Chris

Nice time lapse non the less. I've only seen a couple of Perseids myself.

Superb image!

Do it!

Hopefully you're feeling better now, Steve? You've always been the first name that springs to mind with anything to do with binoculars!

Thank you Rob I think I'm a little bit smitten with Fuji after witnessing it's ISO invariance, and Ha performance. The analogue dials are pretty nice too

I'm surprised mirror alignment isn't a bit higher up, John! Good if it is though, then we can fret a bit less over it

Cheers Alan Far from a perfect test but the difference was so stark! If anything the Fuji was at a disadvantage in many ways as well - Exposure length, optical speed (forgot the reducer/flattener) and I didn't use the fancy pants L-Enhance filter with the Fuji Either. Olympus are nice and retro looking cameras also, they do the best in body image stabilisation as well. I do hope the company that bought Olympus will continue to make cameras.

I was having zero luck imaging nebula with my 40D, so I decided to pick up a Fuji XT1 after reading about their Astro performance. Yes, it's an extra step converting Fuji RAF files into Tiffs or DNG in order to stack in DSS. but I think it's worth it for the Ha performance and the ISO invariance. Both the Canon and Fuji were shot using ISO1600. Oh and please excuse the lack of a field flattener, I'm an idiot, or tired, or a tired idiot 🤪

Great report Rob, sounds wonderful

SGL's equivalent to a national treasure Many congratulations to you John, 50K posts is an amazing achievement!

Impressive fine details in the 3 main Coma Berenice galaxies, and nice rich velvety background sky, what's not to love

So much depth! Very nicely processed!

Thanks Jeremy

Cheers! Sound like you're talking from experience here Alan 😁 Thankfully, we only have cheap old cutlery that she doesn't seem to care much about, but the day she comes home with anything posh I'd better change my ways!

Cheers Rob, I was sold on the tripod when I saw people using it to do pull ups with on Youtube 😆 💪

I've noticed occasionally beginners get a bit stuck with setting up the Star Adventurer mounts. Not spotting the pre inserted 3/8" to 1/4" adaptors that often need to be removed is an example. Here is a very quick setup guide. It doesn't include polar scope calibration as that would be a video in it's own right. Just enough to get peeps up and running for a first outing I also wanted to show off the innorel RT90C tripod. Some of the usual astronomy tripods are a bit thin on the ground at the moment which lead me to research an alternative for the SA mount. This is one solid tripod for £289, and I think it's going to be great paired up with the Star Adventurer 2i. More on that though once tested.

Hi, I'm just thinking that it might not be worth spending loads of money on a dedicated cooled camera straight the way if you're only going to occasionally dabble with deep sky imaging? A second hand full frame DLSR or Mirrorless camera would match well in terms of sensor size and pixel scale, e.g. The Sony A7s and Canon 5D mk1 both have massive pixels and sensors for not much money If you find yourself doing more and more DSO imaging jump up to a dedicated cooled camera at that point. Admittedly the above will be better for galaxies, globular clusters and small bright planetary nebulae, rather than extended faint nebulae, but then again galaxies, globs etc are what the C9.25 will be best at when it comes to DSO's

Hello Rob, cheers mate. Yeah it is counter intuitive when you think of it like that. I don't think exit pupil is considered that much in general. I never used to even think about it, just the focal length and the AFOV. Oh then I learnt about eye relief before exit pupil.

Haha thank you! Not sure about the glass though, you've witnessed how clumsy I am 🤪

Thank you! and I'm glad you enjoyed that bit 😃 lol just don't ask how many takes it took trying to film that scene in super slow mo !

Hi John, thank you so much, I'm very relieved it's generally received the thumbs up! especially from someone as experienced with eyepieces as yourself I'm all too aware of how heated debates on eyepieces can get so it's a worry when you inject your own personal opinion here and there. In hindsight I was a little harsh on Plossls, especially for someone that went back to using nothing but Plossls for several years! I probably should have mentioned that Plossls make excellent planetary eyepieces with very long focal length telescopes E.g. a 10mm would give a nice 200x with a C8, and that would be reasonable on ER and the size of eye lens. I think the only other thing was my slight exageration with my example using a 10mm 100 degree eyepiece for best contrast with an f/5 scope. Yes true it would give the magic 2mm exit pupil, but I'm aware we need to compromise on FOV in order to fit some objects in. I think what I was getting at is people often jump for something like a 35-42mm thinking it's going to be a great deep sky object eyepiece, but often all they're doing is blowing the contrast and softening the image, as well as having black outs from the magnified central obstruction and massive ER making it hard to position the eye. I think in reality something around 15-20mm with a very wide AFOV would be a better more practical compromise.

Eyepieces are highly subjective, what somebody hates someone else might love. Here are some things to bear in mind before upgrading your stock eyepieces.

A medium sized say 4" refractor might be a good shout when it comes to delivering consistent results viewing planets. The larger aperture Mak's, Newt's, SCT's, CC's really shine for the planetary imaging side of things. The venerable ED100 f/9 springs to mind as you get the ED glass, focal length and shallow depth of focus.

Yes, OTA wise, the only real difference is the livery. EDIT: Well, if I'm being picky some ST102's come with rings and a Vixen dovetail, where as others have an integrated short Vixen dove dovetail.

Hiya, as you've probably gathered the optical tube is the same so it's all about the mount when choosing. As far as I could tell the mount for the StarQuest range is an updated EQ2. It does has some design improvements over the older EQ2 such as very large easy to find clutches, plus it's easy to place the mount into an Alt Azimuth mode by adjusting the altitude to 90 degrees. The Startravel 102 comes with various mounts such as the AZ3, AZ Goto and AZ-GTI, so are you considering the AZ3? I would choose the StarQuest over the AZ3 versions, but the AZ-GTI mount gets some cracking reviews so it just depends on if you want Goto or not. You can add a motor drive to the StarQuest and I was able to do some very basic imaging by doing this. The motor drive takes 2xAA batteries so they don't last that long but it tracks well enough.