RobertI

Great to hear about your first light and welcome to the club! Your experience quite similar to my first views - doubles and clusters amazing, planets awesome, faint fuzzies a bit "meh". But actually it's my main scope at present due to its convenience, and the lack of aperture hasn't stopped me seeking out those faint fuzzies anyway, and with its super contrast, its actually better on fuzzies than you would think, especially with narrowband filters. I got some binoviewers for planetary, lunar and solar and have been amazed by what extra you can see and how much more enjoyable the experience is. 

2 hours ago, Sunshine said:

It's been weeks that I have been obsessing over a larger refractor, reflector, refractioner! something to buy just because I have the money in my pocket constantly tormenting me!. Making it seem like I should not be happy with what I have, robbing me of sleep time as I pondered. It is horrible, my wife would be calling my attention and I would have the thousand yard stare, lost in thought. I've had it with this disease which makes me want bigger and better so i decided gather myself and allow myself to realize that my refractor is perfectly good for my lifestyle and so too is my dob. In that moment of soul searching I realized how much I miss H-alpha and how I regret having stupidly  sold my Lunt60 for a large dob which I barely touched because it was so big. You may be able to guess where I am going with this, I put the deposit down for a Lunt60PT, It will complete my astro yearnings to have a refractor for doubles, a dob for fuzzies, and a Lunt for solar, the trifecta. If I ever contact any of you again, Inquiring about this or that reflector/refractor please slap me, give it your best and I'll turn the other cheek. It feels as though a huge weight has been lifted from my conscious, I can sleep tonight, Aww who am I kidding?! they tell me it will be three months for delivery, OH GOD! now I wait in agony!.

If you're like me, and find it hard to sell stuff, then buying a new scope is a big deal, even if you can afford it. By adding yet another scope to the collection there's always the risk it will make your observing less enjoyable by making it more complicated. A dedicated solar scope sounds like a fine plan though and a nice complement to your night time arsenal. 

Some great advice above. Once you’ve found them, you’ll be seeing them all the time. Don’t forget M35 in Gemini. If you extend the line from M38, M37 and M36, you eventually get to M35. If you have good eyes and a reasonably dark sky, you might spot its hazy companion cluster NGC2158. 

Excellent, something a bit different, looking forward to seeing it!  In house premium optics by the look of it. Is it a doublet or triplet?  

I was out last night (see separate report) with the goal of observing objects in Cancer. I had a pre-planned list and it worked really well. Except....... because I was exploring a single constellation, with a variety of object types, I was switching eyepieces quite frequently. 10mm and 17mm for clusters, and zoom with/without barlow for double and carbon stars. The result was that I dropped an eyepiece - always the danger when 'fiddling'. The alternative is to stick to an object type (eg: open clusters), and choose a single appropriate eyepiece (eg: medium power or zoom), cruising multiple constellations for that object type if required, but this is a bit more difficult to plan, in my opinion.

When Leo is better placed, I can have the best of both worlds, so many galaxies in one constellation!

What are people's thoughts? How do you observe?

Jupiter

I set up the 102ED on the AZ4 before dinner, and had a squint at Jupiter. The GRS was visible, but not immediately due to poor seeing (as always!). I invited my 8 year old to have a look at Jupiter through the binoviewer. Amazingly he immediately said, "I can see a spot at the bottom", and when he described it, it was in exactly the right place below one of the EQ belts. Young eyes I guess!

Cancer

I went out again later for the main event - a pre-planned tour around Cancer. Despite the dew-band for the objective failing (broken I think - the cable got hot but the band didn't) and me dropping my new Morpheus eyepiece onto concrete (minimal damage thankfully, thanks to a niftily placed foot), it was an ok session.

• M44 - the showpiece, large and spectacular at low power.
• M67 - an open cluster with around twenty stars forming some interesting swirls and loops
• Tegmine - A triple with the closest pair being 1.1" apart, this was a real challenge in the non-ideal conditions (and manual AZ4 mount). At my maximum mag of 320x, most of the time it was just resolved (peanut shaped) but some of the time it was clearly split (gap in between). 
• Struve 1245 - a nice multiple system, easily split
• X Cancri - a lovely, bright, deep orange carbon star. Using the zoom was interesting on this one, the colour seemed better at some magnitudes than others - I think part of this is getting enough "white" stars in the FOV to  really highlight the red colour. 
• Iota Cancri - the "winter Alberio", lived up to it's name with a yellow primary and seemingly blue secondary, truly spectacular.
• NGC2775/2749 - a couple of bright galaxies, unfortunately the objective was well and truly dewed by this point, so I shall have to leave these beauties for another time. 

Surprising how much this faint constellation has to offer.  

1 hour ago, Glenbo said:

Well after lots of pondering and almost buying a beautiful used Orion EON 120 until coming to my senses & realizing that my AVX mount would be taxed to handle it for astrophotography I bought  the TS OPTICS PHOTO LINE 102 APO. Thank you for all of your good advice based on user experience i, it was pretty obvious that everyone preferred  the variation that I bought. I am excited plus I got a good deal from Telescope Service on a showroom demo. 😀

Good choice, enjoy!

Best of luck Stu, hope you finally catch the flame, 🤞

First session in a while. Beautifully transparent, a fair amount of sky glow and wobbly seeing. Out with the 102ED plus 17.5mm Morpheus plus dew straps. Sub-zero temps but ski jacket, thermals and warm boots kept me toasty for the whole 90 minutes. My main goal was to try out my new Hb filter. After thoroughly dark adapting and using an observing hood, I spent a good thirty minutes trying to see the Horsehead. A bit ambitious perhaps, but I was actually quite pleased, although I was not close to seeing it, there was distinct nebulosity in the right area and in the right direction, which was not visible in any other filters. I have to confess, I was hallucinating seeing it at times! I learned the starfield well and have hopefully taken my first step on the quest for the HH. I’ll try with the 8” sometime. Sigma Orionis looked lovely nearby and I was surprised to see the faint fourth member at just x40 mag. Seeing was too awful for planetary or challenging doubles, so I scanned for some old favourite “two in a view”. M97 was clearly seen, and much better with the OIII and UHC filters, but no sign of nearby M108 in the low murk. Higher up in the darker skies, M81 and M82 were spectacular and benefitted from increased magnification, M82 especially so. M35 and its small companion cluster looked wonderful. The Morpheus is such a lovely eyepiece, so immersive and foible-free, made observing a joy. Nice to be out again. 

10 hours ago, josefk said:

3rd light on the Takahashi tonight. I'd kept it cool all day after last nights session so it was "sharp as you like" straight after taking this picture and returned fabulous view of Jupiter at 200x using a Tak 5mm LE. Mars thirty minutes later with the same eyepiece was equally fabulous.

Interestingly my two best views of Jupiter this past 6 months have both been in transitional skies. This evening in twilight and back in August 2022 in the dawn.

Wonderful pic. With your 4x4 it really looks like you were on a “Sky Safari”! 

Really very sad to hear this news. John was a big presence on this forum - knowledgeable, humorous and always hit the right tone with his posts. You’d never see John getting involved in arguments, he was all about the astronomy. We will all miss him.

Condolences to you and you family @thunderbird02 and thank you for taking the time to let us know. 

What a wonderful scope, love Newts and that’s a beaut. Interesting focuser, does this ‘transverse’ design have any advantages over the traditional design? 

1 hour ago, Moonlit Night said:

It works extremely well on the rock solid and extremely economical AZ4 btw

Agreed, it’s a brilliant match, almost like the AZ4 was made for a 4” F7 scope. The sturdiness is really helped by the excellent 1.75” tripod. Regularly use at x180 for viewing planets and it’s solid and nice to push around. And a lot lighter than my Skytee + 2” tripod too. 

A fascinating history for this scope, very interesting read. I think the majority of the value of this scope is probably in its provenance! 

8 hours ago, F15Rules said:

hate to quote Jeremy, but that Objective on Foxy the Vixen looks entirely, er, lickable!!

Has anyone tried this method  to clean their objectives? In some countries, if you get grit in your eye, you go to visit your local ‘doctor’ who will probe your eyeball with their tongue until they find the offending particle and then slurp it out. Apparently a very effective method. 😆😆

 Nice comparison Nigella. I wonder what amateurs will be capable of in another 100 years? Will the concept of telescopes and cameras seem rather quaint!

Truly amazing. 👍

The first one is a very popular scope on this forum, also available branded as Altair Astro, Tecnosky and Starfield. I have the Altair Astro version and have been very happy with it, its high power planetary and lunar capabilities have been a revelation. Perhaps lacking in aperture for deep sky, but not sure the 110 would show a huge amount more. The 102ED is now my main observing scope. I have no experience of the 110 and have never done a direct comparison, so I am doubtless biased towards the 102 .🙂

Great observing session, some nice objects there. If you loved what you saw, then you have a lot more to look forward to. Yes I agree totally about the Hyades looking like the Predator laser pointer! 

Looks like you got it Phil, amazing, we’ll done!! 🥳 It’s great to know it can be seen in a smaller scope, and will encourage me to keep trying ….I shall continue to wait for that rare night of good seeing. 

Hi, I’m a bit confused, why do you want to put the Skywatcher lens in the Helios tube? You’d have to shorten the tube considerably I think and the Skywatcher objective lens would not perform any better. Have I missed something? 

Nice Reggie! 

I have a spare slot on my visual filter wheel, the consensus from fellow SGL’ers was that an Hb could be fun, looking forward to finding out…..

3 hours ago, Stu said:

It is not pristine by any means, and there is definitely some stuff between the two lens elements

I'm afraid it's ruined Stu, if you want to give it to me I might be able to find a use for it. 🤭 Seriously though, good job, a clean lens is a thing of beauty.

I have to confess a similar frustration to you Dave - even when I decide to give the moon a go, it still sometimes frustrates by being too low or too full! And it seems to hang around for so long. But when I got my binoviewers, I was blown away by the views of the moon and it did trigger an awakening of interest - I started to track down some more challenging or unusual features like domes. But my interest has waned again. I think the key for me is to do some proper planning, and a good book or lunar resource can really help - looks like you've found a goodun'. I found a Lunar 100 list ordered by lunar day which also refers to Rukl charts which happen to be in my Colins Concise Guide to Moon and Mars, so that should help me plan. I'd also like a nice lunar map for my wall, to remind me it's there!

We can do this together Dave! 😄