sorrimen

If I were in your position, I’d scour astrobuysell and the classifieds on here for used BST Starguiders. At f/10, you’ll be forgiving to cheaper options but with an SCT, aFOV is always going to be a nice thing to have. The quality is slightly wasted at f/10, but the afov increase in nice for not a lot of money. £30-35 a pop, you’re talking 3 better eyepieces used or 4 or 5 new ones in plossl format. I’d prefer the former, many would prefer the latter! There are also the 66 degree (maybe measured a bit less?) goldline series. Direct from aliexpress these are very cheap. Although their issues are mainly blackouts and glare which I don’t imagine f/10 would do anything to reduce.

Great report! Had a night where my observing eye contact fell out. Found out that one contact is more annoying than none 😁 Awesome that you got to see nebulosity with M45. Can’t imagine what that must’ve been like!

Just to add, nothing wrong with the BST barlow and it’s a great match to the BST eyepieces! Safe choice when you come around to it.

Like spock says, a good choice of magnification. Not too high as to be approaching atmospheric or your scopes limits and oftentimes the ideal magnification. Note that a 7.5mm plossl is going to be a rather tight squeeze. If you could stretch to the 8mm bst or even the goldline/redline series you’d have a much more comfortable set up, plus wider fov. Note that with cheap plossls the coatings aren’t great so the image suffers anyway, at least in my experience. That advice is also based on the fact that your eyepieces will be the limiting factor rather than the barlow, so it would make more sense to me to upgrade eyepieces before spending a good bit on a barlow. Combined with the fact that your the barlow is wasted on the 25mm, I think in your situation I would go a different route. Others may disagree of course.

Thanks all for the suggestions again. Came across the rolling pin method briefly on another post, so seems like the next thing to try. Luckily got a couple days away to take in more advice and get a plan of action. Thanks Ivan for the words of encouragement as well, more motivated than I’ve ever been! 😆

God knows 😆 Just following things I see online but I did think it strange. Only saw it used on car bodies and panels though, so figured it was worth trying. Flaking paint isn’t too much of a worry. More worried that I’ve got no experience with panel beating or metal work and may hammer it to ****!

Thanks for the suggestions. Got the black trim off okay, went boiling water then a combination of pulling knob and pushing other side and hammering as well. With it being right at the end, I don’t think it’s the right type of dent for boiling water method so going to have to panel beat it seems. For the price of the panel beating kit, might just see if a PDR specialist will have a crack at it.

Hi all About a month back my OTA in a large rucksack slipped out my hands. Annoyingly, the useful little knob for moving the scope around sticks out which meant inescapable denting. Writing this now, thank god it wasn’t my focuser… Anyway, the resultant dent is thankfully very little and the knob still works well enough, but I would of course like to fix the dent! Currently, I’m thinking pouring boiling water and trying to work the dent out with my hands. Seems for boiling water I would be best off taking off the black plastic and pointing the tube upside down vertical, so that there’s no risk of water getting into the OTA and coming at all close to either mirror. Basically looking for thoughts on the boiling water, as well as whether the black plastic simply screws off and on as it looks like it does. Any other ideas greatly appreciated. (Last image just shows the black plastic and one of the 6 screws that hold it in place, dent is on the opposite side) TIA Ross p.s. note that there is the knob screw on inside of the OTA, which may interfere with certain techniques. Does seem itself entirely undamaged so maybe best to remove?

Blows my attempt out the water. Fantastic image there. Wow!

Wouldn’t mind if a truck full of expensive glass pulled up to the rec… lights off of course!

It’s nice that it’s large enough to compare to images now, isn’t it? Need to try looking at maps and finding out what I’m looking at!

Each session he brings more goodies, a 100 degree to come next 😯….

Quite right. Noticeably much larger than a few weeks ago so really can’t wait for when seeing is good. Opposition to be occulted by full moon if I remember correctly, which should be interesting.

Thanks, Kon.

Whew, what a night. Another one with @PeterW. Planned to get out before 8 to try image the ISS and catch a young starlink passover, with forecast predicting clear skies from 8 onwards. Sat looking out the window and saw a thick ocean of cloud so we decided to stay home and wait. Saw the ISS cut through the clouds beautifully from my window. Hour by hour, the clear window kept getting pushed back on the forecast. Boy was this frustrating. Gets to about 11:15 and Peter heads out to check out our spot, but clouds are covering most the sky. After another 30 minutes or so we decide we may as well take the plunge and hope for the best. Arrive at the spot at midnight or so, with fairly vast cloud coverage. Briefly tested my new Baader zoom mk3 barlowed to see what conditions were like. Pretty satisfying collimation, and surprisingly little thermal action considering the scope hadn't cooled much. Also saw a good deal of airy disks which I've probably seen before, but had never attributed it as such; can imagine how these would be a nice sight in a frac. With the zoom in, it seemed a good idea to jump on over to the ring. Resolved nicely and was satisfying to get up to more appropriate mags just with a twist of the eyepiece. Tried to get to M27, but just as I was getting close to Peter's laser marker clouds covered it up. This became a bit of a trend for the first 30 mins - 1 hour of the session, jumping between targets that came in and out of clouds. Must add that observing with someone who knows their skies and has a laser pointer makes things very quick and easy. Almost makes me want GOTO.... almost... Hopped on over to Mars just to see what we could see. Seeing was fairly horrendous; stars violently twinkling almost up to zenith. A very short stay on Mars and as Peter was thinking up a first proper target I thought I'd get over to Uranus. It was much easier to starhop a few weeks ago when Mars was close to my chosen reference stars, so my attempted quick surprise ended up taking a few minutes. Still, once we got it it was a clear pale disk and is a lovely sight as always. I'd never tried for Neptune, so we went over to that next. Not too difficult to get to, but a bit more difficult to confirm. HD222147 being next to it was the confirmation, and once I knew it was there the dark blue colour came out a bit more. Very small disk! Next up was M36, 37, 38, with the latter of course being the nicest of the three. This is the point at which I had a serious 'wow' moment. Peter handed me a morpheus 12.5mm and my god the sight was beautiful! After taking in the view for a little bit, it was time to put it in the focuser... The well corrected, high contrasty, 76 degree field was truly phenomenal. So many stars to be resolved in 38 and the difference that field of view makes is no joke. Safe to say I've been spoiled and I can never look through my Starguiders the same way. A very nice area of open clusters that will be visited again. The order of the rest of the targets is a bit jumbled, which reminds me that I should start taking notes as I'm observing. A few other clusters were seen: M35, M52, NGC7789, Double cluster, and certainly others on our way around. All of these responded to the morpheus greatly and it was in the focusser for most the night. Going from 24mm to morpheus 12.5mm always shows a great increase in resolvable stars. Great views all around the board. Onto nebulae, this was equally wonderful, but in a different way. Given that we are in a fairly poor bortle 7 (although last night was measured at 19.3 or so), nebulae are obviously challenging targets. First new target for me was M1. This was very faint and my initial attempt to find it failed. Peter got down to the scope and did some real magic to get it. Unfiltered with the 24mm we were using, it was real faint and needless to say an incredibly impressive find from Peter. Adding in an OIII cut it down a little too much, but the ultrablock seemed to be a sweet spot in increasing contrast. Both the 12.5mm and 24mm UFF responded pretty well and it became more and more obvious. In between nebulae, we got over to M81+2. Over a bad bit of sky for us so probably the poorest views I've got of the two, but at least M82 was still faintly visible. Jumped over to M97, the owl nebula. I tried briefly, but like M1 this was really one for Peter's expertise. He got us in the exact right spot, but couldn't see it. Sitting at the eyepiece for a minute with the ultrablock, I just managed to make out the faintest of smudges. I was super chuffed as it was a seriously difficult target (towards sky glow, already poor skies, low in sky, 8" aperture etc. etc.) Managed to snap a picture to confirm the sighting and as you can just about make out, it's there! The view was very similarly unobvious, if not even fainter. Briefly tried for the veil and although Peter may have made out a little nebulosity with the OIII, I couldn't see anything (haven't seen before so that doesn't help). Final nebula was M42. My first ever sighting of it and best believe it was phenomenal. Tried all sorts of filter and eyepiece combos, with one surprising one being Hbeta. Completely changes the target and was actually the most expansive view of the nebula. OIII and UHC working well too. Good detail in the core of it, with large bat-like wings expanding out. Looking at the trapezium, I managed to get down to E but nothing more. This was before I knew where it should be or even if I was looking at the correct trapezium, so it was a definite sighting. The seeing was awful, but twinkling actually helped see E as it was only visible when it would flash a certain colour. Did some imaging after Peter left and revisited M42 when it was higher up. Was much more expansive, even with a totally unfiltered view. Quick phone image below! There were other targets, such as the Garnet star and Polaris, but I've rambled on a bit! All in all, what should have been a good night, turning into a bad night, turning back into a great night. Not quite a 'was going to stay in but went out and seeing was 10/10, saw 50 meteors and Jupiter eclipsed by all 4 moons colliding' kind of night, but very glad I got out. Feeling the effects of getting back at 6 am though.... Thought I'd attach the Mars image I got at the end of the session here so check that out too below if you like.

Mars from ~5 am. 8” dob (untracked), asi224, barlowed to ~3000mm. A very very brief imaging session so only captures two videos. Generally takes a few for me to get warmed up and it’s been a while anyway so I’m pleased with what I got. Not to mention seeing was roughly pickering 3!

Great review. Not enjoying wider angles certainly helps your wallet 😆 Have you considered decloaking to cut down the weight?

Welcome 😁

Oh good, all perfect then. Tiny note is that if you zoom on the first two images you have double diffraction spikes as you’re very slightly out of focus. Something to look out for! Little side note, when I’ve imaged individual stars I’ve experimented with taping very thin paper strips over my scope to get different diffraction spikes. Fun thing to change things up, and stunning with your own eye! 🙂

Bit late to the party, but I’ve often found that with more frames it may look softer pre sharpening. When you take it into registax however, you can push it much more without having to denoise in response, ending up with the better image. I’m not super experienced, so Neil and co.‘s advice is more important, but this may at least explain why you were seeing the difference pre registax.

Look pretty good to me! Is there something specific you’re worried/curious about?

Found the same here. Pushing mag did more than ultrablock on the ring for me.

Yeah that looks much more similar to the mk 4 with the much wider rubber. No surprise that they upgraded. Leica ASPH eyecup looks like the exact same piece, so that makes sense. Unfortunately doesn’t seem like the issue is widespread enough for a common fix.

In fairness maybe I won’t need to, but if the scout hut lights are intermittent as they were last time it would be useful. Think my phone holder days are over now anyway so that’s not a concern 😆

Not the best photos in all honesty, but not bad considering untracked 8” of aperture. Oh, and more importantly all of them from a bad bortle 7!