RobertI

It is indeed a wonder star, which I haven’t caught yet this year. I remember my first view, actually not that long ago, when I saw a lovely double at low magnification, and as I slowly zoomed in a third component appeared - a wonderful way to discover it!

Sounds like you are after something with decent aperture, quick to set up and carry around the yard, ideally with something better than a red dot finder? I am a big fan of the 130-150mm F5 Newtonians for giving the best aperture in a lightweight package, especially the ones that don’t need collimating. I would suggest two options to think about: A 150P Newtonian on a goto mount - would remove the need for starhopping with a red dot finder (apart from initial alignment), but you need to spend extra on a powertank and cable. A 130P Newtonian on a manual AltAz mount - you can then use something like Astrohopper on your smartphone to find your targets These setups also have the advantage of being able to observe standing up, which removes the extra hassle of a chair, and is useful if you do quick ‘grab and go’ sessions. The Celestron Starsense Explorer technology is excellent , but I don’t like the flimsy tripods and mounts on them - the 8”-10” dobsonias are the best, but these will be too bulky for you by the sound of it.

Well done, sounds like you’re well on the way with your astro journey and that scope will serve you well (I have one myself). 🙂

Thanks John, I’ll have another more serious go this year. I think I may have to go to my local park to get away from the houses and get a better southern view, but even then I’m not sure I have the right scopes for the job, the 102ED being possibly too small and the C8 just not having good enough optics (“hairy stars”). Perhaps the 150PL? But I’ll re-acquaint with your excellent post to help me decide.

My most recent first light was with my 102ED around three years ago. It was significant as it was my first experience of a good quality medium sized apo, having used mainly mirrored scopes for years. First light was perhaps a bit underwhelming, but subsequent sessions revealed to me a lot about what the scope could do on different types of object, so the first light report was really just the start of an interesting journey of discovery. If conditions aren’t good for a first light report? I think I might still have posted to convey how I got on with the weight, length, focuser, cooling, etc.

Superb, well done! 👍 M82 can reveal some mottling on good nights so another reason to check up on them regularly. 🙂

Ha, yes the cigarette smoke! In my first job there were some heavy smokers in the office. I remember going into a meeting and I put my files down on the table near an ashtray and sent up a cloud of ash. For some reason everyone blamed me, rather than the people who had setting fire to pieces of paper all day!!

Great report of a very nice haul of DSOs. I think if you’ve caught M1 you’ll be able to see M81 and M82, trouble is they are in an area devoid of bright stars so it’s not easy to find them. You’ll get them. 🙂

What a great day out Alan, I must do the same sometime, they look really interesting. Last time I went shopping in Cambridge there was a shop full of various vintage computers, running classic games, which you could play for a modest fee. Pretty cool.

The Vaonis and Unistellar (not on your list) scopes led the ‘robot’ telescope revolution, and are relatively small startup companies. ZWO, who are a large company that have a long track record producing astro-imaging products, have obviously seen the potential and now come in with a product with similar capabilities, at a much lower price. So personally I would discount the Vaonis on price alone. I think if you are going to really get into the imaging of deep sky objects, then the larger aperture and longer focal length of the SeeStar will take you further along that journey than the Dwarf. I’ve been seriously tempted by a SeeStar myself. Here is a thread showing what can be achieved with the SeeStar: My opinion of course, others may see it differently.

The newsletter will be greatly missed, it’s been part of the amateur astronomy landscape for a long time. I hope Steve (@BinocularSky) remains active and continues to educate us all!

I may be way off here, but I think many of the stars in the picture have a similar but much fainter and smaller ‘glow’ - the only thing different about this star that I can see is that it is very red M class, but not sure why it would generate a significantly greater ‘glow’ than other stars in the frame?

Excellent Nick, welcome back.

I was using the WO 20mm eyepieces with the 1.6 GPC giving just over one degree FOV. I did let people know that they could adjust the inter-pupillary distance, but most people seemed happy with the way it was - I did adjust it for a couple of the younger visitors though. I think your average member of the public is not so bothered by perfect focus and inter-eyepiece distance as us fussy astronomers! I also suggested people remove glasses if they were struggling which seemed to help. What I did find is that people spent longer at the eyepiece with the BVs. Previously with a single eyepiece, people just tended to dip their eye to the eyepiece very briefly, too briefly, but with BVs people were really LOOKING. Definitely worked better than expected.

Another successful outreach event last night organized by the Dedham Vale Society, the third outreach session in a row with clear skies! This time the location was a field behind the Anchor Inn in Nayland. As it was solar system only due to the bright moon, I took my 102ED Starwave with binoviewers, and left the C8 behind. The use of BVs was a bit of an experiment and I was not sure how well it would work for outreach. The upshot was that the setup went down extremely well, with the low power views (57x) of the moon drawing gasps from many there, and I have to say seeing the full disc of the moon through BVs is quite something. Only a couple of people struggled with the BVs, and the workaround was to just close one eye! I think even a couple of the experienced astronomers became BV converts. Surprisingly, low power views of Jupiter and Saturn were also really nice through the BVs and much easier to manage on my manual setup. I’ve found that two eyed viewing makes everything look bigger anyway, so 57x seemed more like 80-100x in cyclops mode, so perhaps that’s why it worked. There was a good range of scopes there, including a CPC11 and 10” Newt for eyepiece viewing, and a 5” Newt and Askar lens showing real time images. It was a good couple of hours, despite the cold (frost on the scope by the end) and it was nice to meet with the gang and share our skies with around forty people. A hot meal in the pub afterwards was just the ticket.

Great report, glad you got some good seeing. 👍

Just had a brief session - full thermals were needed to battle the cold, but it was worth the effort as I didn’t feel chilly at all. The main purpose of the session was to work out what to take to tomorrow’s outreach session, with likely 40-50 people in attendance. Decided that the 102ED with binoviewers would work well with Luna, Jupiter and Saturn. That setup will give high powered views of 170x if the seeing allows, but also giving a low power 57x view which will frame the moon completely - when the moon is full this low power view is breathtaking through binoviewers and I am hoping to hear plenty of “Wows”! The seeing tonight was pants unfortunately.

Interesting article Jeremy. My experience has been that my 10x50s, 66mm APO and 100mm achro generate the most vivid star colours. In each case it’s the deep yellows, the oranges and reds that are most striking, but then I guess most colourful stars fall into this category. I can understand why the 100mm achro shows vivid colours - the lens gives everything a slightly warmer tint which I think would exaggerate the oranges and reds. Not so sure why the 66mm should be good in this regard, perhaps we are getting into the low ‘illumination’ (brightness) explanation of the article, or perhaps there is another factor at play here, that I often use the scope for low power views which might tend to concentrate colours. And the 10x50s - well they’re achromatic, low power and small aperture, and perhaps two eyes makes a difference too! It would be interesting to compare colours in my 102ED with and without binoviewers - I would expect the dimmer image and possible stereo vision of binoviewers to show more striking colours.

Mind slightly blown! 🤯 Looking at the slightly more modest 8” Newt, I wonder how it differs from their existing Quattro range, and why is it sporting the type of focuser you see on non-Synta scopes? The photo of the label is annoyingly blurry! Perhaps this is also an indication of the new styling and colour schemes of future Skywatcher scopes.

That’s because it’s expanding John. 😉 Well done on cracking the crab Kevin. Definitely something that seems to have become more tricky over the years as skies deteriorate. Interestingly as some others have said, it seemed bigger than I remember during a recent observation. For me, it’s one of those objects that has very little of interest to actually observe - no core, shape, colour, mottling , etc, just a grey oval smudge. Perhaps I’m just a poor observer!

Just watched the video, I can’t understand why the guy keeps “wobbling” the scope to show unsteady the mount and tripod are! 😆 Still at least the video is honest in showing what the scope can do in reality, and its limitations.

Certainly looks the part, but I am pretty sure it will be an achromat and the phone app will be a planetarium program which will get you in the rough vicinity of the target, rather than the plate-solving tech you get with the Celestron Starsense Explorer. The mount looks solid enough though, with slow motion controls, can’t possibly be any worse than the Celestron! The 45 degree prism is a bit of a compromise, not very good for astronomy, but good for looking at birds in the garden, which is what most of these scopes end up being used for!

Do you already have a decent altaz mount or do you need to buy one? I‘m just wondering if it’s worth trying the FLT98 on a good altaz mount first to see how more useable the setup is, before splashing out on a new premium scope?

Lovely sketches, well done! 🙂

I think there is someone selling them on eBay, sorry don’t have the link…