John

2 hours ago, Saganite said:

Easy split of 52 Cygni, but Lambda Cygni just refused to be split, very close but the seeing seems to have worsened a little in the last half hour, so that one will have to be revisited.  Not sure what separation is but certainly less than 1.3"

 

According to Stella Doppie it's .9 of an arc second Steve plus quite a difference in brightness. A tough one !

I agree with @Ags / Agnes.

Get a small, simple scope that you can simply plonk down outside and look through.

I have used a VIP barlow with the Leica ASPH zoom but didn't find the view quality exceeded that of my Pentax XW's. I found the zoom + VIP a faff to use so I didn't hang onto either for long.

Others rave about these items though so YMMV as the old saying goes 🙂

17 hours ago, Manoj77 said:

Hi, How does your Baader T2 Zeiss diagonal attach to your FC-100DF?  Did you attach the Baader 2" nosepiece to the T2 ?

I use either a T2 - 1.25 inch nosepiece or a T2 - 2 inch one. Not Baader but similar.

My scope is a FC100-DL but I think the focuser is the same as the DF.

A 250g sample of the asteroid Bennu is due to return to Earth this weekend:

Osiris-Rex: Asteroid Bennu 'is a journey back to our origins' - BBC News

Many years ago there was a Celestron branded but Vixen made 6 inch F/5 newtonian with that focuser mechanism. I think the model was the SP-C6 - it came on a Vixen made Super Polaris mount. The focuser was .965 / 1.25 inch fitting only as I recall. 

There was also a Celestron model called the Comet Catcher which was a 5.5 inch F/3.7 newtonian with the same focuser. I think that was also made by Vixen.

Here is a thread from the CN forum which shows the SP-C6 in more detail. I suspect the Perl / Vixen 130 newtonian would be similar:

Celestron SP-C6 6"f5 Newtonian - Classic Telescopes - Cloudy Nights

I owned the 36mm Baader Aspheric for a while but was disappointed in the amount of astigmatism that it showed in the outer parts of the field of view - and that was with a 6 inch F/12 refractor. Not one of Baader's best products IMHO.

I've used them both. Not a lot in the performance but I believe that the Powermate is just that "niggling" bit better. By better I mean totally invisible in the optical train apart from the magnification amplification. 

Take this with a little pinch of salt though - as is probably widely known on here, I am a bit of a Tele Vue fanatic 🙄 

A 2 inch aperture increase does not make a lot of difference to the views with newtonians in my experience. The 4 inch step gives a more obvious boost to the views but a 12 inch is a substantially larger instrument of course. That said, for deep sky observing ANY additional aperture is welcome of course.

I found a 12 inch dob was the largest instrument that I could handle on my own, transport occasionally while retaining relatively quick setup / tear down times. Mine was an Orion Optics 12 inch dob though and they weigh about the same as one of the chinese 10 inchers.

Back on topic, I once purchased a Helios branded 150mm F/8 refractor which came on an EQ5 mount on an aluminium tripod 🙄

The scope was good but it was totally un-useable on the alu tripod, even at low magnifications. This was the stock spec of the early chinese 150 F/8 refractors - it seems daft to market a scope / mount combination that was so badly matched but it's not the 1st time that has been the case of course.

11 minutes ago, Piero said:

 

That's interesting. Instead, I refer to the TV paracorr2 specifications for the parfocal groups of TV eyepieces: https://www.televue.com/engine/TV3b_page.asp?id=61&Tab=_ttop .

The reason is that I find important to be able to quantify the travel distance between groups. For instance, Ethos 21mm is A whereas Ethos 10mm is H and each letter is separated by 0.1" or 2.54mm. Using the same scale it is possible to infer non-TV eyepieces quite easily using a TV eyepiece. For instance, the APM UFF 30mm is G.

I've never used a Paracorr so I'm rather ignorant about the way that they group eyepieces.

On 13/09/2023 at 04:33, Piero said:

I think you meant "D".

 

Sorry for the delayed reply - I've been away.

I was referring to Tele Vue's parfocal group "B". The eyepieces that conform with this are listed in column 4G in this table:

Tele Vue Optics: Tele Vue Eyepiece Specifications

I've had a few (mercifully few) bits of kit that have been notably underwhelming for me. The ones I can recall include:

- A Meade AR5 127mm F/9.4 refractor, which was very mediocre at best. A Bresser branded version that I had owned previously was excellent.

- A Tele Vue Gibraltar mount and ash wood tripod which bore no resemblance, in stability, to the rock that is is named after.

- A really awful William Optics 8-24mm zoom.

- A baffling Meade LXD55 GOTO EQ mount. Supposedly the same as an EQ5 but the Skywatcher EQ5's that I've owned have been better. 

- Back in the early 1990's, some Meade 4000 series plossls and SWA eyepieces. Made in Japan and really quite expensive but they certainly did not impress me.

Of the few under-performing items I've owned (briefly, usually !), the majority have, unfortunately, been branded by Meade. I'm sure Meade do have some good products but I've not had much success with them.

This may sound a little immodest but I will put forward my 130mm F/9.2 LZOS triplet refractor on the T-Rex mount. I have been a great admirer of Sir Patrick Moore's Cooke 5 inch refractor (see my avatar) for many years and I was so pleased to be able to get something along those lines of my own a few years ago. The objective was designed by the late Thomas M Back and executed by LZOS in Russia. The tube was assembled by APM in Germany and the focuser is a Starlight Feather Touch. The T-Rex alt-azimuth mount was designed and built by a highly skilled Japanese engineer on behalf of the Kokusai Kohki company in Japan. When the engineer sadly passed away in 2016, the design and build capability went with him.

From discussions with Markus Ludes at APM I reckon there have been no more than 150 of these telescopes made since they were launched in late 2005. The relatively slow (for a triplet) focal ratio is a result of the objective being designed especially for the visual planetary and lunar observer. 

While I have greatly admired larger aperture refractors, the 130 F/9.2 is readily useable, and on the T-Rex mount can be moved around without much trouble and it's performance is simply the best that I have experienced, inch for inch, from any telescope 🙂

1 hour ago, badhex said:

Ah damn, sorry to hear. I replied at the same time as you! 

No problem - if you have it clear, go for it Joe 👍

11 minutes ago, IB20 said:

I found it didn’t take much pressure to move the barrel and sometimes replacing the eye caps moved it. Perhaps I just had a loose outlier of a Delite? 

Once locked the Delos eye cup section seems to stay firmly in place, at least in the ones that I have used. It is a two handed operation to lock it though. I have yet to use a Delite but I believe that it is the same.

9 minutes ago, IB20 said:

Oooh. 😁 

Do they have the same twist barrel mechanism as the Delites, as I wasn’t a huge fan of that style?

Yes they do. I prefer the XW approach than the Delos / Delite approach but it's not a showstopper for me. Once I had my Delos eye cup in the position I liked, that was it.

3 hours ago, badhex said:

Noted, cheers John. So far skies are looking good, I'm going to powermate the APM Superzoom which should give me a bit of extra oomph (112x, so not exactly super high power 😂) and see how I get on! 

Clouded out here 😒

Good luck, if you have clear skies still.

If your skies are clear, Enceladus will be reasonably well placed between 10:00 and 11:00 BST tonight. 10:30 seems to be the optimum. A  bit below Rhea on the Titan side of the planet and rings. 

55 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

.... The Sightron allows me (literally) to spot a hole in the clouds, pick up scope, mount and tripod, plonk it down and observe....

 

Exactly the way that I like to observe so all my mounts have similar characteristics 👍

It's also the best way to get more astronomy done under UK skies !

16 minutes ago, Neil P said:

Yes it is the APM AZMaxload (I think is it’s full title), I have the one with encoders, I am a Nexus DSC fan so mostly just use all/az push to for all my scopes now. I actually put a Rowan saddle on it so I could attach the Rowan handle, there was not a ‘native’ option for the APM mount strangely.

Thanks - I should have noticed it in your signature 🙂

I considered a Maxload when I had a 6 inch F/12 achromat refactor but the mount would have cost twice as much as the scope had cost. I did try a Bray Tablet mount but that was not really strong enough. 

That is the challenge with the really big refractors - you need really, really big mounts for them !

Nice to see them all the same - I'll bet the deep sky views are superb 👍

It makes the 21mm Ethos look rather compact 😁

48 minutes ago, Neil P said:

I don’t think I have seen any of these on here, my light bucket Frac, a Tecnosky Goliath 210/1200. Only used for the Deep-Sky, though with a Baader minus violet filter the CA is not that bad.

Very interesting refractor 🙂

Is that an APM Maxload mount it's on or something else ?

2 hours ago, josefk said:

How do you make your aperture mask @John .....

 

The "mask" I'm currently using is simply the hole that is in the plastic dust cap, which has a diameter of 53mm. Simples 🙂

39 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Now there's an excuse for a FS60 if ever I heard one 

I reckon my ED53 F/17 performs practically as well, maybe even a touch better 😉

I'll stick with my little 70mm F/6 ED travel kit as my smallest native aperture scope I think. I would not use 60mm enough to justify the investment in a little Tak, lovely though they are 🙂

Saturn was magnificent but is now hidden by rapidly rising and thickening mist. Jupiter is hidden by both a large conifer AND the rapidly rising and thickening mist.

Oh, well, it was very good while it lasted 🙂

Hope others get a bit longer to enjoy things 👍

With Saturn currently getting a bit misty I have put the aperture mask back on and I'm having a look at Iota Cassiopeia at 225x with the 53mm of clear aperture.

The A-B pair are quite easy. They have a separation of 2.7 arc seconds and magnitudes of 4.69 and 6.9 respectively. The slightly more distant component C is quite hard to see. Just a very faint spot of light at magnitude 8.7 with a 7.4 arc second separation from the A star.

Another one that I'm familiar with using larger apertures, which helps. 

Interesting stuff. Sorry that I don't have a true 60mm available currently though 🙁

Maybe I'll make another aperture mask with a 60mm hole in it 🙂