John

Great result !

Looking at the fly by "corridor" again I realise that I'm just off the edge of it hence the "no show" of the ISS for me. I'm glad you got it though.

I'll look forward to seeing the results !

I got my scope setup and on the Sun with a Herschel Wedge but I'm a few miles SW of the centre line so I have the feeling that it was a grazing flypast from here at best and very quick. Anyway I didn't see it but thanks for the "heads up" anyway

I found this post on the Cloudnights forum:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/362825-drive-for-early-vixen-super-polaris-mount/?p=4674995

This indicates that the Synta (ie: Orion and Skywatcher) drive systems will work but the motor mounting points might need some DIY work.

Not sure about the motor set that Stu links to above

PS: 365Astronomy still seem to be listing the 3.5mm version of this eyepiece alongside the current Skywatcher SWA 70's:

https://www.365astronomy.com/3.5mm-UWA-Ultra-Wide-Angle-Eyepiece-70-degree-1.25-inch-and-2-inch.html

I've seen an 8mm in this range as well.

I recognise the eyepiece - I've used the 5mm version (which also has a hybrid barrel) and it was a nice eyepiece, if a little bulky. This was about 6 or 7 years ago and the eyepiece that I used was a few years old even then.

They used to be listed by OVL, the Skywatcher importer but I'm not sure that they were made by Synta (who make Skywatcher stuff). The inner 1.25" barrel contains optical elements so don't be tempted to remove it !

Celestron might have had a version of them as well.

You probably won't be able to tie down the precise optical design without taking it to pieces. Probably 6 or 7 lens elements though. Many super wide eyepieces were a development from the Erfle eyepiece design tweaked to give better edge performance and more eye relief.

Give it a try - you may well be pleasantly surprised !

I enjoy finding and observing open clusters. I often seem to stumble across them when panning around looking for something else. The challenge then is to work out which one you have come across !

When I started out with my old Tasco 60mm refractor, open clusters were one of the best DSO targets available to me so I spent quite a bit of time hunting them down with that little instrument and my parents old 8x30 birding binoculars.

I do have Sky Safari but I don't tend to use electronic devices out with me when observing so I relay on noting the relative position using my finders and use paper star charts to try and ID the target.

My favourite scope for open clusters is my Vixen 102mm F/6.5 refractor. Armed with a 40mm wide field 2 inch eyepiece I can see a 4 degree chunk of sky which is wonderful for not only picking up these star groupings but also seeing the context within which they sit.

One thing that adds to the fascination of open clusters for me is to find out when they were 1st noted. I get a little thrill thinking that I'm replicating the view that some of the great names in the history of astronomy saw many years ago. William Herschels name seems to come up a lot !

1 hour ago, sloz1664 said:

I would have loved to have had a nice working example of this scope

Steve

I got to try 2 examples when I reviewed the scope for this forum quite a while ago. The 1st arrived with a broken lens element within the tube. The 2nd was undamaged although the fit and finish was perhaps rather rough for what was then a £1,400 scope. The optical design had potential I thought, considering no ED glass was used, but I would not like to try and collimate one where the optics had shifted !

I was setup and observing Jupiter about an hour ago. It's now clouded over and we are having showers of rain now and then. Rather frustrating

14 minutes ago, Deck_Dark said:

Thanks for the nice welcome

 

Hi JamesF and John, nice to know there’s a few of us around the area . Have you got any favourite spots around the region?

I mostly observe from my back garden but I'm a member of Bristol Astro Society who have a small observatory not far from me so I can also observe from there.

I've heard that the National Trust car park at Sand Point is a pretty dark spot but I've not yet tried it myself.

Hi Ben,

Welcome from me as well - just a short way up the M5 at Portishead

Nice scope you have in the Orion 8 inch dob

It's a singlet lens if it is from the TAL Apolar. The optical system employed by that scope is a 6 element system in 3 groups (see below). I can't see it being a lot of use on it's own, frankly

51 minutes ago, Rob Sellent said:

..Other tools I've found really useful - but acknowledge they aren't for everyone - is a Telrad or Rigel Quickfinder etc to get in the neighourbhood, then use a RACI finder scope. Just orientate the star chart so it aligns with what is being seen through the finder and star hop from there.....

 

 

Those are the finders that I use with my 12 inch dobsonian and very effective they are too. My favourite star chart most often is the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas.

With regards to your eyepiece question, yes, using a low power to start with and then applying a bit more to get the view framed as you would like it, is a good approach. The 25mm eyepiece is already quite low power but a 32mm plossl would show you a little more sky. In the 1.25 inch fitting a 40mm eyepiece won't show any more sky than a 32mm can and also, with a scope which has a focal ratio of F/5 (ie: the Skywatcher 150P), the exit pupil generated by using a 40mm eyepiece is too large to be effective.

7 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

I was in the South Hams area of S Devon. Clouded out.

i had waited for this eclipse for more than 25 years having read about it in many books when I was young. The annoying thing was I was living in Dubai at the time so could have taken a short flight to Iran for guaranteed clear sky. But because  of my earlier aspirations to see it from near home, I decided to come back to the UK for a holiday just to see it!!!

I read about the eclipse in the Observers Book of Astronomy when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I waited 27 years to see it, and it was cloudy !

Of course the previous day and the day after the eclipse were more or less clear

After the eclipse we went to see "The Phantom Menace" at Penzance cinema. I think my kids enjoyed that more than I did.

1 hour ago, Peter Drew said:

I have had some of my best views of Saturn when that close, the brightness of the Moon reduces the glare of Saturn, rendering the more subtle ring and surface details more visible.  This of course might apply only to larger than 12" telescopes.   😀  

I had a similar experience when Uranus was very close to the lunar limb. It's blue colour seemed really enhanced

Maybe a similar effect to observing Jupiter and Venus against a twilight sky which is when I've had some of the best views of those planets ?

I was in Marazion, Cornwall on the beach with my family and a few thousand other people right next to the live broadcast that Peter Snow and Phillipa Forrester were doing. While it was mostly cloudy, the effect of the shadow rushing across Mounts Bay and watching the lights come on around the bay and on St Michaels Mount was wonderful as was a crowds reaction as the eclipse happened. My children still go on about that day so I'm so glad we made the effort

26 minutes ago, iPeace said:

My largest telescope - ever - is an 8" f/6 Newtonian, like your old 200p. And it's enough for me. Like you (it seems), I prefer manual control. I've never used anything with motors - and never will.

Your post reads like you already know what you should do - find someone with a 200p who wants to trade up.

In any case, thanks for sharing and good luck!

I'm in the same camp - I've tried a few GOTO setups and don't get on with them. I much prefer the minimalistic setup.

Hope you find a way to keep a decent amount of aperture that you enjoy using.

I'm sure someone will want your 10 inch GOTO which will leave you enough £'s for a nice manual 8 or 10 inch.

I could only manage some quick views with my 11x70 binoculars this evening but the "hook" of the Jura Mountains was prominent and quite striking

The Vixen NPL eyepieces are plossls so they have eye relief of around 50%-80% of the focal length of the eyepiece. Orthoscopics are similar in this respect. This is a feature of these designs.

So the 30mm NPL has 20mm plus of eye relief, which is nice and comfortable, but the 6mm NPL has just 3mm, which is very tight.

Today there are many eyepiece designs which offer eye relief in the 15mm - 20mm range even in the shorter focal lengths. The Vixen SLV is one of these designs.

Just now, A_N_other_beginner said:

I take it though that adding a barlow also affects the exit pupil size proportionately, so whether you 2x barlow a 10mm or just have a 5mm you're still talking the same levels of magnification and exit pupil size?

Yes thats right.

I thought this eyepiece might have been an "April Fool" excercise when it was 1st publicised back in April but I can see that it is a serious comemorative production piece now. I agree that it would have been nice if it's actual availability could have coincided with the dates of the Apollo 11 mission though.

Maybe it marks the start of the ultimate replacement of the long-lived Nagler line of eyepieces ?. Tele Vue say nothing to support this though.

I'll take a punt at £450 as the UK retail price, when it actually becomes purchasable.

The OVL focuser uses a smooth steel rod bearing against an anodised, shiny flat section to propel the focuser drawtube back and forth. This arrangement has limits in it's weight carrying capacity and needs (in my experience) very careful adjustment to work well. The Baader approach uses slightly roughened surfaces on the flat section and the steel rod which provides more, and easier to adjust, control and weight bearing capacity.

When I started out 30+ years ago, for the 1st couple of decades I had a single scope and a small set of eyepieces. It was probably around the time that I joined this forum (nearly 14 years ago !) that I moved to having a couple of scopes but still used a relatively small set of eyepieces.

Over the past 3-4 years my kit seems to have expanded to 7 scopes and 3 sets of eyepieces. I tend to use just one scope and one eyepiece set during a session though so I suppose things are not that much more complicated.

I have stayed generally away from scopes that involve computers and power supplies, sticking mostly to manual alt-azimuth mounts for observing.

I have not tried to assess the degree of satisfaction that I gain from the hobby and how that relates to the amount of kit that I posess. I might get an answer that I don't like !

50 minutes ago, A_N_other_beginner said:

That's easier said than done. There's only a small percentage of nights where the cloud cover makes it worthwhile taking the scope outside and when I am actually able to do that. Of those, the percentage of the time when I can reasonably bring a child out too is much smaller. This hobby fascinates me (and youngster) but I don't see any choice other than to look to maximise the time I have available. I accept there are no absolute shortcuts, but spending night after night looking at the moon (for the record, something I've managed a fair few times) just to get my eye in for when the conditions just isn't going to happen. And expecting a young childs interest to be held repeating the same isn't likely.

I'm not trying to blame my tools here. I'm just trying to make the most of the very limited time my eldest and I can spend together with the scope. And if I can stretch to an EP, barlow or ADC (and - whatever I consider, a collimation cap and some cleaning products for the EP's will be on the order) I do this knowing that at some point in the future that item will be used. It might not be for planets, it might be used for picking out lunar features or trying to split doubles, or something else. So I accept that the long way round is to take my time, learn the craft, learn to use what I've got - in a sense a refreshing change from the consumerism embedded into many hobbies. And I still hope to do that along the way. But I certainly don't have a problem with buying something - not in a vain hope of solving a problem, but because if I've got it I'm likely to use it. It's long been my intention to add a couple of EP's and a quality barlow, if one of those things could help with planetary viewing that is really a bonus.

 

One issue I have noticed is that the youngster seems to struggle with the BCO (as has my wife) to actually see anything very much. I've managed okay but struggle to articulate to a child how to move your eye around to actually get the subject visible - and that's before worrying about getting it into focus. I've noticed that my 32mm Vixen NPL is the most comfortable EP I have. Would something like the SLV be easier to use compared to the BCO with regards to the issue I've described?

In order to see more detail on planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, you need to spend some time observing them regardless of the quality of optics employed. What I mean by this is that 30-60 minutes of observing a target will gradually allow more detail to be seen. A quick look (eg: just a few minutes) will restrict the amout of detail that will be visible generally, in Jupiters case, to the two main cloud belts. Maybe a little more under good conditions. I realise that younger observers might have a more limited attention span but the general advice of "the more you look, the more you see" applies with them as well.

There are eyepieces that are easier and more comfortable to view with than orthoscopics and a relaxed eye does help in teasing out more detail plus making observing generally a more enjoyable process.

The Vixen SLV eyepiece range is more comfortable to view through for the reasons that Stu explains and maintains a similar level of optical quality to the orthoscopic.

When you are using higher powers with a scope (ie: 100x, 150x etc, etc) you need to use a short focal length eyepiece and that has the effect of producing a small exit pupil (the illuminated disk of light that comprises the field of view) and that smaller patch of light is what newcomers to observing can find hard to pick up as they move their eye to the eyepiece. The Vixen 30mm, being a relatively low power eyepiece produces a larger exit pupil which is easier to find with the eye. I've found repeatedly this is the case from the outreach events that I've done with my astro society.

With patience and practice folks learn how to keep their head still and how to position their eye at the eyepiece and get more success at picking up, and holding, the smaller exit pupils that higher powers inevitably produce. When using a 10mm eyepiece with your scope (which I think is an F/5 newtonian ?) the exit pupil is 2mm in diameter. If you reduce that to a 5mm eyepiece for higher power, the exit pupil reduces to 1mm.

Hi,

Could you post a picture of your mount ?

That will make it easier to ID the mount and pin down the correct motor for it.

Hmmm, I'm not convinced that the £120 investment in an ADC would deliver significatly improved views of Jupiter and Saturn in this case. I've had some very nice views of both planets lately from the UK and while their low altitude has created some challenges with seeing stability from time to time, I've not noticed the tell tale signs of atmospheric dispersion specifically affecting the views.

I suspect that the original poster might get better results by checking the collimation of the scope, ensuring that it's cooled and by observing these targets for a good period of time to allow the observing eye a chance to adjust to the contrasts and to gradually pick out more details.

At least those steps are cost free and can be put into practice on the next clear evening