Chris

I received a Takahashi box too! Finally joined the club ??

Great looking mount, Shelster. Looks a step up from the NEQ6 so should serve you well

I do. The Crawmatch focuser was like butter, the depth of focus was superb, the field was flat with stars like tight orbs on an inky black sky, and the scope itself looked flipping fantastic. There was a sense of occasion when using the skylight, but then again now days there is a sense of occasion when using any scope! p.s. it was also fab for white light with a binoviewer.

Ah that's stunning! I had the Skylight 60mm f/16.7 and was daft for letting it go. You're in for a treat, and such a prestigious scope in particular too! All i can say is enjoy

The Luminos might not be as bad as you think

Thanks They are the only 82* EP's I've found where I can see the whole FOV without my eye touching the glass! Great built and comfy. downside - the odd reflection near the Moon, and a touch EOFB, but very sharp and cheap!

That's a great looking thing and a bargain, congrats

7 and 15mm Celestron Luminos to go with my 10mm. I had these before, sold them, regretted it. It's 82 degrees with decent ER = rare thing.

I reckon it must have been the Tak76 which costs a mere £1,300 to £1,600! depending on the exact model and included kit. Very tricky to justify that much dosh for 76mm of aperture even if it's 76mm of perfect aperture. I reckon a 20" Dob must be at least 4k and would probably show you 20x more than the Tak from a dark site. Then again, you would probably set up the big Dob 20x less than a little Tak which would even out the odds. Fantasy shopping, I don't think I'd go for a Tak76, but I could see the point for either the 60mm or the 100mm. The 60mm is relatively affordable and would be handy as a super finder, travel scope, grab n go on a photo tripod, or for imaging/EEA, and I can imagine you get the warm fuzzy feeling of being a Tak owner. The Tak100 is 2K for the OTA but it's a very useful aperture, and very light weight scope. You could argue that in an urban environment it would be all you needed...ever. Then again Synta and WO offer 85% of the above performance per aperture at half the price! Anyway, back to EEA.

Thanks Rob, I'm not going to lie it was driving me nuts! I knew time was ticking by and who knows when I can try again. As you say some good came from it with the little out reach session, he really was impressed with Jupiter when I last observed with him but I don't think he'll be buying a scope any time soon so not a convert. I'm glad you've got a setup that works for you, I know realise how tricky that can be! Yes it was such a lovely crisp dark night, glad you got out also, and there is a lot to be said for something you can just grab and plonk down. The 130p giroWR sounds perfect for this, such a light weight setup with decent aperture by my standards at leasts p.s. I'm not going to lie, I did have a little thought about selling the lot (apart from the 100p) and using the money to buy a fluorite Tak now FLO are stocking them This probably won't happen I'm always shocked by the price when window shopping

Nah Some good came from it, I got to show that the 100p focuses to infinity with CMOS type astro cams, and that the 100p is 'reasonably' well collimated out the box, but could be improved with a little tweak. Yes, that faint star was really handy for getting a good focus, Polaris was too bright to know when this was achieved. Exposure was less than a second! I reckon you could be onto something there, the same thing, said it had aligned then headed the long way round to stuff and ended up about 10-15 degrees out. Worked fine last time with the C5. I'll try putting the 100p the other way round, thanks I'll put a bit more effort in before I give up on this venture. I was impressed with the 100p's ability to pick out M82 and M81 visually. Framed them both nicely with a 20mm Plossl.

Finally a clear night! though I had real trouble aligning the goto using two star alignment It said it was successful each time, but clearly way off the mark when slewing to M82, M51 etc. Tried again twice more using different alignment stars but no luck. Worked like a charm last time I used it so I think it was some kind of user input error. I ended up just pointed the scope and camera at Polaris to do a focus and optics check, then gave up and stuck the 100p back on it's little Dob base for some visual. My neighbour popped out as he heard my scope slewing about, so I took the opportunity to show him a couple of galaxies (m81/82), and after a little training he was able to pic them out. Not bad for a little 4" f/4 shaving mirror Bit frustrated that I couldn't actually electronically view M82. When an imaging night goes wrong I always want to give up and just look through scopes instead!

Well done, looks good to me Seems pretty decent for EAA with a small chip! Question answered, which is a good job because it might be a while until I get the chancet to try!

The weather is a bit like banging your head against a brick wall at the moment. Every night I check, and every night there's cloud rolling in over the east coast

If I look at the money I've spent on astronomy equipment over the last few decades, I'm sure I could have bought a brand new car for the same out lay, and I would certainly get a lot more use out of the car! At one point I've had as many as 8-9 telescopes sitting around waiting to be used. However, if you're into astronomy you're into astronomy. It's as simple as that. You'll always have your eye on one bit of kit or the other even though opportunities to use the kit can be few and far between. It's not a practical use of money beyond a point, but looking at your sig I really don't thin you've over done it. It's nice to have at least one scope available if you do find it clear out side and you don't have an early start for work

Oh dear, Rob At least my garden is ok due to being on a high spot.

Cloud, wind and rain since I posted I'm afraid. Forecast for tonight is patchy rain and brisk winds also I guess it doesn't help that I have a small window of opportunity from 9pm when all the kids are in bed, and 11pm when I ideally need to be going bed for work. If I didn't have to be super nice to people all day at work I'd go bed later

Which camera did you use with it?

Yeah, not only for dew but also stray light.

For that kind of money you'd at least want a dew shield. The glass looks to be right at the front so will dew up pretty quick unless I missed the part about inbuilt dew control?

The scope, but the camera is pretty recent also

The post man brought me this little tyke

Thanks Rob, the FOV you've shown above looks great, and it will also give 2"/pixel which is bang on for our skies. I'm hoping the small chip will get around the f/4 coma but we'll see. Fingers crossed for some interesting results p.s. your Ipad needs charging

I've had one of these little 4" fast parabolic mirrors previously, and did wonder at the time if you could do any imaging with it. Fast forward three years and the thought crossed my mind again, so order placed yesterday with FLO. It arrived today and a quick indoor test looks promising. The focuser is mid travel with the ASI120MC, and it's picking out some lovely detail in the little windows of the front door 30 feet away. The plan is to stick the 100p (mini f/4 Quattro) on my 5SE mount and see how it does for EAA. I think if all goes well it's short focal length and fast mirror might be just the ticket for the ASI camera. To be continued.

It's worth a try My gut feeling is you'll need 4 more diagonals, but might be ok if you have a really wide IPD? I think my IPD is 62mm so I would probably struggle.