John

I've only had one significant one, thank goodness. My lovely Vixen ED102SS refractor fell out of the jaws of the dovetail clamp and onto the patio about 5 feet below

The noise as it hit the paving slabs was horrible.

Very fortunately Vixens are tougher than they look and the damage was limited to a bent focuser wheel axle and a dent and a scratch on the dew shield. No optical damage and no change to the collimation of the scope.

The focuser has been replaced, the dent smoothed out of the dew shield, a touch up with paint and the scope is still looking good and performing well.

Heart stopping moment though. Due I think to using one of those small dovetail bars in the flat jaws of the ADM dovetail clamp. It felt tight but it wasn't really

With my 12 inch dobsonian 75x is my normal low power - its a 21mm Ethos though

19 minutes ago, Dan13 said:

Hi Rich, apologies for jumping on this old post but do you still have the HEQ5?

Can we confine buying and selling to the classifieds section please ?

Thanks.

1 hour ago, bomberbaz said:

There is always a case to have differing focal lengths and fields of view but the more different types you have, the more complicated it gets. I think you just end up convincing yourself you need a specific eyepiece for viewing this or that object until you have a very lot of eyepieces, some of which never see the dark of night.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Certainly happened to me. 

Perish the thought baz !

I found with hyper wide eyepieces I needed less focal lengths so I found 31mm, 21mm, 13mm, 8mm and 6mm replaced a somewhat larger range of eyepieces with slightly narrower field of view.

All was going well until I decided that often I wanted smaller eyepieces when using refractors, so I put together a 1.25 inch fitting set. 

Then I decided that I needed an outreach / travel set so added a zoom, a barlow and a wide field for those purposes.

So all my good intentions are undone now

"Confessions of an Ocularholic"  

44 minutes ago, Telescope40 said:

Seem to remember the time when Hyperions were very well thort of. 5/6 years back I’m guessing. I had two or three go through my hands. 
Things move on as they say. 
John 

When I first joined this forum the Hyperions were the "new kids on the block". That was 15 years ago !

Some additional focal lengths were added later (can't recall which).

Mostly cloudy here plus it's film night with my other half.

Enjoy the views if you have them

On 03/04/2020 at 16:27, jetstream said:

Did you measure it Don? Out of curiosity how much astig shows in the Vixen SSW? I'm looking at those as well but...

For what its worth I did a report on the SSW's a while back Gerry:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/255080-vixen-ssw-ultra-wide-angle-eyepieces-review/

Gosh - where did those 5 years go !

Eyepiece sets always seem to be a "work in progress"

I think reports are starting to indicate that C/2019 Y4 Atlas might not achieve the brightness that some predicted. This information has been posted on my society website by Nigel Wakefield (who is also a member of this forum):

"There are reports coming in that indicate that the C/2019 Y4 has ceased brightening. There is speculation as to the cause but the dust production has dropped markedly so the nuclear magnitude appears to have fallen a little in consequence. It could be that the nucleus has turned so that a solid crust now faces the Sun. This crust is presumed to have formed when it was part of a larger comet as that neared the Sun and subsequently broke up. It's orbit matches very closely to a bright comet in 1844 and it is speculated that C/2019 Y4 and the 1844 comet are part of a parent body that split up a long time ago."

I got Antares once with my 130mm triplet. Just the once though.

Sirius is easier with some light still in the sky. It gets harder as it gets darker. Like many astro observations there is a "goldilocks" period when there is just the right amount of light in the sky to control the glare from the primary while still allowing the much dimmer secondary to glimmer though.

Sirius has never looked to me like a "classic" binary though, ie: two crisp airy disks side by side. It's always been a matter of peering though the "skirts" of Sirus A to try and catch the glimmer of the Pup. If the seeing is less than good the glare and shimmer of the primary extends further out and that kills the dim Pup star.

What scope are you using the eyepiece with ?

Is it the ES 24mm 68 degree or the 24mm 82 degree eyepiece ?

Can the eyepiece angle be changed, ie: rotated, on the Gen 2 scopes ?

Sticking straight of of the side like the one in the picture is not the most convenient eyepiece position I think.

An angle like the one in this picture seems to work best:

225x - 257x occasionally to 300x. The seeing is a bit variable with the higher powers.

I've been looking at it with my Tak 100. Nice rilles and central peak structure. A very complex floor to this crater.

I don't know the exact figures but I think the 20mm erecting eyepiece will have an apparent field of view of around 35-40 degrees and the 10mm somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees.

Nice report Doug

No beer here but it's a totally clear sky.

Gassendi does look very nice. Using my Tak 100 tonight.

Very clear here as well. Not that great seeing though ?

Just using 11x70's on Venus at the moment. Nice view though.

Are you using a newt Neil ?

Could be the secondary shadow.

Thanks Stu.

I've had the GP a while but I have not used it much. The slow motion cables are from the T-Rex but suit the GP very well I think.

I put a Skywatcher motor drive set on the mount which works fine but I thought I'd try it with the long slo mo cables tonight, for a change.

I got it some time ago on the Astroboot site. I've had to create my own DIY mount attachment system because this one was fitted with the mount that large binoculars use. I use a large 8mm thick steel washer under the tripod hub with an M10 bolt through it into the mount base. A large diameter M10 knob bears against the bottom of the plate to hold everything in place. It works well for my Skytee II and Ercole mounts as well.

I got it yesterday and have hopes again today. I'm being greedy

Scope is out.

This is my Celestron / Vixen GP on an Oberwerk hardwood tripod with the Takahashi FC-100DL on board. The long slow motion cables give it quite a classic look I think

Funny how things come around. Vixen used to make stuff in Japan for Celestron back in the 1980's / 90's. Nice stuff too 

This link has some info on low cost hacks to improve dob motions:

https://flylib.com/books/en/3.311.1.60/1/

They use the term milk jug where we would mean a large plastic milk bottle eg: 4 litre size.

As usual I found the Pentax XW's excellent for lunar observing. The 5mm and 3.5mm are so sharp

When I had the 3.7 amd 4.7mm Ethos SX's I compared them to the XW's over a few months but in the end had to conclude that the XW's were the sharpest even in the centre of the field of view. There was not much in it but despite my love of hyper-wide views, the Ethos SX's went to new homes eventually.