RobertI

There’s also a 125ED at an equally bargain price.

Nice report Paul. I have also been attracted to this scope, partly due to its BV friendliness. I am assuming that with the removable section, you can use the BV without a GPC/Barlow, meaning you can get nice low power views?

What they said. ☝️ Four inches doesn’t seem much, but the 4” refractor just seems to hit the spot in so many ways. I have six scopes, but use the 4” refractor ninety percent of the time.

Fantastic, the joys of a really dark sky. Sounds like you’ve got lots of great observing ahead of you. 🙂

Welcome home and I hope you find lots of help and inspiration here on SGL.

Yes, I don’t get airy discs with my C8, only ‘hairy discs’. 🙂

Brief session tonight with the 4” under high hazy cloud - Jupiter was the only thing worth seeking out and was quite steady. Sketch made at the scope and tidied up a little indoors.

I reckon that’s almost as good as the view I got at Kelling through a 20” Obsession dob with a 100 degree Ethos eyepiece - just shows how deep EAA can go with a small scope. I’ll never forget dipping my eyes into that eyepiece and drinking in that view though!

I really feel for you, what do you have to do to get some darkness? 😦 I know it’s little consolation, but I once had a neighbour who went away and left her house empty for three months - trouble is she left the bathroom light on! 😡😡

I’d be interested to know how you are getting on with the 8” F4 Newt for visual, perhaps you can post your experiences at some point (if you haven’t already). 👍

That must have been a truly awesome experience, the kind of conditions I can only dream of. Worthy of a separate observing report I think - perhaps next time (and I hope there is a next time). 🙂

It’s a really interesting one. I’ve six visual scopes, only two of them get used on a regular basis and I could live quite happily without the others, although it’s fun to re-acquaint myself with them sometimes and the occasional “shoot out”. I never really have a decision to make over which scope to use, in reality I use my 4” most of the time but I find the 8” is good to have for galaxies, globs and trickier faint stuff. If I was forced to have only one scope I could live with an 8” or 10” dob, but do I want to? Nah!

I don’t know if @Coco has made a decision yet, but I’ll add my thoughts. Refractors do give perfect star shapes and beautiful airy discs so in theory perfect for doubles, but they are limited by aperture (for most of us) which creates another problem, at least for me with my 4” refractor - when I get to really high powers for those tight doubles, the stars look like discs rather than … well …. stars! The smaller the aperture the bigger the ‘disc’ appearance. I have found that my 6” reflector does not exhibit this effect. I know it’s just an aesthetic thing, and I don’t recall ever seeing anyone else complain about it on SGL, so it’s probably just me! But I think for a doubles-only scope I would go bigger than 4”, and I think a 150mm or 180mm Mak would perform very well.

Great write up Nik, it’s really inspired me to find it from my back yard. I viewed M33 through a 16” dob at Kelling recently and NGC604 was very bright and easy to see. I could also see another nebula which I assume to be NGC595 which was almost as bright. Looking forward to tracking it down.

Similar story for me last night, caught the very beginning of the Io transit, both shadow and moon clearly visible on the limb. Seeing was good, and through my 102EDR with binoviewers (approx 170x) the other three moons showed up clearly as tiny discs. As others have mentioned, the GRS was not easy to see nearing the other limb, it should have been easy as seeing was good, but it just wasn’t. Spent the rest of the session viewing some DSOs around Auriga and getting some early glimpses of Orion and M42. A new object for me tonight, the open cluster NGC1893 embedded in the nebula IC410, the latter only visible with a UHC filter. The nebula wasn’t bright, but was eventually clearly seen, and to my eye resembled the Pacman in shape. To me this is a brighter object than its more famous neighbour, the Flaming Star nebula. There is also a lovely double 14 Aurigae nearby.

Amazing!

If it’s lunar and doubles, I would think the Skymax 127 would give the nicest results, but understand that cool down might be an issue if you do short spur of the moment observing. Can you store the scope outside in a shed or garage to keep it closer to ambient temperature?

I think it’s a sensible plan to use the 8” SCT you already have - it should provide good lunar and planetary views. Personally I don’t go above 200x with mine, mainly due to seeing, so I wouldn’t say its longer focal length would be an advantage over a 4” ED refractor, but it should show slightly more detail on those really good nights and also more colour on the planets. I do like the sharp and contrasty views of my refractor, but you have your 80mm for that. 🙂

I think the bino advice is good for kids that are really interested in “doing” astronomy, but in my experience, many children just want a telescope, and in particular something that “looks like a real telescope” - ie: a refractor of some sort on a tripod. In that case I think a cheap scope and lots of encouragement from a knowledgeable person can work wonders. It’s the second bit that’s usually lacking though!

Well done, Almach is one of the most beautiful doubles in the sky, did you notice the colour difference between the two stars? Albireo in Cygnus is another double of the same quality. I think many people with astigmatism observe with their glasses on, and choose eyepieces with good “eye relief” to help with this. I’m sure some experienced observers with astigmatism will offer some advice on this if you are interested.

I’ve not tried the Evostar 120 but I’m guessing an F5 achro will show a fair amount of chromatic aberration, which may or may not bother you. An alternative scope which springs to mind is the Altair Astro 102ED Starwave Ascent, which has an ED element (FPL51?), so should have less chromatic aberration, and is within your price range, but you will need to get a finder and diagonal. The FPL53 version is highly regarded so the build and image quality should be excellent. I’d agree with the AZ4 as a mount for that sized refractor, very happy with mine.

From memory, I don’t believe I needed the GPC in my C8, due to to the large range of focus, so I’m guessing the C6 would be the same, but I can double check. I did try it with a 0.63 reducer and no GPC to try and get a low magnification for DSOs, but could not reach focus, so the lowest magnification I could get was around 100x (no GPC or reducer). The field stop of the BVs is only 20mm, so limits the field of view if using longer focal length eyepieces to get lower mags. More expensive BVs improve this problem. Probably more info than you wanted!

The standard arrangement with the William Optic BVs (20mm eyepieces plus 1.6x glass path corrector) will give 120x in your C6 I think. You can also play with barlows to give different multipliers, rather than eyepieces - I have a Baader Classic 2.25x Barlow, and when I screw the lens from that on the end of the BVs (instead of the GPC) I get an effective multiplier of around 4.5x, which gives a perfect 160x in my refractor so that would give 337x in your SCT, which is probably too high, but if you have barlows worth experimenting. It’s worth noting that you could also use BVs with your ZS66. Being a bit controversial, but I would suggest getting BVs before shelling out on a bigger scopes - for me they have been a complete revelation for solar system. They don’t work for everyone though.

Oh dear! 😆 At least the WO binoviewers come with eyepieces, but I take your point.

You may have already considered this, but for visual only have you ever tried a binoviewer? I have found mine to be amazing on lunar and planets, objects look 50% bigger with two eyes, and viewing is more relaxing and just far more engaging. Your C6 would work well with one I think.