Chris

I made a video with the same title a few years back and concluded that "if you could only own one scope" it would be an ED100 f/7 refractor. I also gave a budget option of a 150p f/5 Newtonian because the refractor might price some people out. I'll watch Ed's video after work and see what he came up with, cheers

Nice! I'll try not to be jealous of your south facing garden and I hope you enjoy the session 👍

You just need to drop the truss rods down by about 1cm and re-tighten them to reach focus with a ZWO planetary cam. I do this often with my Heritage 150p including last night. EDIT: The helical focuser and lack of tracking can be frustrating for imaging though.

Well de-ionised water has had all the mineral salts removed, so I think it would be fine

I was a bit nervous about posting this video as I know cleaning optics can be a bit of a divisive subject, so I appreciate that! thanks p.s. I had to Google Aquafina...I don't think we have that one over here?

I bet wool looks like wire under a microscope! I know what you mean about feeling debris with your fingers. I had read the theory but I was still surprised by how well you could actually feel these!

I was intermittently wrestling a giant bottle of RO water that I use for my marine fish tank water top ups 💪😅

Rinsing with reverse osmosis water worked absolutely fine for me, although I did of course discuss rinsing with distilled. I'm guessing you missed that part of the video vlaiv. I do understand skipping sections, this is a long video : )

You could use 3 or 4 drops instead of 1 or 2 and spend a bit longer with the rinsing. The mirror looks practically new using the method above, but I can try using more soap next time and see what difference it makes. The cloth is of course optional just in case the mirror slips and turns in the water. I didn't want it to slip face down on the bottom of the craggy bowl.

Setting up to observe with the Heritage 150P I noticed the primary mirror looked completely dewed up, or at least I thought it was dew! A few minutes with the hairdryer later confirmed that the mirror was caked in some kind of deposit which left it looking like frosted glass. It wasn't budging with the hairdryer and it was slowly dawning on me that I would need to clean the mirror! Last time a cleaned a mirror I used the good old cotton wool and distilled water technique which worked ok but didn't get all the debris off. I decided to do some digging to see if there were any other methods for telescope mirror cleaning and I read a few comments here and there talking about using your fingers! It seems like a bit of a controversial technique, but I can't argue with the results! I know which method I'll be using in future.

Canon are very easy to use cameras with good astronomy software support such as backyard EOS. I'm sure you'll enjoy it for Astro

Rory's great! He makes TV programs for a living and is clearly talented, passionate and creative, His videos are on another level as far as I'm concerned. As others have mentioned, there are also plenty of talented SGL members with a vast amount of knowledge over many areas of astronomy, so it's well worth spending some time here as well as on Rory's channel Rory has had to go back to his daytime job for a while, but hopefully he'll be back soon when he's able to afford to spend the thousands of hours and resources needed to make his level of content. I honestly don't know how he managed to live off Youtube money for as long as he did when he pays London prices and has a family to feed? It must have been stressful, but he's that passionate about sharing and promoting astronomy that he just does it when he can : ) As you can tell, I'm a big fan

Congrats Rob!

Hehe yeah I think he's reached some kind of Shaman level trance like state. I used to get visual disturbances after the 16.5 hour night shifts we had to do years ago, so Mark must be really tripping after 140 hours!🤪💪

Yaaah! Still going strong even after smashing it He doesn't want this record breaking anytime soon!

I find it's very much dependant on eye relief! For example - I remember needing to clean my ES82's after every use, as my eyelashes would 'bat' the eye lens repeatedly, but I rarely need to clean eyepieces with longer eye relief such as BST's, StellaLyra LER's and Vixen SLV's etc.

I keep popping in to see how he's going on, and it's just unreal! Talk about the right stuff! I would have been asleep under the chair days ago!

I think it's amazing when people lecture for 2-3 hours, so to see him nearly 105 hours in and still going is just incredible! I so hope he breaks the record and raises loads of money. Shared

This is brilliant! Super clean for a single stretched sub, and that detail can't be from a light stretch....or maybe actually with the RASA.

Happy birthday Alan! Or should I say happy Halloween 🙂

The first mirrorless camera I ever tested for imaging was the original Canon EOS M. They are basically a Rebel camera made to look like a bar of soap I thought lol. Good for galaxies, globs, and reflection nebulae, but the stock Canon IR cut filter is too harsh for those faint nebulae I feel. https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/used-equipment/used-photo-and-video/used-mirrorless-cameras/used-canon-mirrorless-cameras/canon-eos-m/sku-1289632/ Basically £100 for an APS-C sensor, so a cheap galaxy cam

Yes some of the mirroless cameras weigh about the same as a diagonal and eyepiece. Also have you seen the new ZWO ASI485 and 482's Large sensor planetary cams 😎 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-asi-482mc-usb-30-colour-camera.html https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-asi-485mc-usb-30-colour-camera.html

I think I was inherently into space and astronomy from a early age because I can't remember an event triggering it. My parents bought my first telescope for xmas when I was 7 or 8. Although it was one of those 60mm plastic fantastic jobbies so I quickly lost interest until I bought a better telescope in my teens. I laid my eyes on Saturn and at that moment I knew what subject to pick for Uni 😃 First attempt at Astrophotography was interesting! I strapped an SLR to my 6" reflector, I think it was 1997? Anyway, I pointed at the Moon and focused the best I could, then patiently waited for Boots to develop the images. The results very much remind me of this! 😆

Brilliant vlaiv! 66mm even without the filter is a major improvement, and you're still at f7.5 which isn't that slow. This seems like a great option for budget imaging, just grab an ST80 or similar and stop it down a bit. I kind of want to try it myself. No pun intended but I 'figure' it also helps with the optical figure. The edge of the lenses is usually worst culprit from what I understand.

P.s. that's a very nice mosaic from the achromat, the CA certainly isn't quite as apparent at that scale!