RobertI

It’s a tough one to get right. The advice was always to start with binoculars, but more recently even this advice has been questioned by some. Whenever anyone asks me now, I simply lend them my Heritage 130P and I generally find out what they are REALLY are interested in. The most recent time I did this with a friend who expressed an interest, it turned out all he wanted to do was take a snap of the moon. The concept of looking for faint fuzzies was not something he was aware of… or interested in. 

Currently on holiday in Turkey, I took the 10x50s to a deserted beach cabana to observe the parts of Sagittarius I rarely get to see. Quite a lot of nearby light pollution but the skies were actually really dark. Highlights included the Lagoon, Triffid, Swan and Eagle Nebulae. M22 globular was a large bright glow and I fancied I could almost resolve some stars - oh for a telescope! The Sagittarius star cloud was spectacular, made more evident by some bright stars scattered around it, making its boundaries seem distinct. Ptolemy’s cluster was large, bright and open, seemingly made for binoculars, shaped like a mini Cepheus to my eyes. Numerous open clusters abounded. Tomorrow I might try Scorpius. It’s strange to see Polaris so low in the sky. 
 

3 minutes ago, rojay said:

Great stuff, I hope that's not marker pen on the carpet for the asteroid belt!

Fortunately not, it’s a string of magnetic beads! 🙂

Just had fun recreating the solar system using marbles with my eight year old son. The distances from the sun are accurate relative to each other, but the planetary diameters are not due to limited range of marbles! 

5 hours ago, John said:

Great report Rob - wish it was like that here tonight !

Are the constellation binoculars the Vixen 2.1 x 42's ? 

Thanks John. They are actually a home made pair using two Nikon Teleconverters cable tied together!! They appear to produce around 2x magnification. It would be nice to have a ‘proper’ pair though. 

You know it’s a transparent night when you walk into the back garden and instantly see the Milky Way shining across the sky. Too good to miss, out came the constellation binos and the 10x50s for a quick view. The constellation binos were a real winner tonight, showing amazing colour and contrast on some real standouts objects:

• The line of sight triple Omicron 1 Cygni, with the bright orange A component and the seemingly green C component making a lovely pairing, and the faint B component just visible
• Omicron 2 Cygni nearby was an even deeper orange.
• The orange Alpha Vulpeculae (Anser) and its companion made another colourful line of sight double. 
• The coat hanger, just visible through the constellation binos but spectacular through the 10x50s
• Amazingly, the North America nebula was very clear through the constellation bins, with the basic shape visible and “the wall “ very apparent, but the Gulf of Mexico could not be seen. I believe the constellation bins were better than the 10x50s for the NA neb tonight.
• M39 very striking. 

It’s amazing how the constellation binoculars give a really different perspective on the sky, revealing new asterisms and arrangements not visible with the naked eye and not apparent with the narrower field of the 10x50s.

I felt the transparency had deteriorated by the end of the 30 minute session, so I think I lucked in. Two night’s observing in a row, can’t be bad. 🙂

Good catch John, perseverance paid off. 👍

Beautiful clear skies here tonight, so I had a tour around the globulars and doubles of Hercules with the 102ED. Couldn’t resist getting out the C8 with binoviewers at 170x for some high res close ups of M13 and M92 - I wasn’t disappointed - views were spectacular. Also checked out M57 which looked huge with the C8+BV combo - amazing. Finished up with the rising Saturn - wobbly but plenty of detail - looking forward to the autumn. 🙂

Superb, have a great time and some clear skies. 🙂

All major astro purchases start with “just a look”! 😆 Good luck resisting the temptation. 

Looking forward to this Stu. I was all set to do a comparison between my Celestron 70mm F10 ex-Starsense Achro and my 66mm F6 ED, but haven’t managed it yet. I was quite impressed with first light with 70mm though, I managed to see some small bright planetaries, easily see M81/82 and split some close doubles. Can’t ask for much more from a small cheap achro with a plastic tube.  

1 hour ago, YogSothoth said:

OK thanks and thought that might be the case. Replacing the saddles with ADM saddles adds another £180 to the price 

The early saddles of the Skytee were not fit for purpose. The issue was the poor quality knob which didn’t thread securely to the bolt of the saddle and was made of soft alloy. I replaced the knobs with higher quality ones and the saddles became perfectly usable, although by that point I had moved them to a different mount. The knobs provided on the current mount saddles look different to the originals so I would hope they are much better and have resolved the issue (perhaps others can advise). FWIW the ADMs saddles are top notch, and a good investment if you have heavier scopes (say 6 kg+) but if you are only mounting lighter scopes then there are cheaper good quality saddles available. 

Excellent! An interesting selection of objects. IC1396 looks tough, especially from my skies. 

36 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

I'll go for a pair of Celestron 20x70's, or similar. If you think that's a poor choice then please let me know thanks Rob!

I guess it depends on exactly what you want to get from bins, the little 2x constellation binoculars are pocket sized fun but limited, 10x50s will reveal huge amount of stuff, and can be handheld, and also used for everyday use, anything bigger or more powerful will need mounting in some form so less grab and go.

Why not start a new thread in the binocular section to get some further thoughts and advice? Good luck! 🙂👍

4 hours ago, wesdon1 said:

@RobertI May I ask, Rob, are you a school teacher or university professor? The reason I ask is you dealt with the weather problem so constructively and positively, unlike myself ( I'm a builder! LOL ) who just starts whining and complaining! LOL.

I've wanted to buy Bino's for a while, so after reading this i'm going to finally take the plunge! Thanks Rob!

Thank you for your kind words, I wish I had the dedication of a school teacher or the intellect of a university professor! I do have some patience though and that helps. 🙂 I’m so glad you are taking the plunge with binoculars, get a good pair and you will have an observing companion for life. 

I guess the other option is the Celestron Starsense 200mm dob - it’s £150 more than the StellaLyra and you don’t get a dual speed focuser, but the the Starsense is fab in my opinion.

1 hour ago, Richard N said:

I’m a doubles fan too. I find that not everyone “gets” them. I was chatting to our gardener this week. I mentioned that I had set some pads in the lawn for my tripod. This prompted a discussion about astronomy. He turned out to be very knowledgable and even suggested a double that I hadn’t observed yet (Rigel). Maybe there are more doubles fans than I thought?

Sounds like your gardener is pretty knowledgeable! Yes I know what you mean about people not ‘getting’ doubles, especially beginners. Perhaps they are an acquired taste. 🙂

Very nice sketches, a good rendition of what I saw, I like the format too. I’ve only tried to estimate the colour and separation but I can see how doing brightness and position angle would encourage being longer at the eyepiece. I try to estimate PA when observing very faint/close doubles to eliminate any doubt! Thanks for posting the sketches.

Lovely images Reggie, nicely done. 🙂

2 minutes ago, josefk said:

I'm a fair way through that AL doubles list @RobertI - i've really enjoyed it/am really enjoying it. You have to sketch them for the pin badge if that kind of thing floats your boat. I'm childish - i want the pin badge 🙂. TBH having to sketch them (and make certain specific notes) has been an excellent learning experience and has improved my observing discipline for doubles no end.

Interesting to hear. I have occasionally tried a doubles sketch, but don’t think I’ve got the right technique! Feel free to include any sketches of the above doubles, it would be interesting to see, and might bring my descriptions to life a bit.  

1 minute ago, Ratlet said:

It's always weird when you try to explain nice doubles.  I'm not sure what the criteria is but some of them just look amazing!  I'll need to check these out.  Next purchase is going to be a Starsense and hoping to get more doubles in with it.

 

Great report and delighted you got some clear skies.

Totally agree! It’s hard to make the descriptions interesting, some definitely have colour, usually yellow or pale orange, occasionally blue white, but the dimmer secondaries are hard to identify the colours. I have been trying to estimate the separations and have been within 20-30% but not sure that makes for interesting reading! 

The rare sight of a clear sky demands some observing, even under bright moon. 102ED plus Baader zoom (30-90x) plus Starsense atop the AZ4 made for some pleasant double viewing. Using the Astronomical League’s list of top 100 doubles in Sky Safari led to me to some really pretty doubles in Cepheus, Cassiopeia and Bootes. They were all very nice to look at, but two stood out:  the first was HR8281 embedded in the Elephant Trunk nebula (which I couldn’t see!) - this is a lovely triple, with a yellow primary and a dimmer secondary either side around 8” away, one seems bluish and the other greenish (yes I know green stars don’t exist!). The other was actually two doubles in the same field of view, Kappa Bootis and Iota Bootis, just in the same FOV at 90x but much better at lower magnification. 

I pretty much exclusively binoview for moon, sun and planets, it’s been a game changer for me, at least with the scopes that can take it. It’s much easier to stay at the eyepiece(s) for long periods to reveal the detail. For deep sky? Yes and no, at least with my BVs. Brighter stars have a “speckled” quality, so doubles not so nice as cyclops, although the splitting power seems the same. Lower power views of galaxies and nebulae are fine, but I feel less contrast than cyclops, perhaps due to the light loss through all those prisms. Globulars and open clusters are great and probably the best DSOs for binoviewing in my opinion. Downsides for BV are I cannot get lower than around 70x mag due to long light path, restricted clear aperture, etc. I have looked at ways to achieve much lower power but it seems expensive. So for now it’s BVs for solar system and cyclops for DSOs. 
 

Nice Starsense setup Paul, I’m sure that will work perfectly. 👍 How do you find the 130PDS for visual? I’ve often thought about getting one to replace my Heritage 130 - I just love the size of the 130 F5 Newt, really underrated as a grab and go scope in my opinion and the 130PDS has the dual focuser too. It’s got a larger secondary than the H130 I think but I guess that is more than made up for by the better light protection and focuser?

I was out with my 102ED plus Starsense recently, and I actually managed without a finder at all, initial alignment was at the zoom’s lowest power, and then all fine from there. I did feel a bit ‘naked’ without a finder though! 😂 Like you I continue to be amazed by the Starsense app, and now I’ve enabled it in SkySafari, I can use my numerous preprepared observing lists to guide my observing sessions, and capture my observing notes too if I feel so inclined  

I must get hold of one of those orange adaptors…..

3 hours ago, bosun21 said:

The Starsense has a red display which I use at night. I feel that I also need to reduce the phone brightness to make it dim enough.

Yes, I did exactly that, I also set the iPhone colour scheme to red as the iPhone ‘soft button’ occasionally appears and would otherwise be a bright white. For doubles and brighter DSO it was fine. I would imagine that in a very dark site with serious dark adaption, it may be a different matter - not something I generally have to worry about though! 😆