John

Good idea about the club Keith - there are some good ones around that are very helpful.

Think I managed to get SN2020ftl tonight:

Not the best transparency here but worth a shot at SN2020ftl with my 12 inch dob I thought. I managed to get the brighter pair of NGC 4281 and 4273 fairly easily laying N of a close triangle of stars. After a while, using high power (318x) I picked up the dimmer NGC 4268 and two faint star like points laying just W of NGC 4273. I think the N most of these was probably the supernova rather than the core of NGC 4277. Barely detected any sign of the home galaxy. The star N of the supernova suspect was magnitude 13.55 I believe and the suspect point of light was dimmer - maybe magnitude 14.2 or so ?. I found this sketch which shows the area quite well and the SN. I can't find who created it though otherwise I'd give them credit for it:

Panstarrs is better than Y4 Atlas now. Larger as well.

It's rather dim and hard to find tonight as well:

To align the finder with the scope eyepiece, yes you do it that way. That should be a one-off adjustment which you can do in daylight using a distant target. Then, when you are using the scope at night, you do it the other way around and what you point the dot in your finder at, should then be in the eyepiece.

Nice dark night here. Got the 12 inch dob out. My first target tonight was to be comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas which is in Camelopardalis (the Giraffe). I noticed from Cartes du Ciel that comet C/2107 T2 Panstarrs was in the same constellation tonight (not often you get two comets in the same constellation) so I also targeted that one. Despite being reported as more or less similar in brightness to T2 Panstarrs, I found Y4 Atlas quite hard to pick out. Got it in the end - rather dim, small but elongated patch of light. Needed 199x to pull it out clearly. T2 Panstarrs on the other hand was much easier to find, somewhat more extensive (75x was fine to see it well) and more condensed towards it's centre. A better comet to observe than Y4 Atlas by quite a margin tonight IMHO. Can't quite believe that it is no brighter than Y4 Atlas - it certainly looks brighter I also noticed that comet C/2019 Y1 Atlas was not far away in Cassiopeia (the Queen). That one was dimmer than Panstarrs but still a better looking patch of light than Y4 Atlas. Also tonight it's right alongside the lovely open cluster NGC 225 and they make a great pair in the 75x field of view of my Ethos 21mm eyepiece. So three comets thus far and clear dark skies forecast for the night. Happy bunny here

I use a 7.2 - 21.5 zoom mostly for nighttime and occasionally when I do solar white light. I've been quite impressed by it. A touch narrow at the 21.5mm end (<40 degrees) but it does widen out to around 55 degrees at the other end. Mine seems to be a clone of the Hyperflex and Lunt zooms. Here I have the Baader 2.25x barlow attached which makes it a useful 9.4mm - 3.2mm high power zoom:

They are pretty good plossls.

I've added some to my post above. Eyepiece choice can be even more complicated than scope choice ! You might want to start a new topic on this.

You are going to need 3 or 4 eyepieces to get the best from a scope. The 25mm is a low(ish) power eyepiece. Something around 15mm and also 10mm or 8mm will be very useful indeed. The BST Starguiders are well thought of for £50 apiece. Decent plossls would also be OK and can be had for around £30 each.

The red dot does not show in the eyepiece of the scope. You align the scope so that the red dot viewed through the finder is lined up to exactly match (as far as possible) what is in the centre of the eyepiece. So using a distant object (needs to be a few hundred metres away) helps to do this alignment (a one-off process) before attempting to use the scope at night.

This is the problem with scope choosing isn't it - you stretch your budget to get the next step up and then find that yet another step up is also now, almost, within reach

I thought that I might move in that direction a while back by building up a set of quality eyepieces with AFoV's of between 50 and 72 degrees. The Delos and Pentax XW's are the core of that set. This didn't work though because I find that I still love using the hyper wides with my 12 inch dobsonian so I have kept the Ethos based set as well What I've found is that I tend to use the smaller AFoV's with my refractors which they seem to suit well. I can't see myself going back to using orthos again though no matter how good they are (and they are very good) I've given up worrying about there being eyepieces out there that are slightly better at this or that now than the ones I have. I think its possible to get a bit obsessive about that rather than fully enjoying what you do have

A very good, and free, guide to used Celestron and other brand SCT's is available from here: https://skywatch.brainiac.com/used/used_sct.pdf

The BST Starguider 25mm weighs 180 grams. The 24mm Hyperion weighs 383 grams according to the Baader website. The Hyperion is quite a fat eyepiece (fatter than the BST Starguider) so getting your nose in between a pair might be an issue as well as the weight ?

Manufacturers are guilty sometimes of undermounting scopes. I can think of a number of other examples of a rather poor matches. Also, when you get a dew sheild on the scope (essential when maks and scts are used) the tube gets longer and puts more strain on the mount.

This is a highly magnified sketch that I made of Zeta Hercules when I first managed to split it a few years back. This was with my ED120. The secondary star appeared as a greyish lump in the diffraction ring rather than a neat star. My 130mm refractor shows it a little more clearly split than this. When Hercules is higher the split will get a little easier to see:

Rob Miller went over to the USA to work with Roland Christen at Astro Physics on some of their amazing mounts. I believe he and Peter Drew were involved in the design of Astro Systems (Luton) scopes. David Hinds made many / most of the mirrors for these so they are very good.

Yes, the central star is quite easily visible with this planetary nebula with higher magnifications. Not so easy if you use a filter when observing observe it though. The central star is around magnitude 10.5 I think. So you were not imagining it

The trouble is, for a £250 budget, the options for a GOTO mount are limited. Much of your budget has gone on the mount leaving a rather smaller and less capable optical scope.

This video might help. It covers basic functions of a similar scope on a similar mount. You can see how the scope moves around the 2 axis of the mount when observing in the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_2nl8VHwg

It is confusing. There are quite a few decent scopes around for your budget but all have their strengths and weaknesses of course. Looking at your original post I wonder one option is something like the Celestron Astromaster 130 that you had but perhaps better constructed ?. The Skywatcher 130P might do the job: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p.html Its mount does not have a motor drive but it does have slow motion controls so that you can get used to the way that an equatorial mount works and then add a motor drive later if you wanted to ? A more capable (optically) scope on a simpler mount would be the Skywatcher Skyliner 150 dobsonian. You can still take the lunar snapshots with that and the views would be even better than the 130mm reflectors provide: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-150p-dobsonian.html Take your time to think things though though. If you stick with the scopes that First Light Optics list, you can't really go wrong. FLO just don't sell bad scopes plus they provide 1st rate support both pre and post sale.

I don't do much solar observing. For nighttime observing I start as soon as I can see anything (ie: Venus, Sirius, the Moon in twilight) and carry on until the early hours if I get engrossed / into the zone and the skies stay clear. I don't do early mornings I'm afraid unless there is a very special target that can only be seen then Sometimes though, even when the skies are clear, I take a break from observing. It is a hobby after all I'm retired now so I don't have to get up early to go to work, which helps.

Very nice list there Paul and many congrats on Zeta Herc - a toughie !