TheycallmeRiver

Download yourself an app like Stellarium or Sky Safari, point your phone at the sky and you should easily be able to identify whatever you're looking at. It'll also help you navigate towards the kinds of things you want to see 👍

Another option in a similar area https://www.itelescope.net/ Prices start around £18 per month and they're apparently no quibble if you're not satisfied. They claim to just refund your last months subscription within 24 hours. Edit - Also just seen they have a 'try it for free' option with 2 lower end scopes.

Please have the confidence to do it. There's so much I don't know, but still feel too embarassed to ask. Welcome to SGL.

I messaged the guy pretty much immediately when he posted it on ABS because I frustratingly missed the last couple that got posted on there. He still left it marked as For Sale until after we'd met a couple of days later though - I guess that's fair enough. Seemed a decent guy when we met. Anyway, I'm going to be using it mainly with my FLT 132, perhaps in my dob as well, but definitely the primary plan is to use it with the refractor. I'll let you know how it goes (but it might be a short while due to health issues). 👍

Picked this up used this morning for £400! So excited. My eyepiece collection should be good to go for a long while now 🥰

I'm mainly intending on using it with my WO FLT 132, I think it might be too much power for my other scopes. Really can't wait to get going with it.

The only Nagler I've used so far is the 16mm, and I absolutely love it. I bought the 3-6 zoom earlier this week but I haven't used it yet, and I'm hopefully picking up a used 31mm T5 tomorrow morning for £400. Really excited. Should complete my eyepiece collection.

Nagler 3-6 zoom courtesy of FLO! I'm not too well at the moment and as a result i'm often in bed long before it gets dark. Can't wait for the nights to start drawing in as I have so much new stuff to try out.

Saw these on FLO tonight. They’re described as ‘mythical’ and ‘legendary’ in the description on the site. I’m looking for some low power wide field eyepieces but I’d never heard of these - Hardly surprising given my newcomer status, but are they really all that? Does anyone own any from the original run back in the 80’s? 85 degree FoV and long eye relief seems enticing? Price seems much lower than equivalent Naglers? Are those what these are competing with? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/specialist/masuyama-ultra-premium-japanese-eyepieces.html

Thousands of miles from you, but I also have a 9.25 Evo. Great scope, and I love it. Welcome to SGL.

I'm rarely not.

My third Morpheus arrived this morning, courtesy of FLO. (edit - The 6.5mm) Almost ready to start plucking the foam on my new eyepiece case now ... Or, maybe I'll wait for just one more! Does it ever stop? 😆

If you had seen both a sausage and the aurora it would have been quite a night.

I have the Berlebach Charon and I’m 17 stone. My experience of the chair is that the seat bends slightly more under my weight than I thought it would. I don’t feel like it’s right on the border of breaking or anything, but being 3 stone under the weight limit I didn’t expect to feel any movement at all.

Absolutely love it. Thank you for sharing.

Welcome Tina. It made me smile when you said that. I’ve also always felt that maybe I was born a little to early 😊 You say you wish you had a good telescope. What do you have?

There is an AZ-EQ 5 which has just been posted on UKABS, including tripod and hand controller for £700. I know that’s still expensive, but it’s a lot less than the £1000 option you vetoed and should do what you want it to do payload wise if you use it in AZ. Plus, you’re a little future proofed if decide you fancy trying some astrophotography further down the line. I figured along similar lines when I bought my used AZ EQ 6 recently. https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/

Two new arrivals here over the last couple of days. Yesterday I collected my 6 y/o daughter's first scope. Thank you @Mark at Beaufort. She's so excited. I hope in 12 years time she herself will be a member here, and I'm able to remind her of this picture 🥰 And for me: A used 19mm Panoptic arrived this morning! I might let her use that instead of one my plossls, if she can demonstrate the required care

The case I ordered from Amazon arrived a while ago, but i've been holding off on populating it until I'd acquired another couple of eyepieces I wanted. I'm almost ready to go now, only need one more eyepiece before I can figure out the best foam plucking pattern in order to fit them all in. Anyway, I do have a question. Other than making some space for silica gel in the case is there anything else I need to do in order to keep my collection safe? I read something a while ago about certain types of foam 'outgassing' and potentially damaging optical equipment.. Don't really know what type of foam is in this case but it does have a pressure release valve on the front. Picture attached.

I also made my own filter with baader film similar to the one in your link. Yes you will definitely be able to see sun spots, but I’ve never really seen any other activity. Here’s an image I took recently and this is a pretty representative example in my opinion. 10 inch dob, iphone held up to eyepiece.

Well to answer your question, the Mk IV zoom was one of the first decent eyepieces I bought so I used it pretty extensively back in my first sessions where just about anything was an upgrade to the ep’s that came with my scope. I still use it pretty much every time I go out, but over time as I’ve gradually started to build a collection of decent fixed focal length eyepieces I tend to use my zoom first on most targets before switching to something fixed. The zoom does tend to be my most used eyepiece when doing a bit of white light solar through my XT10 though. Convenience I guess, plus I like to be able to show my kids different mags nice and quickly without swapping stuff in and out. Anyway I don’t wish to derail your thread. I like the 16T5 a great deal. Wider FoV at 16mm is of course an obvious advantage over the baader zoom, but yeah, that comes at a pretty significant price difference.

I own the 16T5 and whilst I am relatively inexperienced if you told me today that I could only keep one eyepiece from my collection, it would be this one. I've mainly used it at F/10 on globular clusters, some bright DSO's, and the moon. My eyesight isn't perfect (I wear glasses when I drive but not when I observe), but the relatively short eye relief hasn't really bothered me. I haven't barlowed it myself yet, but I had a PM discussion with Don Pensack on another forum about this eyepiece and he told me it barlows to 8mm well.

I know that the 30mm and the 40mm were only brought back semi-recently and that the ones that were newly produced had -R (For Ricoh) added at the end. I don't think any changes were made to the actual eyepiece itself though, only the name. Not sure about the -S though, sorry.

Grab and go.

Manual is here https://www.manualslib.com/manual/116323/Orion-Skyquest-Intelliscope-Xt10.html#manual but I don't see any exact measurements on there. The assembly images might help you though? I own this telescope on its factory base, and I can measure specific lengths you need if it helps?