John

The comment that I read was posted by a well known and respected dealer in the USA, Don Pensack. Don posts here occasionally as well.

Perhaps I'll tell the poster on the other forum that he might be mistaken ? He is a dealer though so I wondered if his comments were based on sales trends.

As above. It's visibility varies though. A couple of nights ago Triton was clear with my 12 inch dob at 450x with direct vision. Last night I could not detect it at all with that scope under similar conditions

I've really enjoyed reading though the posts in this thread - thanks so much for sharing your thoughts I think what really counts is that astronomy now offers a very wide variety of ways to enjoy and engage with it - hopefully that will enable a wider range of people to find interest in the Universe around them. It's not just a hobby for "boffins" but has something to offer everybody

Very interesting responses folks - thanks for posting them I have to confess to snapping the Moon and (filtered) Sun a few times lately with my mobile and having enjoyed getting some easy but half decent results. There does seem to be a strong urge from folks I talk to in my astro society and others whos views I read on here and elsewhere towards capturing in some way what they see rather than just describing it. Maybe some of the Facebook type culture is also coming into play - the "if there is no picture, it didn't happen" type thing perhaps ?

I've just been reading a long thread on another forum during which a respected source stated that observational astronomy was on the wane compared with imaging. I have suspected for some time that this is the case, although observation is all that I do. I'd be interested to hear others views. Is observing now becoming a minority occupation within the hobby of astronomy ?

William Optics put them on their focusers as well:

Got this comet again tonight. 12 inch dob again. It seems a little brighter but that could be slightly better transparency ? It's moved quite a bit in 48 hours:

Hope your Op is a success Alan and that you are feeling your old self again soon

From the UK Saturn is currently pretty low in the sky. Thats a lot of atmosphere to view through hence the lack of a stready view and also it makes seeing more challenging features such as the Cassini Division more difficult as well.

Great stuff - I'm sure you will enjoy it I've put a 2 inch diameter barrel extender on my 13, 8 and 6mm Ethos so that I can use a 2 inch filter with them to tease out those nebulae. The Baader 28mm Fine Tuning Rings do a good job for this purpose.

I've been a member of Bristol Astronomical Society for the past 4 years now and I've really enjoyed what I've got out of it. I've been a member of SGL for over 10 years and enjoyed that immensely as well. The two things complement each other for me What the Bristol AS has provided, in addition to excellent, frequent and stimulating meetings, is the chance to get involved with outreach events which is a dimension of the hobby that I had not really been involved with until I joined the society and one that I've very much enjoyed. The Society also gives me the chance to meet regularly face to face with other folks interested in astronomy in my area and have access to a well equipped observatory with some exciting "toys" to play with

Now that does look really nice !

Great comparison report Stu 16 Vulpeculae is a great split to get with a 200mm aperture. I believe it's right at the very limit of a top end 6 inch refractor.

I think Synta / Skywatcher have addressed the issues of packing and made some small modifications to the objective cell design now. The more recent reports of these scopes that I have read have been much more positive. I'd like to try another at some point - despite the issues that I encountered with the early ones that I tried, I think the scope has a lot of potential.

Quite correct. The Skytee II is not a Skywatcher product.

Then you may need to use an extension tube to get eyepieces to focus with the scope. Astro cameras often have to be closer to the tube wall (and therefore the main mirror) than eyepieces do.

I have a Baader T2 Zeiss prism and it's a great performer but so are my Tele Vue and Astro Physics mirror diagonals

The 130mm F/9.2 is a triplet (LZOS objective) and it is not far off the weight and length of a 6 inch F/8 frac to be honest. To get a 6 inch with comparable performance would cost me much more than I can afford just for the OTA and then I'd need to spend another £1K or so on a mount hat could really do it justice. The Altair 150 EDF is a very interesting entry into this niche though, no doubt about it.

Hopefully priced somewhere between the Skytee II / Ercole and the £1K plus items I mentioned earlier ?

I had an Altair Sabre Mk2 for a while. It was OK to use and looked good but I felt that both the Ercole and the Skytee II did a better job with my ED120 refractor in terms of both smoothness of motions and high magnification vibration dampening. I tried a 6 inch F/8 refractor on the Sabre and it was rather overwhelmed. Very interested to hear what FLO might be thinking of

I still think there is a niche for a heavy duty alt-az mount somewhere between the Skytee II / Ercole and the top end ones such as the APM Maxload / T-Rex / DM6 etc.

The astro prisms discussed here deliver an image with the same orientation as a mirror diagonal. There are prism diagonals that give "correct" image and the lower cost versions of those are not great for astro use. I believe that there are some higher end correct image diagonals available now though. I use one of the Baader T2 Zeiss prisms with one of my refractors and its excellent.

The 3-6 and 2-4 Nagler zooms have pretty much identical optical performance. Apart from the focal lengths the only difference is that the 2-4 has click stops at half mm intervals wheras the 3-6 has them at 1mm. You can position the zooms anywhere along their range though. As I understand it, the Tak FC-100DL was made in two production runs each comprising 100 instruments. My scope was the last UK one of the 1st run available. I did wonder if Tak would do a 3rd run but with the launch of the F/8 FC-100DZ I think we won't see any more DL's made. Congratulations on your Vixen FL102 - it's a scope that I dreamed of owning for many years

I was observing with a Lunt 100 at 8,000 feet altitude recently in the USA and found precious little detail to see on the solar disk. There were one or two small prominences and that was it. I was quite pleased that it was not my £7K plus scope given the amount of detail visible