John

Great stuff Stu. I'm inside now warming myself up with a cuppa soup

Well, I can't seem to split Sirus tonight. I've tried all sorts of eyepieces but the star is just a little too glaring tonight. I guess the seeing here, while good higher in the sky, is just not good enough at the level that Sirius is at.

Hope others have better luck.

Otherwise a very pleasant evening at the eyepiece

With your 114mm scope, what is it's focal length ?. 114mm is the diameter of the main mirror I think rather than the focal length. There should be a label on the scope somewhere saying what the focal length is.

I agree Stu. I've manged to split both 52 and 32 Orionis with the 130mm triplet tonight. Pleased with that

Waiting for Sirius myself here as well - I have to view it through a gap between our house roof and the neighbours !

I've just managed to find this comet with my 130mm triplet refractor. More or less right overhead currently so not the easiest position for a long refractor to observe but it was worth the contortions to see the small misty patch of light with a brighter centre. Just letting my back and neck muscles recover while I type this !

Open clusters are nice targets. Some have an interesting history when you dig into it a bit.

I always enjoy observing M35 and seeing the much fainter, more condensed and more distant NGC 2158 in the same field of view.

8 minutes ago, Stu said:

..Any particular targets in mind?

I've observed Venus, Uranus and a few nice doubles so far. I'd like to try 32 and 52 Orionis plus E & F Trapezium of course. Might try Sirius if the seeing is decent. And I'll probably have a look for comet Panstarrs too. Plus other stuff that seems a good idea as I go along

Yourself ?

19 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Not having objective spec' on the front makes it look "cheap" I think.

Dave

Well they are low cost for their performance. If you want the same or similar optics with an engraved bezel I'm sure there is a scope out there for a few quid more that has that

Another clear night. I have the big 130mm TMB/LZOS triplet out tonight. First target = Venus at 300x 

If the vendors say that then I think we have to accept that is the glass that is used. I have an ED120 that dates from the time before the stickers were used. I've no reason to suspect that the ED element is not FPL-53 or the mating element Schott BK-7. The scope certainly performs excellently which is what counts

Short of sending samples off for analysis I dont know of any way to tell what glass is actually being used

I'll have to check this lateral colour issue with the XW 7mm tonight. I can't say that I have noticed it up to now despite owning the eyepiece for a couple of years

What would be a good test target Louis ?

I currently have the 2 inch Explore Scientific UHC and an older 1.25 inch Meade (Japan made) 4000 series UHC and both show a similar effect on stars to that described above.

18 hours ago, bingevader said:

I'm assuming the barlow helps a bit with the eye relief?

Yes, the barlow pushes the eye relief out a little. The eye relief of that zoom is quite comfy without the barlow though and it has a twist up / down eye cup.

I agree with Phillip R. The differences between the XW's and the Delos (I have both) are practically zero in performance terms so the 1mm is the main one in this instance.

Delos are in the same par-focal group as the plossls, Panoptics and Nagler T6's etc apart from the 14mm and 17.3 which need about 8mm inwards focuser movement - close to where the XW's reach focus.

On the glass issue, the appearance of the Schott stickers on scopes was the result of a marketing agreement between Skywatcher and Schott. Synta (who manufacture the scopes) have always used a Schott glass mating element in these scopes even in the early days when no stickers were on the tubes.

If the marketing agreement had been with Ohara then "FPL-53 inside" would have been on the tube I guess.

Actually I find the tapered design of eyepiece barrel (eg: Explore Scientific) more of an issue than the under cut when it comes to potentially being out of alignment when using a compression ring fitting. I can live with the shallow undercuts that most manufacturers use these days. At least Tele Vue put a small chamfer on the lower edge of their under cuts now, which helps when removing the eyepiece I think.

People have been moaning about under cuts on an off on forums like this since I've been a member of them, which is over a decade now with little effect it seems  

This was my 1st proper scope and the one I used in 1986 to observe Halleys Comet. It's the 6 inch version of the one that David had back then but on a Fullerscopes MkIII equatorial mount. No photo of me with it unfortunately. Before this I used a 1960's Tasco 60mm refractor but I don't seem to have any photos of that.

I seem to recall that the undercuts could be filled using metal tape ?

They don't bother me personally but I know quite a few people really don't like them.

Hello Asim.

I have just had a look at the internal componants of my 9x50 right angled correct image Skywatcher finder eyepiece and it seems to be the same as your arrangement A.

Having put mine back together the finder works fine. I think the eyepiece of your 9x50 should be a similar design ?. I think the only difference with the RACI finder is the prism diagonal and the shorter finderscope body.

Perhaps try that configuration again ?

Maybe the objective of your finder has shifted as well ?. Worth checking at least.

Edit: also worth checking that the lenses and spacers in the eyepiece have seated properly - it can be a bit tricky to get them all in a neat stack so that they go back into the eyepiece body neatly and properly seated.

Nice one Baz !

It was good here until about an hour ago then a cloud layer came across and spoiled things. Not that I've been able to do more than have a quick peek with my 11x70 binoculars just before loosing the clear sky. Had to be sociable with relatives this evening.

6 hours ago, markse68 said:

Hi John, had another fruitless look at Sirius last night but I'm a bit confused as I’m not seeing the surrounding stars like in your image. Is this a magnitude thing? I looked in sky safari and can’t see the line of stars either.  I guesstimated your fov and played around with magnitude settings - was there something else in your fov that wasn’t a star/s? 🤔

I observed Sirius last night and the field stars were the same as my sketch but last night the seeing was not as good so Sirius B was not seen. The fainter stars shown are really quite faint so the sketch probably shows them as relatively too bright.  

The sketch shows the field with a Pentax XW 5mm eyepiece which has a 70 degree AFoV so shows a true field of a touch less than 1/4 of a degree.

Hope that helps.

Super report - thanks for posting

Shows that you can get a lot out of a dark winter sky with a smaller aperture scope !

I've been trying Sirus tonight with the 12 inch dob but cant get the split. There is just a bit of thin cloud knocking around and the seeing is OK but no more. Star images are not really optimally crisp from here. Everbodys got their central heating on full blast in that direction I reckon !

Nice views of some other deep sky stuff though so can't complain

Just quick post mid-session.

Very nice night so far with lots of winter favourites on show.

I've been enjoying Messier 42 with my 12 inch dob using various eyepieces and various filters. When I tried using the H-Beta filter I noted that a particular feature of the nebula becomes much more obvious than it is with a UHC or O-III filter, or no filter at all.

I've outlined this feature in the image below (not mine I ought to say) in green. I have seen it referred to in some places as the "sail" but also as "shocks". To me, with the H-Beta, filter it stands out as an elongated scalloped wall shaped feature almost as bright as the area around the Trapezium cluster.

I guess that this area of the nebula must be a stronger source of light in the Hydrogen Beta wavelength than some other parts of the nebula so the H-Beta filter makes it "pop" more than other filters.

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this effect ?

Yes - it appears as a tiny dimly gleaming point of light that shows through the glare from Sirius A. It needs steady seeing do see it at all and very steady seeing to see it steadily. Its visibility comes and goes as the seeing fluctuates. 

The usual things apply such as a well collimated scope, well cooled and an eyepiece that keeps light scatter to a minimum. There will be plenty of sessions where it wont show even though your gear is capable of showing it, because the seeing is just not steady enough.

Tricky little blighter !