John

I think they could have charged more and still sold them. For some that sort of money is more or less loose change. A couple of new tyres on a Lamborghini or a Ferrari for example.

Hello and welcome to the forum !

That looks similar to my situation at home. If you pick your targets and plan your sessions (use Cartes du Ciel or Stellarium) and wait for targets to get well above the horizon and into the more stable areas of seeing and / or lower light pollution you can still have a lot of fun.

With the major planets so low currently I've found scopes on taller tripods (ie: refractors) easier to use because it's simply easier to point such scopes at low lying targets and refractors seem to cut through the poor seeing closer to the horizon better.

For most other targets my 12 inch dob has done a great job as usual, despite the compromises of my observing location.

I've always kept my scopes to a size which can be moved around fairly easily during a session to make the best of the views that I do have.

Nothing is ever 10x as good as anything else IMHO.

Take a Skywatcher 102mm F/9.8 achro refractor and a Tak FC-100DL - 10x the price difference easily but is the Tak 10x better (whatever that might mean) ?.

Zeiss ZAO 10mm orthos go for around £400 or more each these days on the used market. Are they 10x better than a Baader Classic 10mm ?. I sincerely doubt it.

The Apollo 11 will sell because it's a limited edition and is thought to be iconic of a very well respected family company and of Al Nagler who did have a role in the Apollo programme. Many won't come out of their packaging much I suspect.

The market for them will be very limited worldwide but there are only 500 eyepieces so supply will probably match demand in the end.

I'm sure they will sell well despite the price 

I'll be very happy to try one out if FLO would like me to

That mirror looks in good condition to me. Obviously it's optical accuracy cannot be determined until it is used.  Many folks like a central spot / ring in the centre of their mirror to aid collimatiobn but that can be added later.

Yet another cloudy night here ......

You will need to budget for a suitable secondary as well then. The size of secondary you need will depend on the focal ratio of the primary mirror.

You will notice if the coatings are in need of replacement. Holding the mirror up to the sky and viewing from behind it will reveal if the coatings have holes etc in them. Ideally there should be no light coming though the mirror although one or two pin hooles are OK. The top surface should look evenly bright with no flaking, odd patchas, stains etc. Often coatings start to deteriorate from the outer edges first so those are worth examining.

Can the seller post you some photos of the mirror ? - you could post them on here then.

For a commercial mirror (Skywatcher, GSO, Meade, Orion Optics etc) assuming that it and it's coatings are in reasonable condition and that it has no scratches / damage, that would be a very good price. If it needs re-coating before it can be used that will add as much £100 to the cost.

For a DIY mirror of undefined quality that would be about the going rate.

Does that include the seconady mirror ?. They are often sold as a set.

I'm aiming to be mobile on the 11th of November with white light solar setup in the boot of the car and a tankfull of petrol ready to seek out somewhere clear.

Currently the forecast here for the 11th is very mixed so I suspect being mobile and flexible is going to  be key to getting any views. Just now the forecasts look slightly better further south so I'd be heading down to Devon I reckon.

Maybe the other X and L as well ?

The Meade 114 EQ1 B seems to use a mount which is a clone of the Skywatcher EQ1. Right ascension drive motors are still available for the EQ1:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SkyWatcher-R-A-Economy-Motor-Drive-For-EQ1-Mount-UK-Stock/333169557122?hash=item4d9273fe82:g:agQAAOSwrSpdIm3y

Our Yaris has a facility where the rear seats slide forwards to create a much larger boot area. With this feature I guess that a Flextube  12 would just about fit in.

2 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

So a 5" Refractor is as good as a 6" reflector and a 6" Cassegrain.

Thats pretty much what I found when I owned an Intes 6 inch maksutov-newtonan and my ED120 refractor. I was able to try them side by side on a number of occasions and found their performance very similar indeed. The additional aperture of the mak-newt showed deep sky objects a little better although the contrast of the refractor helped get it pretty close on these targets. On double stars, the planets and the moon the two scopes were pretty much neck and neck.

In the end I kept the ED120 because it cooled down quite a bit quicker and was easier to mount steadilly.

I'm not sure that a 6 inch SCT would have quite kept up with these two though

These were pretty good scopes as long as they were not made in the run up to the Halleys Comet return in 1986. Meade and Celestron relaxed their quality control to get scopes out in the run up to Halley.

You will need a dew shield if you don't already have one. SCT's are "dew magnets" with all that glass up the front end.

Celestron went through a number of patterns for the secondary screw heads - those hex ones being one of them. They may well be an imperial size.

The other thing to check for with those older SCTs is mirror flop where the mirror moves slightly as the scope moves around, affecting the collimation.

A couple of thick washers on either side of the motor frame resting on that "ledge" on the mounting platform might do the trick insead of the spanner I guess ?

Moving the gear along the axle to match that of the mount is normal and I had to do that when I fitted the Skywatcher dual drive set to my Vixen GP.

Lovely !

It's good to have these reminders from foreign parts of what these astro favourites look like - I'm beginning to forget with all the cloud and rain here

Depends on the size of your rucksack ........

The Rowan AZ100 is certainly portable - the mount head weighs 8.5kg. I can move the Berlebach Unit 28 tripod and the AZ100 head around in one piece fairly easily. I would not want to climb a flight of stairs with it though. Otherwise it would tick your boxes well I would have thought.

It might be better to hang on to your Tasco 130mm and see if we can help you get more out of that while you save up to allow a larger step up to the next scope ?

To see some meaningfull improvement you are going to need to increase the aperture by at least 50-70mm I think and your budget will strugle to deliver that as it currently stands, especially with the other features you are hoping for.

Bristol Astronomical Society are holding a Young Persons Astronomy Course running over 4 weeks and aimed at the 9-12 year old age group and based in central Bristol. More details can be found in this PDF poster including a link to the Eventbrite booking page:

Nov 2019 YP Astronomy Course Poster.pdf

The course starts on the 8th November.

Some light dust on the primary won't affect the views at all.

If you want to remove it and can get near the mirror, a manually operated "hurricane" blower seems to be the best tool. I use one like this:

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/matin-hurricane-blower-1028568/?mkwid=suvkiEYmP_dc&pcrid=310558796614&kword=&match=&plid=&product=1028568&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-pzQ54bH5QIVAojVCh3yZQaxEAQYBSABEgLdY_D_BwE

Best not touch the primary mirror by using a duster and suchlike.

Lovely shots Stu

Unfortunately here the it's a Heavy Cloud > Moon > Jupiter conjunction so I'll have to enjoy your pics instead !

Just a quick update on the Rowan AZ100 mount. You will, recall that @Stu and myself now have pre-production units of this mount for testing.

Trials that I have done and that Dave Rose has done at Rowan Astronomy (both using 130mm refractors as it happens) have showed the AZ100 to be a really sturdy and well engineered mount capable of dealing with large, heavy optical tubes and long ones as well. The motion of the mount is very smooth around both axes and the tension is highly adjustable using the tension knobs fitted to both altitude and azimuth.

The one area which we both felt could be improved was the motion of the axes when driven by the slow motion control cables, especially when the load is unevenly balanced. To this end Dave / Rowan Astronomy have modified the mount in two ways:

1. Damping knobs have been fitted to the azimuth and altitude axes which provide the ability to fine tune the mesh of the worm gears. The 2nd example of the mount that I have been sent has this modification and it has also now been applied to the one that @Stu has as well.

2. Improved worm bearings have been provided to @Stu and myself to replace the original ones. I have performed this straightforward upgrade on my mount and this has resulted in noticably better slow motion control around both axes. @Stu will be upgrading the bearings on his AZ100 on his return from holiday I believe.

I now need a clear night or two to test the modified head under the stars but I do have great hopes and expecations for it

Dave Rose at Rowan Astronomy has been very responsive, helpful and a pleasure to work with.

Thanks again for your patience

Interesting report John - thanks for posting it

I have considered the AZ EQ5 as a possible mount for my 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor but I think that scope might just be too much for it. The scope weighs around 1kg more than your ES 127 and (probably more critically) is that much longer being F/9.2

The mount looks great with your ES 5 incher on board

I'd stick to a focal ratio of around F/7 for a holiday scope. Modern ED doublets are really versatile scopes and you have the option of wide field scanning under dark skies with the faster focal ratio. F/7 is so much less demanding to mount than slower refractors as well.

I have a Vixen ED102 F/6.5 which can deliver from a 4 degree true field through to 200x plus and it sits very happily on an AZ-4 mount.