RobertI

3 hours ago, MalcolmM said:

I have an FS60CB permanently setup on a photo tripod with fluid video head in the house. 

…..plus a teeny tiny observing chair.  🙂

Over the course of many years I’ve acquired the following scopes for the following reasons:

- Celestron C8 - had always been my dream scope since a teenager

- Zenithstar66 - I wanted a ‘super finder’ for the C8

- Megrez72 - Because I wanted a 2” focuser for some imaging  

- Tal100RS - because @Chriswas selling one nearby and I thought “why not?”

- RC6 for EAA

- Heritage 130P - because at £90 used, it was just so much bang for the buck!

- 150PL because I wanted to re-live the experience of my first ever scope I had as a teenager 

- 102ED because I wanted to see what a 4” refractor with FPL53 glass could do - a lot, it turns out. 

I still have them all except the Megrez72 which I immediately regretted selling.

They all get used for certain objects or in specific situations or sometimes just for a change. 🙂
 

Enjoy your gear! Don’t be a stranger though. 😉

2 hours ago, Telescope40 said:

Hello all.  After Dave @F15Rules flagged up a Tak Fs 128 a couple of weeks ago and it's now mine, here is another Tak I've come across.  The scope has no link to myself in any way but looks rather good along with the mount. 

Fill you boots.   John 

Takahashi Telescope FS102 APOCHROMATIC Fluorite Doublet. Fine condition | eBay

When you look at an ad for a superb scope like that, and then you see that it is just 10 miles away, you wonder whether the astronomy gods are trying to tell you something. I shall sit here and await further revelation from above ........

4 minutes ago, HollyHound said:

Oh and @FLO have one on offer if it is of interest… https://www.firstlightoptics.com/offers/offer_stellamira-80mm-ed-f10-refractor-telescope-with-rp-focuser_329571.html

That’s a very nice discount!

The Stella Mira 80mm is a beautiful high quality scope with ED glass and it will excel on moon, planets, solar and doubles. For deep sky I would say you would miss the extra aperture of the 120 but downside of your scope is I believe it’s an achromat so you get purple haloes on bright objects and miss out of very fine detail on planets and moon.   I did consider the 80mm Stella Mira when I was looking for a more premium refractor, and i really wanted it, but decided I needed a bit more aperture and ended up with a 102ED F7 refractor, although I also have an 8” SCT for fainter stuff. Do you already have an AZ-GTI? Does it handle the weight of the 120 ok? 

You might find this video of interest…

Sounds like an awful injury Alan, made my eyes water just reading it! Really super image.  

Hi and welcome to SGL! 🙂 For visual observing I would say you have a great selection of gear there and I wouldn’t be inclined to rush out and change anything until you have done a lot more observing and decided what you really love looking at. For imaging the 80mm plus AVX would be great but sounds like you are after a lighter weight mount? I will leave others to comment on this as I am not an imager, and I expect there may be lots more questions coming your way about what you want to achieve!

1 hour ago, Carbon Brush said:

It is so much easier and cheaper to build more wind turbines, harness tides, put solar panels on everything, etc.

Agreed, and there are so many new technologies in advanced stages of development, I seriously doubt this will get off the ground (excuse the pun) in the short term. Never say never, but not soon. 

This thing will be 6km long!! And it’s helix shaped so a part of it will always be reflecting the sun. And it’s in geostationary orbit over the UK so it will always be visible. Quick calculation, I reckon it will appear 35” in diameter in the sky, which is about half the size of the ISS. So I think we can expect it to look like a bright star of around magnitude -2 or -3 permanently in the night sky in the UK and surrounds. 

Yes I know what you mean. My 102ED rides on an AZ4 which is an awful lot lighter than my Skytee, but still no lightweight, so need to lug out scope and mount separately. Plus I need a chair when observing, so takes a little while to get sorted. My 66mm frac on a mini-giro plus photo tripod is ‘one hand’ portable, but again needs a chair and doesn’t really cut it on DSOs for me unless it is very dark, so sometimes limited. My best G&G setup is my Heritage 130P on the mini-giro. Plenty of light gathering, pick up with one hand and you can observe standing up, so no chair required! Stored in garage, no cooling needed. It’s not got the build quality of my fracs, but sometimes I get a good feeling from seeing challenging DSOs with such a budget setup. 🙂

Fascinating. Look forward to seeing the results. 👍

8 hours ago, bosun21 said:

I have found that filters are of little to no use when galaxies are concerned and prefer viewing them without. On the odd occasion a Baader neodymium skyglow can help 

Yes it makes sense, I know that there is no logical reason that a filter should help with galaxies unless there is filterable sky glow, and in theory a filter would actually remove the fainter galaxy detail. I was viewing M33 with various filters last night to try and find NGC952 (I couldn’t). It did darken the sky and improve the aesthetics of the Galaxy as a whole, but I cannot say it made a difference to the discernible detail, which is what you would expect I guess. The UHCE was the best and it did make me think that perhaps a CLS would be worth a try, but also the Skyglow might help on certain nights. I think there is a bit of psychology going on here too, when you have experienced how well narrowband filters work with some emission targets you can’t help thinking you are seeing the same result on all faint fuzzies,  but clearly you don’t. All of this reinforced that the best way to reduce sky brightness without affecting the target is to go to a dark site. 🙂

2 hours ago, Astro_Dad said:

My final DSO of the evening was NGC 1664.

I’ll have to track this one down. 🙂

1 minute ago, Stardust1 said:

Rob, this is very interesting thread. I'm thinking of getting a filter wheel as well for visual. Are you using 2" or 1.25" filters? 

I’m using 1.25” filters. So far it’s working well, it’s nice to have the filters ready to try and the filter wheel sits permanently on the diagonal, but gets removed when I use BVs for planets/ lunar. The filter wheel is very well made. 

Yes I think you’re right about the LED lighting. The only other thing is that I believe sky glow emits in a fairly narrow band, which might be filterable, but I don’t know how much of my intermittent bright skies is due to sky glow and how much is just high level mist/murk. Since posting the above I have been thinking that perhaps the Hb might be worth a go…..

Not sure where to post this - hopefully this section is ok. I recently treated myself to a ZWO manual 5 position filter wheel to allow me to switch between filters when viewing DSOs. It's actually quite a lot of fun switching between the filters for certain objects. Currently I have installed the following filters (see also graph screenshots):

• Astronomik UHC - Good all purpose narrowband filter for emission nebulae
• Astronomik OIII - 'Line' filter, great for certain emission nebulae and for "blinking" to find those elusive planetaries 
• Astronomik UHCE - Designed for smaller apertures, higher transmission, getting closer to a 'broadband' LPR filter, good for comet ion tails due to carbon line (apparently)

I'm primarily using it with the 102ED at the moment but could easily switch to the C8.

I leave one slot empty for normal viewing, so the question is what filter could I put in the fifth slot? I have thought about a blue filter for planets or a neutral density filter for the moon, but most of my lunar/planetary is done with bino-viewers and I'm pretty happy with the unfiltered views (plus wouldn't reach focus with filter wheel), so I'm thinking of possibly a really good light pollution / skyglow filter for DSOs. Most of my light pollution is LED these days so not sure what would work. Is there anything that might make a difference for galaxies and reflection nebs? I suspect not. Would a Neodymium do anything more than my existing filters? 

Any thoughts/advice appreciated. 

EDIT: I tried the UHCE on M33 the other day under fairly bright skies - it darkened the background and made the view a bit more appealing, but didn't reveal anything extra, but also didn't seem to lose anything. 

38 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

M31 / M32 / M110 is another obvious target and after seeing some wonderful views of these galaxies with EEVA I decided to check out the visual view again. While the Skymax 127 is too narrow field for M31, the view has always been better visually with this scope than with the Photoline 72. I could see the centre of M31 easily, but it was just a bright smudge and much smaller than the full extent of the galaxy, perhaps only 0.1° compared with the 3.5° that is its full extent. M32 was clearly visible on the edge of the field of view but I could not find / see M110 even after looking for it via Stellarium.

The session has reminded me what little can be seen visually compared to EEVA and how hard it is to be sure that I am pointing at a target without plate solving.

Yes EAA is fabulous for galaxies - I tend to think of spring as my "EAA season"! It is amazing though what a dark sky can do to enhance galaxies visually - M33 was incredibly luminous from the dark skies of Kelling Heath one year.

On 28/10/2022 at 13:49, ollypenrice said:

Since the imaging is now done with a robotic setup based here, I've decided on a marriage between our 14 inch Meade SCT tube assembly and our venerable Mesu 200 mount, to have a great visual observing setup. The LX200 Alt-Az mount is handy but wobbly and has now started acting the goat electronically. It's over 20 years old and I think that, even if I fixed it this time, it would most likely act up again. This is no good in my circumstances. Stuff has to work. The Mesu observatory is small for visual but the SCT is nice and short. We'll lose the convenience of alt-az but gain the convenience of a Moonlite Crayford which we can't use on the fork mount for fear of collision.

So, Mesu, do you take this 14 inch SCT to be your lawful wedded wife?

We'll find out when the Losmandy dovetail for the Meade arrives and I've de-forked it. (Nearly 300 euros for a dovetail? Better than over 1,100 euros for two tube rings. Not a misprint!)

Olly

That sounds like a wonderful visual setup Olly. 👍

Horrible. Just horrible. It must have been horrific to see (and hear) your beloved scope mangled and bent. What a sad end to a wonderful instrument. Thanks for sharing your story and glad that at least you are getting a payout and can replace it. I suppose you could argue that it was better that it was “written off” than just a bit scratched or dented. I had an apo fall five feet into carpet - it seemed ok, but I never had confidence in the scope after that, I was always looking for signs of misalignment or damage. 

Thanks for the heads up. I saw Mars and M1 (Crab Nebula) in the same field of view recently, which was a nice surprise an unusual juxtaposition. I’ll look out for the Saturns. 

On 27/10/2022 at 00:15, Marki said:

I've finished my brief session with a massive grin and I feel lighter and happier than I have done for months.

Yes I find observing has a similar effect on me. I was out very briefly last night, conditions were not great but it was very relaxing - the peace and quiet, my own space, no demands or complications, just me and Jupiter. 🙂 In fact when it finally clouded over I just sat there in the darkness with a cuppa enjoying the peace and quiet. 😂

Awesome scope, congratulations. 🙂

I would personally stick with Newtonians or mirror scopes for EAA, although I know ED scopes are very capable. I have used an RC6 aggressively reduced to F4.5 to F5 and have had really nice results going very deep and nicely framing smaller galaxies with my Lodestar. Obviously collimation is needed but I don’t need do it very often in my RC6. I have been seriously considering a Skywatcher 150PDS F5 which wouldn’t need reducing or a 150P F4 and I think either would make great portable EAA scopes. I use a CG5 equatorial (EQ5 class) which seems to work fine for focal lengths of 700mm and can do up to a minute if needed (accepting the occasional trailing sub). 
 

I think a really nice setup would be a 150PDS on a Celestron AVX mount. You can use Celestron’s ‘Sky Align’ feature which allows aligning on any three bright stars - makes that part easier I think. It also provides support for polar alignment I believe. You also get an upgrade path to a Starsense for auto aligning in future. Plenty of folk use plate solving but I’m not there yet. I guess you’d need a coma corrector with your bigger chip?  

The Celestron NexStar 6SE is a good alternative for EAA with different strengths and weaknesses - no polar alignment hassle, but tracking not in the same league as the AVX I would say and scope is trickier to get reduced down to F5 effectively for your large chip.  

As an aside I have been experimenting with a 66mm F4.8 refractor on a Sky Prodigy altaz mount for quick wide field views, and to give me my EAA ‘fix’. It works for exposures of up to 15 seconds, and is good for widefield, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘serious’ EAA setup, especially the mount.

1 hour ago, Nyctimene said:

Most important are dark skies - I'd guess, SQM-L 21+/NELM 5.8 or better, and good transparency (low air humidity, no  haze, dust or pollen). Under these conditions, it's not difficult to spot even with 4" scopes. Keep your optics free from fogging up, especially the (low-power) eyepiece, and cover your head with an observing hood or dark cloth (watch out! - increases eyepiece fogging). No filters. If you think, you've spotted the nebula, you can confirm your finding by comparing both sides of "Ally's braid" - that's the pretty star chain, extending from Alcyone to the S. The eastern side of the star chain is completely clear and dark, without a trace of nebulosity, whereas the W side will be filled with the roughly trapezoidal shaped/irregular Merope nebula. Chances are, that you have already spotted it:

That's right; all the bright Pleiade's members are embedded in reflection nebulas. The Merope nebula is just the brightest one.

Give it a go, and let us know!

Clear skies

Stephan

Thanks Stephan, that’s really useful, I didn’t know about Ally’s Braid either! One of my problems is I think I have developed some age related ‘haze’ in my eyes so every bright star shows some haze, so what I need is to be able to see something definitive - you’re description plus the ‘trapezoidal’ shape might just do it. I also found the sketch below made by someone with modest refractors and ok skies - is this a reasonable expectation do you think?