John

Good suggestion. A 2 inch diagonal will also need to be acquired as well though, if Neil does not already have one.

Canadian Astro Buy & Sell: https://www.astrobuysell.com/propview.php I use the UK version of this site all the time and it's excellent

Those scopes compliment each other rather than compete. Ideally you would own both and then have a nice wide field scope for the deep sky and a nice scope capable of sharp planetary views at high magnifications. I realise though that going for both is not likely to be feasible

The Cocoon Neb is a tough one to observe. It needs really dark skies and it's actual surface magnitude is a lot fainter than the integrated magnitude figure that is quoted for it. It is one of a relatively small group of nebulae that a H-Beta filter makes a positive impact on. A UHC will have a small improvement. Even with the help of these filters it is regarded as a challenge. Not quite as hard as seeing the Horsehead Nebula but getting towards that sort of challenge. The Blue Snowball has a much brighter surface magnitude and much higher contrast. I'm sure it is not your technique but the challenge of the target that it the cause of your frustration.

If it's not specified then assume FPL-51 or equivilent. If it's FPL-53 they will say - it's a lot more expensive than FPL-51 ! Still probably made in the same factory though.

Most deep sky objects are just smudges of light even with a 9.25 inch scope. Filters such as the O-III and UHC type do help make some nebulae stand out more. The views with a scope don't generally look anything like the images you see of deep sky objects because those are captured by highly sensative CDDs and are the results of many minutes or hours of culmulative exposures. Light pollution and moonlight can make even the brighter deep sky objects difficult to see. They will seem more impressive if viewed under really dark skies but still won't rival the images I'm afraid. Practice does help the eye to pick out deep sky objects. M81 and M82 are a couple of the best galaxies. M101 and M51 are somewhat fainter because they are face on to us.

The TS and the Altair scopes are probably the same item under different brandings with slightly different detailing.

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If you can find one, the Russian mak-newtonians are superb planetary scopes. They rival top quality apochromatic refractors of a similar aperture. They are quite heavy and their tubes are newtonian length but their tiny central obstruction and excellent baffling really produce very contrasty and sharp images of the planets.

I did a review of the Baader Classic orthos for the forum a few years back:

I can get 1.6 degrees with my 12 inch dob and the 31mm Nagler eyepiece. This shows the whole of the eastern or western segments of the Veil Nebula but not both in the same field of view. You need something like 3.5 degrees to get that which is where shorter focal length scopes combined with the wide / ultra wide eyepieces come in.

So if you want the most compact tube, you go for an SCT

How do you collimate accurately without a centre spot on the primary ?

I think a low power, wide angle eyepiece is a great asset in a fast scope - the challenge is finding one that performs reasonably well without breaking the bank Going for 70 degrees rather than 80 would help - there are reasonable performers such as the Skywatcher Aero ED 30mm or the Panaview 32mm. They won't be perfectly corrected at that focal ratio but they will be better than a low cost 80 degree eyepiece I think.

In his original post Raph was looking at 82 degree eyepieces in the 2 inch fitting and also mentions Naglers and the ES 30mm 82 degree eyepiece so it's reasonable to assume that he is looking for a wider field of view than the 1.25 inch fitting can provide perhaps ?

You can get a perfectly good 52 degree 32mm focal length eyepiece in the 1.25" fitting which will show the same true field of view. I can't see the point of having a 2 inch barrel on a 30mm focal length eyepiece if the field stop fitted restricts the AFoV to 50 something degrees Having wide FoV eyepieces in a short focal length scope delivers some wonderful observing opportunities eg: the whole of the Veil nebula in the same field - one of my favourite views in the hobby

Yes, but OO service attitude could be much better from my personal experience, alas I wish I could say different because I love my OO 12 inch dob.

The APM 80 degree 30mm is the same as the one you linked to earlier I believe. These are produced under a number of brandings and have been for over a decade now. These are chinese clones of the original Japanese Kokusai Kohki WideScan III 30mm eyepiece which I've also owned. The Japanese version was a little better corrected but still showed large flocks of seagull shaped stars in my F/6.5 102mm Vixen refractor !

mm for mm a decent newtonian performs a bit better than an SCT as well, in my experience

I've owned one of those. Great at F/10, rather poor in the outer 50% of the field at F/5. The problem is that controlling aberration over a wide field at F/5 of faster needs careful design, top quality optical glass, accurate figuring and polish and excellent assembly. Thats why the better corrected wide field eyepieces for faster scopes have somewhat higher price tags. If you could pick one up for, say, £30 or so it would give you a feel for the ultra wide experience I guess but I'd not pay any more for one.

mm for mm a good refractor performs better than an SCT in my experience.

Dobsonian mounts are somewhat more stable for observing at high magnifications With my 12 inch dob I can observe and track happily at 300x or more with virtually no vibrations affecting the view. Also the eyepiece and finder positions stay in a nicely reachable position with the dob or alt-az mount wheras they can end up in really awkward positions with an equatorial, depending on what direction your target is in.

Sorry for the delay in reporting folks. This is a pre-production product so I don't feel that I can treat it like something that has been sent "off the shelf" from a retailer. I have had 3 fairly short sessions with the mount (1 with the original mount head and 2 with the revised version) and have made notes on my impressions of the performance so far but I've not had time to pull these together and report back here as yet. With a pre-production unit I feel that it's important that I try to differentiate between characteristics that are likely to be found in the final product and those where the state of the development of the product will still allow further advances to be made. This is not something that I wish to hurry and also something where I need to maintain a dialogue with the manufacturer, who have proved extremely responsive so far. Thanks for your patience

Amazing that TAL even provided a collimatable 1.25 inch diagonal. I've occasionally seen them in the 2 inch fitting but not from any other manufacturer in the 1.25 inch fitting. Hope your TAL 100 gives you closer to 100% now Dave. They are really good objective lenses.

You would think that energy saving needs / sensitivity to energy use would lead to the illumination only being used on special occasions and certainly switched off after, say, 11 pm ? Shining lights onto concrete seems such a pointless thing to do with precious energy.