John

2 hours ago, SteveWolves said:

Never use an eyepiece solar filter please.

Yes indeed. This video explains and demonstrates the risks:

4 hours ago, Franklin said:

Your Parka looks very stylish! We all got sent to school during Winter in the 1970's wearing this hideous outfit and bright orange on the inside!

 

Reminds me of "Men in Coats" 😁

Men In Coats - 2003 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala - YouTube

3 hours ago, The60mmKid said:

Have you ever used a binocular telescope? It's a different beast. I have a friend who detests binoviewers but is head over heels for his Kowa Highlander. A binocular telescope can be a brilliant stargazing tool, including for doubles. Possibly worth trying.

I must try one someday !

I get on OK with binoculars so it might be what I'm looking for.

29 minutes ago, Franklin said:

There use to be a guy on Ebay that 3D printed a DEC cover for the EQ5 and polarscope cover.

I fitted one of those DEC motor covers to a Vixen GP that I had a while back. Quite a neat addition.

1 hour ago, The60mmKid said:

A moment of revelation for me was the first time I observed with a binocular telescope. I could not believe how much more color I could see in stars vs. monoviewing.

Unfortunately I don't get on with binoviewers. I have tried a few of them over the years but somehow I can't take to using them 😒

I've no doubts about the benefits for those who do get on them them though 👍

I used to put a 150mm F/8 achromat on a Celestron CG5, which I think is the same mount as the EQ5. The CG5 did have 2 inch steel tubed tripod legs though - the same as the EQ6 tripods use. With both axis driven the mount seemed to handle the big refractor OK for visual observing. This was quite a long time ago though. I may well not think this combination as suitable today 🤔

I once bought another 150mm F/8 achromat that came on an EQ5 with an aluminium tripod !!!! (yes, once upon a time they were supplied like that as stock) This combination was practically unusable even at low magnifications. I wonder how many folks were put off these big refractors because they were supplied on inadequate mounts 🙄

That's my recommendation as well:

low power / wide field fixed focal length + mid-range 8-24 zoom + Svbony 3-8 zoom

Although I put these together as a "travel / outreach" set I seem to be quite happy using them as my regular eyepieces quite frequently 🙄

Perhaps the larger airy disks delivered by smaller apertures help to see the colours more markedly ?

One trick I use at outreach events, for slightly older eyes, is to slightly defocus the star / stars being observed. This seems to make the colours stand out more. Maybe that is linked to the larger airy disk effect ?

Younger observers seem to see star colours more readily in general I've found.

Quite a beast of a setup !

My eye was also drawn to the big refractor in the background, left. Looks like one of the new Askar 185's 

That looks quite a monster as well !

I think lanthanum glass comes in many varieties. Some make excellent mating elements with certain ED/SD glass types and some are better suited to other purposes. 

There was a thread on this back in 2013 within which was this interesting post on lanthanum glass:

If I wanted to save some further weight from my rig (in the opening post) I suppose the tripod could be lighter. The Slik Master Classic is sturdy and quite tall ( @Mr Spock uses one as well ) and weighs 1.8kg. I wonder which carbon fibre tripod might offer similar stability for a worthwhile weight saving ? 🤔

1 minute ago, Elp said:

TS also now do FPL55 in their triplets, probably similar to some other glass or another.

Somewhere between FPL-51 and FPL-53, rather oddly. Closer to FPL-53.

16 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

....This all emphasizes the point that proper mating of the elements is what is important and there are a lot of different glass types out there.

Very true and it's a point worth repeating often as well as the importance of figuring, polishing and mounting the elements.

As far as I know LZOS is the only glass manufacturer that makes the glass for both the ED/SD and the mating elements of it's objectives.

I think for the Takahashi objectives, the fluorite glass is made by Canon Optron, the mating element glass by Ohara (for the DZ at least perhaps ?) and the figuring, polishing and coating done by Canon Optron. I believe that the objective cell manufacture and the mounting of the elements within them is performed by Takahashi.

7 minutes ago, Franklin said:

Technically they were known as Sun Diagonals and not Herschel wedges and they also produced two Sun filters, one labelled "Sun Filter" and another labelled "Sun Filter for use with Sun Diagonal". I've never seen instructions but maybe the latter was intended to be used before the diagonal and the former on the eyepiece?

I saw it called a "herschel wedge" somewhere else but I can see now that was a mistaken description. It is intended for observing the Sun and I don't think it would work well for observing at night. Probably not really safe to use for solar observing either, by todays standards.

I still have my old Tasco 60mm F/13.3 from that era (maybe ever earlier ?). It's objective is pretty good. The stock .965 inch eyepieces and the rather wobbly yoke type alt-az mount don't do it justice though.

The Carton that is the subject of this thread seems to have what could be a decent equatorial mount 🙂

Not too bad here at the moment. Some thin cloud layers building up though.

Making the most of "now" with the 100mm refractor observing the final part of Europa's transit of Jupiter with it's shadow following on behind. Very steady seeing currently with 200+ still showing well defined jovian surface detail, for a change.

Very interesting feature in the North Equatorial Belt to the N of Europa's shadow currently. It seems to be a pale diagonal "slash" through the NEB. 

Good stuff, for now 🙂

47 minutes ago, Stephenstargazer said:

Dont think that diagonal is solar Herschel wedge as the angle looks like 45deg. Just look through it on its own, should work like a mirror or prism (NOT at sun of course).Good luck!

I thought it might be one of these, which are described as being herschel wedges:

It looks as if a barlow lens has been put into the finder scope mount. I can't see a finder in the box so that is something that you will need to sort.

The diagonal looks to be one for solar observing - it has that hole in the backplate to let most of the solar energy out. I'm not sure how safe those are considered these days 🤔

You will need to get another diagonal for night time use.

My 1st S&T was bought in Flagstaff in 1989 🙂

Before that I used to get the other US magazine "Astronomy" from around 1980. I've still got my early ones of those somewhere. 

I still have the my first year of "Astronomy Now" starting with the April 1987 edition, when it was just quarterly. As well as the articles it actually had some proper astro classifieds in each edition which was a nice alternative to relying on the "Technical and Scientific" section of Exchange & Mart 🙄

Why do we keep these things ? - nostalgia I guess 🙂

The glossy equipment adverts in the US magazines were quite an eye opener when I first saw them  Then at the back of the magazine was a tiny advert for a brand called "Tele Vue". What a naff name for an astro company I thought - I'll bet their stuff is rubbish 😏 

25 minutes ago, Bugdozer said:

I got a full 20 seconds of observing Jupiter last night. Completely clear until the moment I had got the scope fixed to the tripod, then I was literally racing the fastest slew speed against the cloud to get there first. Then dismantled and took it back inside. 

I had a similar experience with my 200mm dob earlier. It all looked promising so I put the scope out. About 30 minutes later I popped out hoping for some observing only to find a 100% clouded out sky. No change after another 20 mins so back in it all came. It is a frustrating hobby at times 🤨

Those photos remind me of a conversation that I had with @Steve of FLO at an SGL star party some years back regarding what a manufacturer like Synta could do if they really put their minds to it and price was, to some extent, set to one side 🙂

22 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

When I want to get an idea what an object looks visually in near ideal conditions I check this site:

 

https://www.deepskywatch.com/astronomy-sketches.html

 

The guy made the sketches from the Negev desert with a 8 inch Newt so normally I expect to see only a half of it in my backwyard, but it's helpful. 

That is a good resource.

I have tried reducing the contrast of the sketch of M 33 from that resource to try and reproduce what I could see of it last night with my 100mm scope and I found that I had to reduce the contrast and brightness by 80% to get anything like the subtlety of the visual image that I saw. And that was still probably more contrasty than the actual eyepiece view !

11 minutes ago, pavel_s said:

 

Hi, thank you for suggestion, but I actually dislike the build quality of SW extensions (not sturdy enough in my opinion). Are there any alternatives?

I've only used the Skywatcher HEQ5 and EQ6 extensions myself. They seemed very sturdy but the finish is not as good as the Berlebach tripod or the Giro Ercole mount. Rowan Astronomy makes some nice extensions - maybe one of those could be used ?:

Rowan Astronomy

15 hours ago, RT65CB-SWL said:

That's why I like my AOK-AYO [left] and Tele-Optic Giro [right] mounts. No faffing around, etc., apart from balancing.

 

I've had a Tele Optic Giro II in the past and liked that a lot. It looked just like yours 🙂 The Ercole is made by the same people and has a little higher capacity I believe. I didn't have any issues with the smoothness of the Giro II azimuth motion though.

I managed to spot the Crab tonight with my 100mm refractor. No filter used. At 64x it was faint but obvious. Larger than I recall (it's been a while .....)

Back inside in a hurry - clouded out and then within minutes, heavy rain 😒

Great session before that though. Jupiter very sharp indeed. Managed to spot M1 in Taurus - haven't seen it for ages and I'd forgotten that it looks quite large in the eyepiece at 64x.

Half of Orion was in view for the last 20 minutes or so. Managed to split 32 Orionis but 52 Orionis was just an elongated peanut. 

Last views before scampering inside with scope and mount were of a glorious M42 and the Trapezium stars. Saw E and might have glimpsed F but it was close to rooftops etc so could have done with rising higher but the rain put a stop to the fun.

Overall my best observing session in some time 😁

Just got to tidy up now !