John

Excellent scope My 12 inch dob is the same optical tube assembly but on a dob mount that mirrors the Orion Optics design in baltic ply. Works a treat From the test sheet, it looks like one of Orion Optics very good primary mirrors

Great result Matthew Very dependant on the seeing conditions this one and with it so low down, those are highly variable.

I found that the DMB NBP filter (a UHC type) bought out green and red / purple tints in the Orion Nebula when used with my 12 inch scope.

Innovative azimuth axis tensioner !

Where do you keep it Mark ?

This approach does work - I use a 100mm aperture mask with my 12 inch dobsonian from time to time. The result is visual performance virtually identical to my 4 inch refractors. As I have a couple of very nice 4 inch refractors I don't do this often though. The plastic dust cap apertures do work and give you something around a 50mm aperture I seem to recall. A rather big 2 inch scope !

I seem to be quite good at detecting relatively small brightness differences but I'm not so good at spotting subtle tints. Maybe I ought to get into variable star observing ?

From Greece, your 130mm newtonian should show the planets somewhat better than we are getting the here in the UK. You will be able to see all 7 planets with that scope when they are in good positions in the sky. With good seeing you should see some detail on Jupiter, Saturn and Mars at opposition. 4 moons at Jupiter, maybe 5 at Saturn on a good night. The phases of Venus and Mercury will be visible and Uranus and Neptune as distinct but very small disks rather than pin points as stars are. Supernovae have never appeared as more than faint point sources to me even with my 12 inch scope - like a faint star that was not visible before and does not tend to stay visible for long. All the ones we have seen recently have been in other galaxies so far, far away. The last to be observed in our galaxy was in 1604 I believe. I was not around then !

Great early big aperture reports Mark ! The sky last night was excellent even with my little 100mm refractor with the Veil and Owl nebulae being just 2 of my targets. Must have been fun with 5x the aperture to play with !

The Lone Ranger waiting for Jupiter this evening ......

When I've been doing outreach sessions with my 12 inch dobsonian I've noticed that younger eyes seem generally more sensative to seeing colour in astro targets than mine are. Some older observers struggle to see even the colour different in the binary Albireo for example wheras the youngsters shout out the colour difference between the stars often without prompting.

Perhaps what we need is for the manufacturers to re-vamp their 82 degree ranges so that they achieve the positive characteristics of the 100's that are now around with a more modest AFoV for those who prefer that. There are continued rumours across the pond of a Tele Vue "Nagler 2" design sporting an 85 degree AFoV and better eye relief across the range but nothing concrete as yet. Vixen nearly achieved something great with their SSW range but IMHO some small but annoying issues have held them back. A topic for a different thread though !

Good stuff Piero - glad to hear a positive report I'm surprised that you see much coma at F/6 though. It's hardly noticable at all with my F/5.3 even with the Ethos eyepieces - at most just a touch right where the FoV meets the field stop. I cool my 12 inch at a 45 degree angle but it's useable pretty much straight away at low to medium powers.

That looks a sophisticated collimation device - mine is a cheapo plastic cheshire

Glad you got a 20 in the end Mark I'm sure the views of M13 etc will be wonderful - it's pretty cool in my 12 !

Mine is 21%

I have used my 2-4mm Nagler zoom quite often with my 12 inch dob, which I didn't really anticipate when I bought the zoom - I thought it would be in the refractor focusers mainly. I can't say that I've used the 2.5mm and 2mm settings that often though with the 12 - apart from the seeing, my floaters tend to hog the field of view with that exit pupil !

You might find that you want to be able go higher than 270x with a good mirror like that in the scope. Over the past few years that I've had my 12 inch F/5.3 I've found myself using 300x - 400x more often than I ever thought I would. This sort of magnification helps to tease out faint point sources such as planetary moons around Uranus and Neptune, central stars of planetary nebulae etc, etc. I've also found 320x (Pentax 5mm XW) really useful for picking out the finest lunar details such as Plato cratelets beyond the "big 4" and the central rille in the Vallis Alpes. Obviously the seeing needs to co-operate as well but its useful to be able to "go to 11" sometimes

Lovely scope Piero - congratulations

It would be good to see FLO & IK at the IAS

I've met and spoken with Ian a couple of times - he is a very helpful and knowledgeable chap. I bought my Tak FC-100DL from IKI and was very pleased with their service I'm sure the IK - FLO partnership will be very successful.

Hi Craig, Sorry I missed your post. I don't recall having used a Vixen LV in cold weather so I can't really comment specifically. Generally speaking with all the eyepieces that I've owned and used, with the exception of some designs fogging occasionally if they get cold, I've not noticed any cold conditions issues with them.

Your scopes are already well cluttered with cables and whatnot plus the Tak already has some red on it. The scope I was referring to should look like the pic below IMHO but the owner that my comment above was directed at (no longer an SGL member) decided to build a cage for it from 4 Primaluce tubr rings and a couple of their Losmandy DT bars, just in case it tried to escape Still, each to their own.

"....with atmospheric refraction and seeing wobbles, colour is always a bit subjective!...." It most certainly is ! That image is close to what I observed in terms of scale and hues during the moments of best steadiness, which were rather few of course. The kaleidoscopic effect of the atmosphere on the primary star was doing it's best to keep the secondary a secret

Thanks for that Chris. If those position angles are right then that builds my confidence more that I got the split. I'd say that last night the secondary looked a smaller blob than the primary and rather more the colour of dirty blu tack ! It was good to be observing something last night, I've not been out much due to the poor weather lately.