John

I find the view at of globulars stunning with my 12 inch at around 200x baz so I think you are on the right track Under a dark sky I also use lower power on M13 to try and see a little galaxy that is in the same field of view:

On your question 2, I generally find that my 21mm eyepiece gives a more contrasty view of galaxies than my 31mm does. I have some moderate light pollution where I observe. When I want to tease out fainter targets I add more magnification, eg: 13mm or even 8 or 6mm eyepiece. On question 6, I guess it is scanning up or down Markarians Chain. I have also had nice views of the structure within Messier 64 recently and also observing the "Siamese Twins" NGC 4567 and 4578 "interacting" was lovely.

Great report again Mark I had a break from observing last night but my 12 inch dob is out again this evening. Hope to go for Coma B galaxies and the quasar in Virgo.

If only there were more focal length in the Nirvana range.

As said above, the eyepiece fitting is missing from the end of what is known as the drawtube - the chrome part that goes in and out when you focus. There should be a thread on the end of the chrome tube to take the eyepiece fitting but I don't see one. Maybe it is an internal thread ? It actually looks like the drawtube (chrome) is in backwards in the photo.

Until we have some idea of budget I feel we are just "shooting in the dark" here. All we know at present is: - Planets are of strong interest - 100mm or above in aperture - Does not want to have to upgrade too quickly

If you try it on the stars you might find that the problem goes away. The eyepiece will reach focus further inwards on a target that is effectively at infinity rather than a much closer target. The 40mm may well not reach focus at just the same place as your other eyepieces though, it's worth being aware of that. The usual criticism of 40mm eyepieces is that they cant show any more sky than a 32mm in the 1.25 inch focal length, which is true. So the view down them can seem a little like looking into a tunnel. Owners of long focal length scopes find them useful tools though.

If you need a physically short scope with a moderate aperture then a refractor is not really the right scope. The folded designs such as the SCT and cassegrain will be a much better "fit". Go for the scope that does what you need in the way that you need it done

When you say nearer objects, how near do you mean ? The focal plane (the point at which the eyepiece reaches focus) is often different with 40mm eyepieces in the 1.25 inch fitting.

That can be helpful when choosing eyepieces - you have a wider choice at the medium and shorter focal length end.

Many of us end up with a number of scopes. I have 4 refractors (which is probably excessive) and a 12 inch dobsonian for example. I have also owned SCT's, Mak-Cassegrains and Mak-Newtonians in the past as well and I enjoyed those as well. We find the designs that enable us best to pursue the interests we have and also those which we simply like using. All the designs have their strengths and weaknesses. These "this design vs that design" threads are interesting but don't reach any firm conclusions because there isn't one really Luckily for those starting out in the hobby, the majority designs of scope will do a reasonable job of being an "all rounder" and (hopefully) cement the interest in the hobby

The Nirvanas are very good value. If you wear glasses when observing their eye relief is a bit tight though, ie: you may not be able to see the full field of view. Eye relief is the distance that your eye needs to be positioned above the eye lens (the top lens in the eyepiece) to use the eyepiece fully effectively. The 16mm and 7mm would be useful in your 8SE, the latter as a "highest power" eyepiece giving 286x. I've owned a couple of the Celestron X-Cell LX's and thought them good but no better in terms of optical performance than the less expensive BST Starguiders. Both have more eye relief than the Nirvanas. The Nirvanas give a wider field of view of course.

Things can get big and heavy with 2 inch barlows (Powermate in this case):

Are you intending to barlow 2 inch eyepieces ?

That looks an improvement over the dual axis set Michael. I spent a couple of hours playing around with my GP mount this afternoon (which is a Celestron branded one like yours). I have a Meade LXD55 drive set and controller somewhere which is supposed to fit on the GP's, EQ5, LXD55 etc so I might have a go at fitting that in place of the Synta dual axis set that is currently on there. Trouble is, I don't want or need GOTO. I would like a neater set of motors though.

The project has been running since 2015 with the permissions being considered in 2017 and approved towards the end of that year. Worldwide astronomy organisations did raise concerns at the time but the decision was still to go ahead. I believe the project gathered additional impetus when the US military took an interest in it. By all means sign the petitions etc but in all honesty I don't see any chance whatsoever in stopping this programme now.

I don't cut and remove the foam from my cases. I've found that I can break the foam around the outline of the eyepiece then press the eyepiece down which leaves an impression that the eyepiece then sits in held in place by the foam in the lid. If you change eyepieces (which I used to do a lot !) you can pull the foam back up and then repeat the process for the new eyepiece size and shape. It's kept my cases going though many eyepiece changes

Big refractors need really big mounts and really big refractors need enormous mounts. Refractors larger than a 150mm need to be permanently mounted in an observatory or similar IMHO.

Too late to do anything about it I think - they have approval to launch 12,000 of these and may extend that to 45,000. Apparently they will be bought out of orbit and allowed to come down in a "controlled" manner in around 8 years or so,

If it is the Celestron Starpointer Pro, this one: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/finders/celestron-starpointer-pro-finderscope.html you would remove the foot part and that will leave a clamp rail that should fit onto the bracket attached to your scope that the original finder was supposed to clamp onto. This person has fitted one to his Celestron 5 inch SCT using that method:

I meant folks on this forum. If you put your scope in your signature folks who have not followed your threads will know what you have.

Is this for your Celestron 8SE ? (some folks might not know what you have )

I've added green arrows to this pic showing where the only threaded section of these rails is. If the threads have stripped or are not present in yours then a replacement is required:

Quite right - 1st thing you need to do when you get a scope - adjust the finder so that what the red dot points to is as exactly as possible what you see in the centre of the eyepiece of the scope. Distant targets such as chimneys and telegraph pole tops are useful for doing this in daylight. The target needs to be many hundreds of metres away though to get an alignment that also is accurate for stars and planets.

Starlink satellites: