint" of the Rigel.

What that does not show is the effect of the additional magnification in darkening the background sky which in turn helps to enhance the contrast of deep sky objects. This is why I use my 21mm Ethos a lot more than the 31mm Nagler. True field is one thing but contrast is also a very important part of deep sky observing.

Yes, it can: Neater job: https://astronomyconnect.com/forums/media/short-telrad.130/

Actually, maybe a subject that is better discussed in a thread of it's own perhaps.

What about that old "meaningless magnification" thing that used to get quoted a lot when referring to scope performance ? How do these top quality refractors seem to bypass that ?

I wanted it to save having to use the tray.

Well, all the other fittings are black

Burnley man found impaled on scope. Scope carefully extracted by surgeons and no damage found. No reports on the condition of the victim though

The largest true field of view that your scope will show is 2.3 degrees - that would be with a 32mm plossl eyepiece or a 24mm wide field. With the 25mm eyepiece that comes with the scope you should get around 1.7 degrees which is plenty for galaxy hunting. The Andromeda galaxy is a bit larger than that but the core of it (which is what you see with a small scope) will fit into that view OK.

My delivery was actually yesterday but I thought a picture of it fitted was more interesting than the box ! Berlebach "spreader stopper" for my Uni 28 tripod:

I would agree Louis but I didn't have one of those and I don't think I could have held all 3 with one hand !

You will be able to to the Andromeda Galaxy with your scope. It will appear as a small oval patch of light. It needs low magnification so your 25mm eyepiece. Under a dark sky you can actually just about see this galaxy with just your eyes and any binocular will certainly show it. Ideal galaxy hunting scopes have as much aperture (ie: diameter of the main lens or mirror) as possible. Using them under dark skies is also very helpful for seeing galaxies. I doubt that another eyepiece will enhance the abilities of your scope with regards to galaxy spotting. Using it under a dark sky would improve things though.

I would use the eyepieces that you have for now. Use the 25mm to search for the target after the red dot finder has got you to the right part of the sky. You can then use a bit more magnification with the 10mm eyepiece if needed. Using the barlow lens with the 10mm eyepiece will give you a 5mm eyepiece but this will not be much use for deep sky objects. The big wide angle eyepieces need a 2 inch fitting on the scope and I don't think your scope has that capability. They will also cost as much as your scope has cost !

I had the Aspheric 36mm for a while. I was using it in an F/12 150mm refractor. It worked well with that scope but I noticed when I tried the eyepiece in my F/6.5 refractor that there was quite a lot of astigmatism in the outer field of view - rather too much I felt for the cost of the eyepiece. Personally I think there are better 30-something mm choices available for that sort of price eg: the Aero ED 35mm. The Aspherics are nowhere near as well corrected in faster scopes as the Morpheus is. You might well be disappointed.

Hello and welcome to the forum. What eyepieces, filters and other accessories does the scope come with ? That will help us give some advice about sensible further acquisitions.

Bear in mind that you probably won't get 2.5x doing it that way. Probably more like 1.5x but the exact amplification will depend on the focal length of the barlow lens and the distance between the eyepiece lenses and the barlow lenses.

The Telrad base has a larger contact area with the scope of course so the sticky pads can be larger.

Good idea not to rush ! There are so many eyepiece options that it takes time and some experience to work out which will be useful to you. In general having a range of 4-5 eyepieces ranging from low power to high power is what you need. Many of us seem to end up with somewhat more than that though

The Nirvana is probably the best you can for for it's price. I think it would provide as good performance as the ES 6.7 for a lot less £'s which is why I suggested it. My personal choice at 17mm are the currently the 17mm Explore Scientific 92 degrees and the Tele Vue Delos 17.3mm but these are £300 plus eyepieces if bought new. Big eyepieces as well

The Rigel works very well. It has 2 circles rather than the 3 that the Telrad has which define 2 degrees and .5 of a degree of sky respectively. Mine is around a decade old so I have replaced the sticky pads on the base a couple of times over the years (easy and very cheap to do). My scope is kept indoors which might help. There is a screw hole in the base if you want to use that. For me, I needed to save as much weight and space as possible at the top end of the scope so I went for the Rigel. I have owned Telrads in the past with other scopes and they do the job excellently as well.

With a 180mm mak-cassegrain I would try and store the scope tube somewhere that is close to the outside temperature.

Personally I would go for the Nirvana over the ES 82's and save some money. The limitation with the Nirvana range is that there are only 3 focal lengths in the 1.25" size - 16mm, 7mm and 4mm. 6mm/7mm is quite a high power for DSO observing. It's OK for the small ones such as planetary nebulae but for galaxies, clusters and larger nebulae I would usually use lower magnifications. The 16mm Nirvana might be a more useful all round DSO eyepiece.