John

The Antares 105mm refractors looked great but were internally stopped down to around 95mm effective aperture. Challenging to mount such long tubes steadily as well.

Clearer again now for a bit - out we go again !

Having been there (twice) with young children I can fully empathize ! In your shoes I think I might prioritize replacing the 10mm and 25mm stock eyepieces with better quality ones. Hopefully you will see why when you get and try the 18mm BST Starguider. You could think about a 12mm Starguider and perhaps a 30mm Vixen NPL plossl. With your barlow the 18mm and 12mm will also give you 9mm and 6mm eyepieces and the 30mm NPL gives you a low power option for open clusters brighter galaxies etc etc. Filters would be slightly lower on the list than the above, I think. See what others think as well - lots of good experience on this forum to dip into

Nice session on double stars with my 130mm refractor but a cloud layer has just crept across the sky masking all but the brighter stars Just before the veil was drawn across the sky I managed to spot "The Pup" star Sirus B glimmering very faintly beside Sirus A. I was using 240x a this point and was getting quite a nice tight image of the A star with minimal shimmer. The encroaching cloud layer put a stop to that of course so the scope sits in the greenhouse now waiting to see if things clear up again. Seeing is steady but transparency seemed a little down so the Orion and Eskimo Nebulae were not as extensive as they can be with this aperture. E & F Trapezium were nicely seen though so that was a fair exchange I guess. Perhaps the cloud will thin out again ?. Hope so

I didn't find that my experience bore out that myth - maybe that was harking back to mirrors made from speculum ? When I've done comparisons I reckon a good refractor can match a reflector around an inch or so larger in aperture perhaps ? It does depend on the seeing conditions as well though. Anyway - nice to see Dougs new-to-him 5 incher and I'm looking forward to hearing about it's performance

If you go for filters I would strongly consider a good quality UHC filter over the CLS type. Unfortunately £40 does not really buy a good quality UHC unless its a used one. Astronomik are really good but their new price is higher than your budget: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomik-filters/astronomik-uhc-filter.html The lower cost UHC ones are not as effective and the CLS have less impact again. Sorry if that sounds a little blunt but that's what I've found over the years I've been using filters. For the Veil Nebula, an O-III filter is the tool of choice and, again, good ones such as the Astronomik are the ones to go for. A UHC does help on this target as well but an O-III gives noticably more "punch" to the contrast of the nebulosty against the background sky. Can you be mobile with your scope ? - some £'s spent on fuel to get to a darker site would make a big improvement on your observation of deep sky objects.

I always wanted a 5 inch frac after seeing pictures of Sir Patrick Moore's 5 inch Cooke at Selsey

Nice scope Doug I used to have one a few years ago. I liked it a lot - proper "big" refractor feel to it

It will be visible from the UK but low down in the SW sky in the constellation Capricorn. Stellarium simulates it nicely so you can see if and when it is visible from your location.

There was a thread anticipating the 2020 martian opposition last year that might be of interest Barry: Its going to be a little higher than the last one but Mars disk a little smaller. I'll take higher and smaller happily I think - it was so low last time that I had to observe between houses !

Keep an eye on the used equipment market (ie: classifieds here and the UK Astro Buy & Sell website). I picked up a Skywatcher Aero ED 30mm for £50 delivered last year and thats a decent low power eyepiece with a 70 degree field of view.

Quite a lot of folks get most of their astro satisfaction from observing the Sun. I know a few who do practically nothing else.

ED = Extra low Dispersion glass. One element or more of this more expensive glass. It's also used in ED doublet refractors and triplet apochromat refractors. You will see much discussion of the various ED glass types when refractors are discussed ! Sounds like you have got the relationship between barrel size and max field of view size correct as well If you want wide fields and long eyepiece focal lengths then the 2 inch format is the way to go.

Because they have a 60 degree apparent field of view, the field stop (the ring inside the eyepiece that defines the field of view) would need to be larger than the inside diameter of the 1.25 inch barrel to maintain that beyond 25mm focal length. In other words, longer focal length BST Starguiders would need to be 2 inch format eyepieces. There are other eyepieces that already occupy that niche such as the Panaviews and the Aero ED's. A 30mm in the 1.25 inch fitting, such as the Vixen NPL 30mm for example, would have an apparent field of view of around 50 degrees (limited by the inside barrel diameter again) so it would not show much, if any, more sky than a 25mm with a 60 degree apparent field of view. Hope that makes sense !

Personally I would buy the package - that is what I did when I bought my Tak FC-100DL. You get the tube clamp, finder and finder base then all of which match the scope. I know that £300 seems expensive but that is the world of Takahashi accessories Unless you already have them, you will also need a diagonal of suitable quality plus a dovetail bar to suit whatever mount you are going to use.

Here you go: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/takahashi-fc-100-series-refractor-telescopes/tak_tfk10310.html Very few in private hands as yet so the used market will be somewhat bleak I would think.

Tough question to answer. As an observer I think it might be Jupiter for me. Always something going on there and the details change as you observe.

William Optics did actually have a 9mm 101 degree eyepiece: That extra 1 degree makes all the difference !

Can we keep buying and selling to the classifieds section please ? Thanks Also bear in mind that buying from the USA or Canada (or elsewhere outside the EU) will attract import duty and handling costs which adds around 20%-25% to the price for the buyer.

E is easier to see than F I find. The distances between the E & F stars and their partners A and C is pretty much the same (4.5 arc seconds and 4.6 arc seconds) but C is somewhat brighter than A and thus the C - F pair is a more uneven brightness pair and therefore harder to split. Uneven brightness between components of a binary system makes them harder to split even if the separation between is relatively unchallenging. Sirius A and B being the most extreme example. Observing them at the altitudes they reach in the UK also adds to the challenge of course.

Superb - I can vouch for the quality of the LZOS optics - absolutely top notch

I've been quite happy with my cheap plastic cheshire for the past few years. Perhaps I've been kidding myself

The distinctive lines of a Vixen classic and the Nagler zoom of course !

I don't find the F/7.5 focal ratio of the ED120 too hard on eyepieces. I still like to use well corrected ones but they also get used in other scopes with faster focal ratios. The Morpheus would be excellent in the 120 I reckon although I've not yet had the pleasure of using one of those The 120mm ED doublets can handle quite a bit of magnification so some choices in short focal length eyepieces would be very useful in due course.

In my case, I use the star test to check that the collimation is good following adjustments that I might have made using a cheshire eyepiece. I agree that trying to actually collimate using a star test can be a trying process.