RobertI

I’ve just cleaned some eyepieces which were used during an outreach session last night (people must have really greasy eyelashes!). Whilst checking my other eyepieces in the case I noticed my 38mm Panaview had three or four spots of fungus on the outer edge. After cleaning with Baader Wonder Fluid, the fungus is gone, but there are areas which look like water marks which cannot be removed - I am assuming this is permanent damage to the coating? Interestingly the ‘watermarks’ appear more widespread than the original fungus so I’m wondering if some of the fungus was not visible?

I’m not bothered, I’m pretty sure there will be no impact to the views and it’s a cheap eyepiece anyway, but just wondering what people think. 

PS: I don’t normally remove lenses, but the fungus was creeping under the retaining ring. 

I’ve just cleaned some eyepieces which were used during an outreach session last night (people must have really greasy eyelashes!). Whilst checking my other eyepieces in the case I noticed my 38mm Panaview had three or four spots of fungus on the outer edge. After cleaning with Baader Wonder Fluid, the fungus is gone, but there are areas which look like water marks which cannot be removed - I am assuming this is permanent damage to the coating? Interestingly the ‘watermarks’ appear more widespread than the original fungus so I’m wondering if some of the fungus was not visible?

I’m not bothered, I’m pretty sure there will be no impact to the views and it’s a cheap eyepiece anyway, but just wondering what people think. 
 

How very interesting. I assume this requires fairly accurate tracking to work well. I wonder how ‘real time’ the stacking is - I think it would need to be very fast, of the order of a second or less to recreate that feeling of visual observing and make it worth while going to the effort of squinting through an eyepiece. Even then I assume it takes many stacks to reveal dimmer objects. Not sure about being a replacement for visual eyepiece observing, or a competitor to Night Vision (though hopefully cheaper), but I can see the benefits of the eyepiece view to help quickly setup for some quick and dirty imaging. 

Very interested to see what they have come up with as Unistellar have ditched the electronic eyepiece on their scopes I think. I wonder what the patent is for.

I bought this very scope in order to cannibalise the Starsense unit (which is fantastic by the way). The tripod and mount are next to useless, but the F10 achro optics are actually pretty good, with a passable focuser and RACI diagonal. It’s mostly plastic but very lightweight. Before I removed the Starsense, I mounted the scope on a decent mount and had a nice time using the Starsense app to guide me to various DSOs and doubles. The Starsense now sits on my 102ED but I have kept the 70mm OTA for lending to friends. 

39 minutes ago, Alan White said:

And just to show its not all Refractor mounting, here are my two 150mm Newtonians on the AZ75.

Very nice Alan, the OO looks particularly good on that mount 

I only had a few hours of hazy skies one evening out of three, but still managed to see some good things, mostly through my neighbours' enormous dobsonians. 

Lovely sketches. 👍

Interesting post @John, and a very useful diagram for clarifying the terminology. I looked back through my observing log and my notes say with my 102ED at 320x the pair was resolved (peanut shaped) and occasionally a clear split in moments of clarity. Hmmm. On an previous occasion with my 150PL at 240x it was clearly split although it came and went with the seeing.

In my limited experience, the gap is usually very distinct, it’s either there or it isn’t, but I do wonder whether with these dimmer pairs at the limit of resolution, whether there might be an optical illusion at play - looking at Nick’s diagrams you might be led to that conclusion. 
 

These scopes have a helical (twist) focuser, so there is no lock. If the struts/trusses are extended all the way and locked into place, then there shouldn’t be a problem. Can you see any features of the moon at all? Does it look almost in focus or is it just a brightness filling the eyepiece? Have you managed to see anything with the scope yet? I would also suggest trying to look at a distant object like a tree during the day (as mentioned please avoid sun!). My only other other thought is that the mirror is massively out if collimation, meaning you might struggle to see anything at all. 

22 hours ago, Richard N said:

I was going to take the 8 inch dob but I decided against it. Feel free to change my mind.

It’s a tricky decision isn’t it? Last autumn I started off with plans to take both a manual mount and a goto mount with at least three scopes (plus binoculars), as I had a friend coming. In the end though I felt I didn’t need the hassle of electronics and it probably wouldn’t be clear anyway, so I simplified and took the Skytee with my 102ED on one side and the C8 on the other. I probably ended up using the 102ED most of the time in the end. 
 

This spring I feel I will need the aperture of the 8” for all those galaxies, so I will probably take the same setup again. 👍

1 hour ago, mikeDnight said:

They're a sketches dream!

Very true. You can be sketching away and the mount will be saying "relax, take your time, no rush, Jupiter will still be there when you get back to the eyepiece". Must surely make for a more relaxing experience and better results. 

Another plus for EQs not always mentioned is their ability to observe at/near the zenith, which is often where the best atmospheric conditions lie. Not always comfortable with a frac though.

4 hours ago, quasar117 said:

My apologies.

It's still not available for me yet. Like you say, I believe I have to have been on a month.

No it was my bad, I wasn’t thinking. 

@quasar117 AZ4 head for sale if of interest 

Love the mono captures. 👍

23 minutes ago, quasar117 said:

I wonder if the FLO Stellalyra version of the Skytee2 has better saddles.

FLO don’t seem to mention that as a selling point of the StellaLyra , so I doubt it the knobs are better, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the knobs have been improved on all versions at some point so may no longer be such a problem. 

20 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

What? for real? this can be a catastrophic issue! I can’t imagine, this is insanity! oh gosh I would loose my mind.

Yes, hard to believe but it’s true. There are several reports of this that I read. The problem in my case (and I assume others) was the poor quality alloy knob being stripped of its threads over time a finally failing and popping off. My 72ED fell to the floor - fortunately it was carpet and not concrete! I replaced the knobs with better quality metal, which seemed to work, but I lost faith in them and put an ADM on one side to support my C8 and one of these on the other for my lighter scopes. You get a lot for your money with a Skytee, it’s solid and stable, but built to a price if you know what I mean. 

1 hour ago, quasar117 said:

Really can't make a decision on choosing a mount haha.

The other thing to factor in with the Skytee is you will probably want to buy a replacement saddle; the stock saddles had a habit of failing and the scope falling off (happened to me). I think they have been improved and probably much better now, but many people (including myself) replace one of them typically with an ADM. Perhaps other people with more recent Skytees can chime in here. 

9 hours ago, RobertI said:

What’s the point of it?

Actually I have found the top saddle counterweight bar to be a very useful panning handle. 👍

One thing to note about the Skytee 2 is that the azimuth slo motion does not move round with the scope, it is fixed to the bottom part of the mount which does not move. So if you use slo mo cables, and you are panning round to different parts of the sky, you have to lift the entire rig to keep the slo mo cable in a convenient position close to hand. You can also end up bashing the scope against the slo mo cable as you move around. Not so much of a problem if you are observing just one object during the night, but most of the time a bit of a pain. So much so that I have removed the cables from my Skytee now. Some mounts are designed better and don’t have this problem (eg: AZ100) but it’s definitely worth considering if buying a mount with slo motion.

The other thing about the Skytee is the “top saddle”. What’s the point of it? I never really found a use for it, especially with the inconvenience of the extra counterweights needed. I ended up drilling some holes and attaching the saddle to the end of the alt axis as I use two scopes every now and then. I suspect most people use the Skytee with one scope though. The Skytee definitely represents value for money, especially if you’re on a budget, but if I was splashing out on a dual-scope mount now, id try and stretch to an AZ75.

What a dream setup. Sounds like the mount and scope (and observer) are well suited. Perhaps a picture when you get a moment? 🙂

Superb image and interesting background information.  

Must have been very a rewarding evening. Good tip on the chair, I’ll remember that one. 

On 20/02/2024 at 11:21, dweller25 said:

I have been mulling this over (because it’s cloudy - again 😩)

6” F/8 Newtonian or 4” F/10 achromat.

What would you choose and why ?

I have a 150PL (1.25” focuser) and Tal 100RS and my experience has been as follows:

- Newtonian has greater ability to split close doubles but achro has more aesthetically pleasing stars and airy discs

- Newtonian is better at revealing DSOs and resolving globs, but not so good at wide field

- Newtonian has more accurate colour rendition, the achro gives everything a yellow cast but does make yellows/oranges/reds stand out.

- Achro gives nice clean edges to planets and dark backgrounds, but more planetary detail visible in Newt

- Mars was not very good at all in the achro for some reason (perhaps someone can explain?).

- Newtonian was easier to use at or close to the zenith

- Achro was easier to mount and focus without vibration

Which is “better”? Of my two examples, the Newt is the better all rounder, but it does feel like comparing apples and pears! 

When I was researching which refractor to buy, one of these was on my shortlist - they are quality ‘solar system’ scopes made by Long Perng and I really wanted one, but in the end I felt that a 4” F7 would be a more versatile all rounder which is no more difficult to mount and use. I haven’t done a side by side comparison but I would think the extra 22mm of aperture (28% increase on the 80mm) would allow the  4” to reveal more of those micro-planetary details, and would have a much bigger effect than the differing focal length.

4 hours ago, quasar117 said:

Would I have to be constantly altering the altitude clutch to prevent the scope from slipping when observing at different altitude angles?  

Say for instance I had a 2" low power eyepiece on, would it affect the balance?

 

 

Swapping between 1.25” eyepieces causes no balance problems on the AZ4. If the scope becomes very unbalanced from swapping from a light eyepiece to a very heavy one, I generally rebalance the scope by sliding it along rather than tightening the alt axis - it’s easy to do with a lightweight 4” especially if you have a handle fitted. The Skytee can cope with significant imbalances better, especially when there is another scope on the other side, but the AZ4 is pretty good.