RobertI

Lovely report of your visit. This demonstrates their dedication to their products, and reinforces that Televue products are for life. Good enough reasons to buy from them. 🙂

I’ve often wondered whether remote EAA could be a thing. I think it’s something I would have to try to see whether it provides the same kind of thrill as a home based EAA system. Sadly, I think even with a simple low cost remote setup, it would still be expensive for our humble EAA needs.

Ah yes, well spotted.

Looks like the draw tube is missing from the focuser, will need some attention at some point.

Very sad news.

Great idea John, perhaps we can build this into the “SGL 100”! Great suggestions so far. My suggestion is to see a “two in a view” where Jupiter, Saturn, Mars or Venus can be seen in the same field of view as another well known object such as a DSO. I remember seeing Venus lying in the Pleiades and it was a spectacular sight.

Lovely captures and informative comments. Thanks for the link too! 👍

Nicely captured!

I think it must have been something like that; if you saw no belts on Jupiter, something was seriously amiss!

Could you see the two equatorial bands on Jupiter?

Well so far I haven’t found another 4” I would rather have bought for the money (I have the Altair Astro version, it also comes branded as Technosky and TS). The Askar 103 triplet does look incredibly good value, and has a tube that can be shortened for using binoviewers without a GPC, so I would definitely have shortlisetd that if it was available at the time, not sure whether I would have forked out the extra though. I’m sure there are other interesting alternatives out there, like this one which, at F11 with FPL53 glass, presents the possibility of even better solar system views than the F7 Starfield, but at the cost of being more unwieldy: https://www.altairastro.com/altair-planeta-101mm-apo-refractor-telescope-13522-p.asp

Sorry to hear this @powerlord - hang in there and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It’s a very common problem and my experience is that it’s rarely permanent, and people find something to inspire them to go out again. I am also going through exactly the same luck of mojo - I decided to have a six month break from work last September and one of my key goals was to do more observing - well strangely I have done hardly any observing during my time off and have had no desire to go out on the rare clear night. Just don’t know why. But I’m pretty sure my mojo will return and I’m sure yours will.

I’ve just cleaned some eyepieces which were used during an outreach session last night (people must have really greasy eyelashes!). Whilst checking my other eyepieces in the case I noticed my 38mm Panaview had three or four spots of fungus on the outer edge. After cleaning with Baader Wonder Fluid, the fungus is gone, but there are areas which look like water marks which cannot be removed - I am assuming this is permanent damage to the coating? Interestingly the ‘watermarks’ appear more widespread than the original fungus so I’m wondering if some of the fungus was not visible? I’m not bothered, I’m pretty sure there will be no impact to the views and it’s a cheap eyepiece anyway, but just wondering what people think. PS: I don’t normally remove lenses, but the fungus was creeping under the retaining ring.

I’ve just cleaned some eyepieces which were used during an outreach session last night (people must have really greasy eyelashes!). Whilst checking my other eyepieces in the case I noticed my 38mm Panaview had three or four spots of fungus on the outer edge. After cleaning with Baader Wonder Fluid, the fungus is gone, but there are areas which look like water marks which cannot be removed - I am assuming this is permanent damage to the coating? Interestingly the ‘watermarks’ appear more widespread than the original fungus so I’m wondering if some of the fungus was not visible? I’m not bothered, I’m pretty sure there will be no impact to the views and it’s a cheap eyepiece anyway, but just wondering what people think.

How very interesting. I assume this requires fairly accurate tracking to work well. I wonder how ‘real time’ the stacking is - I think it would need to be very fast, of the order of a second or less to recreate that feeling of visual observing and make it worth while going to the effort of squinting through an eyepiece. Even then I assume it takes many stacks to reveal dimmer objects. Not sure about being a replacement for visual eyepiece observing, or a competitor to Night Vision (though hopefully cheaper), but I can see the benefits of the eyepiece view to help quickly setup for some quick and dirty imaging. Very interested to see what they have come up with as Unistellar have ditched the electronic eyepiece on their scopes I think. I wonder what the patent is for.

I bought this very scope in order to cannibalise the Starsense unit (which is fantastic by the way). The tripod and mount are next to useless, but the F10 achro optics are actually pretty good, with a passable focuser and RACI diagonal. It’s mostly plastic but very lightweight. Before I removed the Starsense, I mounted the scope on a decent mount and had a nice time using the Starsense app to guide me to various DSOs and doubles. The Starsense now sits on my 102ED but I have kept the 70mm OTA for lending to friends.

Very nice Alan, the OO looks particularly good on that mount

I only had a few hours of hazy skies one evening out of three, but still managed to see some good things, mostly through my neighbours' enormous dobsonians.

Lovely sketches. 👍

Interesting post @John, and a very useful diagram for clarifying the terminology. I looked back through my observing log and my notes say with my 102ED at 320x the pair was resolved (peanut shaped) and occasionally a clear split in moments of clarity. Hmmm. On an previous occasion with my 150PL at 240x it was clearly split although it came and went with the seeing. In my limited experience, the gap is usually very distinct, it’s either there or it isn’t, but I do wonder whether with these dimmer pairs at the limit of resolution, whether there might be an optical illusion at play - looking at Nick’s diagrams you might be led to that conclusion.

These scopes have a helical (twist) focuser, so there is no lock. If the struts/trusses are extended all the way and locked into place, then there shouldn’t be a problem. Can you see any features of the moon at all? Does it look almost in focus or is it just a brightness filling the eyepiece? Have you managed to see anything with the scope yet? I would also suggest trying to look at a distant object like a tree during the day (as mentioned please avoid sun!). My only other other thought is that the mirror is massively out if collimation, meaning you might struggle to see anything at all.

It’s a tricky decision isn’t it? Last autumn I started off with plans to take both a manual mount and a goto mount with at least three scopes (plus binoculars), as I had a friend coming. In the end though I felt I didn’t need the hassle of electronics and it probably wouldn’t be clear anyway, so I simplified and took the Skytee with my 102ED on one side and the C8 on the other. I probably ended up using the 102ED most of the time in the end. This spring I feel I will need the aperture of the 8” for all those galaxies, so I will probably take the same setup again. 👍

Very true. You can be sketching away and the mount will be saying "relax, take your time, no rush, Jupiter will still be there when you get back to the eyepiece". Must surely make for a more relaxing experience and better results. Another plus for EQs not always mentioned is their ability to observe at/near the zenith, which is often where the best atmospheric conditions lie. Not always comfortable with a frac though.

No it was my bad, I wasn’t thinking.

@quasar117 AZ4 head for sale if of interest