John

Nice selection Mike

I guess many of us have owned an AZ-3 at some point. OK with a short scope on board, as long as you don't try and point it too high in the sky !

The fork mount (2nd from last) is a Hercules isn't it ?. Don't see many of those over here.

I can't find pics of all of the ones I've owned so I've substitued other pics for some.

1. Revelation 8 inch. Made by GSO but sold under the Revelation branding by Telescope House

2. Skywatcher Skyliner 250PX. Bought off e.bay for £100 "Buy it Now": The owner wanted to see the back of it !

3. Skywatcher Skyliner 200P. Bought from FLO as an "open box" bargain. Super scope - very good "all rounder"

4. Meade Lightbridge 12 inch. Bought used (as usual !). Really felt like a big scope. Needed quite a few mods. Rather heavy to move about

5. Orion Optics 12 inch F/5.3. I bought the OTA and SGL friend "Moonshane" made me the superb plywood dob mount. Continues to please each time I use it

34 minutes ago, timwetherell said:

I use a 2-4 nagler zoom quite a bit, it's extraordinarily gocd for a short focal length eyepiece! 

I have one of those as well. Out of production now apparently but mine has proved much more use than I thought it would be when I bought it

27 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Do ypu find it a bit scary when you realise how many scopes you’ve owned???  🙀🙀🙀

Yes, particularly when I forget some that I've owned !

I should probably put this thread in the scopes discussion area - I can leave a link here to it as well though. Is that OK ?

Great stuff Paz

I'll let you off the eq platform - I used to have one just the same as yours that I used with my 12 inch dob

@johninderby : it's an alt-az mount, just accessorised a bit !

Lovely scopes John - good idea for a thread

I'll dig around for some pics of the ones that I've owned.

The Bray is an interesting heavy duty mount made in low numbers by a British company. I knew that it had serious carrying capacity and could move larger scopes smoothly due to the mount using large bearing surfaces. The Istar 150mm F/12 achromat was a challenge for practically any mount though, more due to it's length rather than it's weight.

The tripod in that picture is the Meade Giant Field tripod with 3 inch steel tube legs - the scope rather dwarfs it and the mount though.

Here is a Bray Tablet carrying a C14 (not mine):

Here is a closer view of the mount head:

Getting detail out of planets is something that you kind of develop at I've found.

The more you observe them and the longer you observe them for, the more detail you start to pick out. I think your eye and brain train themselves to make the most of the information (light) that the scope is presenting.

Seeing conditions have a lot of influence as well but if you keep at it you get more chances of catching the windows of best seeing each session. And those are when our gear really shows what it can do

I've had lots of moderate to good views of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn but relatively few occasions each year when it's all come together. When that happens though, the view can take your breath away even with quite modest aperture scopes. 

Its those glimpses of unsuspected detail and richness that keep you coming back for more I reckon

43 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Wondering if I should start a “ Dobs I have Owned “ thread?  🤔

Well, there is a "gap in the market" there

Your alt azimuth creations look very effective Michael

Wood is a really good material for mounts and tripods I reckon. I often wonder what sort of scale and cost of commercial equatorial mount I would need to hold my F/5.3 12 inch dob steady when using 300x or more ?. And yet a well designed and made plywood mount does the job really well for a fraction of the weight and price.

Some simply gorgeous alt-az mounts here

Wonderful design and execution on both your mounts Doc

The 102mm F/11 achromat refractors have very well figured objective lenses I believe. With the exception of a modest amount of CA (very modest at F/11) a high proportion of the light gathered by the objective will be concentrated into the airy disk of a star being observed, with a faint diffraction ring around the brighter ones.

With the 32mm obstruction, secondary support vanes (I assume), the reflectivity of the primary and secondary being 91% and the system strehl (ie: primary and secondary, assuming perfect collimation) being almost certainly lower than the refractor, I reckon a good proportion of light gathered is falling outside the airy disk as diffraction of one sort or another.

Interesting to see the variety of tripod types being employed as well as the mounts themselves. Having a good tripod can make a lot of difference to a mounts performance

I rather like wood myself.

Pity that Discmounts at so thin on the ground on this side of the atlantic. All their models seem to attract great praise from those who own / use them.

I have seen the Panther a couple of times at shows and have had a demonstration of it. It seemed to operate effortlessly even with a massive and lengthy scope on board. I think it was a 200mm apo refractor in the demo that I saw.

Thanks for posting the pictures Space Hopper

I'm very partial to an alt-az too Alan

Thanks for posting those Piero - they are excellent

Great variety of alt-az mounts already - just what I was hoping for.

CraigT82's Fullescopes-in-alt az mode is a good reminder that some EQ mounts work really well this way.

Superb Gavin - thanks for posting

18 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Looks like I’ll have to sort out a few photos. 😁

Yes please John - you have had some cracking alt-az's plus the lovely AZ100 of course

20 minutes ago, Fozzie said:

That's a serious collection @John over time... which was best?

 

Hmmm .....

The ones I still have are the Skytee II and the Ercole, and the dob of course.

The Skytee II has proved a solid workhorse despite it's quirks (eg: crummy stock dovetail clamps). I don't know how long it will last though - my example is getting on a bit !

The Ercole is an elegant looking mount, really well made and works with finesse. I think it suits the long tube of the Tak FC-100 really well.

Of the ones that are gone, the Bray Tablet proved very hard to source but in the end was a little bit of a let down to be honest

The Ambermille "Giro style" mount was really strong and smooth but it used basic clamping which, though secure, shredded DT bars. If I still had it I would have found a way to fit ADM or similar clamps to the thing and then it would have been even better than the Ercole I think.

With the exciting new Rowan AZ100 alt-azimuth mount finding its way to new owners hands now I thought it timely to start a thread to showcase the variety of alt-azimuth mounts that are in use for astronomy, both current ones and ones that are now out of production.

To start things off, here are a few of the ones that I have owned over the years:

1. Skywatcher AZ-3

2. Tele Optik Giro II

3. Tele Optic Ercole

4. Skywatcher AZ-4

5. Skytee II

6. Bray Tablet Mount

7. Ambermille Mount

8. "Moonshane" Dobsonian Mount

I read about the 1999 total eclipse when I was a lad in the early 1970's. Mum and Dad got my brother the Observers Book of Astronomy and a small hand held telescope for Christmas but he didn't show much interest so I nicked both the book and the scope. The scope was not much use to be honest but the Observers book and a cheap pair of 8x30 binoculars put me onto the path that eventually led to me standing on the darkened beach in August 1999 feeling special. Mind you, 25+ years of waiting and we get a pretty much clouded out eclipse - thats UK astronomy for you !

There was a wonderful lunar eclipse a few years back where the Moon went blood red and suddenly all the fainter stars and deep sky objects popped into view in a way that I've never seen before or since. Again though, no equipment needed apart from being up in the early hours

I've owned and used the ES 2x 2 inch Focal Extender, the Meade 2x 2 inch TeleXtender and a 2x 2 inch Tele Vue Powermate. I'm no imager though so I used these for visual observing. All 3 are pretty good at what they do. The one that truly seemed invisible, apart from the additional magnification, was the Powermate but it's a lot more expensive.

Its the usual story I suppose - you do get a little more performance for the additional investment but the competition is pretty good. Whether the additional £s are something you want to spend on this item is a personal decision I guess

6 hours ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

 So from a size perspective it's about magnification, and for more brightness that's larger aperture  for light gathering.

Thanks again for more useful information John.

While your hear, got any astro memories you would like to share 😊

 

Like Mike, I've been observing for 40 years or so I have lots.

One of the very best didn't involve any equipment at all. Standing on the beach with my family at Marazion, Cornwall during the total eclipse of the Sun on 11th August in 1999. While the sky was mostly cloudy the sky darkened dramatically and the atmosphere on the beach was amazing. All the lights came on around the bay and you could see the out from underneath the edge of the shadow out to sea. Magical stuff - my kids still go on about it and they are all grown up now

We are somewhere in this photo:

The size of an object in the eyepiece depends on the magnification used rather than the scope aperture. Uranus looks the same size at 300x in my 12 inch as it does at 300x in your 8 inch Baz. Perhaps a little brighter in my scope. Uranus is always small in the eyepiece because its angular size never exceeds 4.1 arc seconds. Jupiter varies between 29 arc seconds and 50 arc seconds in apparent diameter - thats a huge difference.

When I look at the prices of astro gear back then in old catalogues I'm reminded how good the prices of astro equipment are these days, and what a huge range of options are available now.