John

The forecast was rubbish tonight but, as it turned out, there were enough clear-ish patches to make observing worthwhile.

The value of having a setup that can be quickly deployed is really proving itself I think 👍

Lots of cloud cover here tonight. It's just thin enough to make observing Jupiter worthwhile though. I've been enjoying watching the GRS come onto the disk and now that has been followed by Europa's shadow and shortly will be followed by Europa itself. 

A background star posing as a fainter, 5th jovian moon adds to the overall scene 🙂

You have already had some good advice. All I will add is that I always try and finish on a couple of "easy" targets rather than something too challenging. That way I end a session in a positive frame of mind 🙂 

27 minutes ago, Spile said:

Thanks both. I’ve not noticed too much friction but your washer tweak appeals. I know that some folk have placed a CD or LP between the two parts to reduce friction.

I tried a couple of CD's initially (replacing the supplied teflon washer) but that did not seem to help. 

At least experimenting with this sort of thing is relatively cheap compared with some modifications !

I have recently acquired a 200P dob as well. I've not owned one for over a decade. Mine was practically unused and I've made 2 changes to it:

- replaced the straight through finder with a 9x50 RACI one. That is my usual finding arrangement with my scopes.

- cut a large diameter "washer" from a plastic milk carton and placed that between the teflon washer supplied with the scope and the bottom board of the mount. This takes a little of the weight of the scope off the teflon pads which makes the azimuth movement a lot smoother and almost eliminates jerkiness altogether. Some folks find that 2 of these milk carton washers are needed but in the case of my scope, one did the trick.

Otherwise I'm very pleased with the scope. Optically it is excellent - I had forgotten just how good these things are 🙂

I had a couple of dobs in the past that had lazy susan bearings (8 and a 12 inch) but found those too loose in azimuth movement so I had to install friction pads to counter that !

Dobs always seem to need some tweaking in my experience, annoying though that can be 🙄

I used to have an Intes (badged Orion) 152mm F/6 maksutov-newtonian (rather than cassegrain). Very, very "refractor-like" images 🙂

Nice image 🙂

The NEB is a complex place at the moment !

Too much thin cloud now but nice little session  while it lasted. Thank goodness for 4 inch "grab and go's" 🙂

If not a refractor then I would be thinking of a Russian mak-newtonian for the purposes stated, for visual at least. I'm not sure how they are for imaging, not being an imager.

Grabbed a quick look with the Tak 100 when a clear patch of sky appeared. I doubt it will last so I made the most of the moon and Jupiter.

Aristarchus and the Vallis Schroterii looked superb. Jupiter very nice and a quick look at Theta Aurigae was rewarding.

Scope is still out but the gap has closed. I'm hoping that it will open up again 🤞

If you are set on 100 degree eyepieces the APM XWA 100 degree range are very close to Ethos performance at substantially lower prices.

The ES 100's are not quite as good as the APM XWA's.

Have you tried a 100 degree eyepiece ? - they don't suit everybody by any means.

Your current eyepieces are pretty good by the way. The Panaview 32 could be improved on by the Stellalyra 30mm UFF though.

That is some list Mike !

I have been through a similar amount but I think the quality of yours have been on the whole, better.

It's a bit crazy isn't it ? 🤪

(fun though, but don't tell anyone 😉)

It was a long time ago but I went down both the FR route and then the 2 inch eyepiece route when I owned Celestron C5's and then a C8. I felt more comfortable with the C8 in 2 inch mode due to tube balance etc.

I think I did try both the GSO Superview 42mm and 50mm eyepieces (same as the Stellalyra's) in the C8 setup - I was on a "going wider" quest as well at the time !

I then picked up a 8 inch F/6 dob and moved away from SCT's. Had to move to better eyepieces then of course 😉

I did try some interesting things in the back of SCT's back then 😁

50 minutes ago, globular said:

If you’d drawn the 32mm with reducer compared to a 50mm without the reducer then they would have given near identical fov, mag and exit pupil....

Which 50mm ?

This illustration might help. I created it using the Field of View (FOV) calculator which can be accessed under the Resources > Astronomy Tools tab at the top of the page. The target I used is Messier 45, the Pleiades cluster.

The yellow circle is the true field of view delivered by a 32mm plossl 1.25 inch format eyepiece with the F/6.3 reducer used in a 125mm F/10 (thus reduced to F/6.3) telescope. The red circle is the true field of view delivered by a 2 inch format 40mm eyepiece with a 70 degree apparent field of view (as large as you can get in the 2 inch format) in the same telescope but with no focal reduced used. EP = Exit Pupil diameter in mm:

4 minutes ago, globular said:

....you'd be mad to create an 11.5mm exit pupil when your own pupil is only 7mm - seeing the shadow won't be the only problem you'd face.

 

Yep. The largest I currently use is 5.25mm. I'm over 60 so I assume that my max dilated pupil has started to get smaller now.

At what exit pupil does the secondary shadow start to show with an SCT ?

2 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

At first glance I thought Takahashi had brought out a mini Epsilon 🤣  

Very, very far from it !!! 😁

Konus used to use a similar colour for their scopes as well, just to confuse things further 🙄

44 minutes ago, Bugdozer said:

.....But it suffered a strange fault after a while. There's a kind of collimator ring surrounding the secondary mirror, stuck on the back of the corrector plate. Over time, this started to slide downwards very gradually, leaving a trail of adhesive like a slug. Of course after a while this was enough over the mirror that it started to affect the visibility of dimmer objects. 

I took it to Telescope House (they still had the physical location in Kent at the time, although I had bought it from them when they were still in London) to see if there was any possibility of repair. The guy looked at it and admitted he had never seen this happen before, and that any possibility of repairing it was practically nil - the gunk had probably ruined the secondary mirror. 

So tragically, I had no choice but to upgrade to a bigger and better scope. Which I guess worked out all right in the end. 

This can happen with older examples I believe:

Meade ETX 90RA | Secondary Baffle Problem - YouTube

And here:

Slipped secondary baffle in ETX90EC - ATM, Optics and DIY Forum - Cloudy Nights

I'll bet Telescope House had come across it before. They have been selling Meade scopes for years.

3 hours ago, Bugdozer said:

Well it's not really surprising, because we all want to be able to see everything. Very few of us are completely "just planets/binaries/moon" or "just galaxies/nebulae".....

Absolutely. 

I don't think the suggestions about another optical tube assembly are flippant. Sometimes this is the most cost effective and least compromising route to achieve what is desired.

An F/6.3 focal reducer does take up a lot less room though.

It's good to explore alternative options I think. What route you personally decide to take is entirely up to you of course 🙂

I think one thing that might concern some is whether they will be able to tell that a scope is not quite in the (optical) shape that it should be when it arrives.

It is really only star testing and / or imaging with the scope that will show up optical issues. Unless it's a gross problem such as a smashed or loose optical component of course. Such severe issues are, thankfully, very rare though.

I agree that FLO's after sales / delivery service is really excellent and, if an issue is detected, they will move very rapidly to rectify it at minimal inconvenience to the customer 👍

It is almost inevitable (it seems) that people who purchase long focal length scopes with a narrow-ish field of view soon investigate how to get a lower power, wider field of view from it and similarly, people who buy short focal length, wide field of view scopes soon develop the urge to get better high power views from them. 

@doublevodka probably hits the nail on the head above 🙂

23 minutes ago, Andy ES said:

..I should think getting into the space cleaning business will be very lucrative In the future.😁

It was being considered over a decade ago:

A vacuum cleaner for space - The Washington Post

If your scope is an SCT the F/6.3 reducers work quite well for visual observing as long as you stick with 1.25 inch format eyepieces.

I used to use one when I had a 5 inch F/10 SCT and with an 8 inch F/10 SCT. 

I don't image but I believe some folks do with the F/6.3 and F/3.3 reducers. The latter is not intended for visual use and has some camera limitations for imaging I believe.

I think I did qualify my opinion by saying that I would probably make an exception for FLO.