RobertI

Great thanks Alan, good know how they compared and what you ended up doing. I think you have the perfect combination there and top brands. A lot of experienced visual astronomers seem to end up with a quality frac in the 85 - 130mm range and a large newt of 250mm or larger. Rewind 12 months and I was mulling over whether to get a 6" F5/F8 Newt or a 100ED frac to add to the collection. I decided to go for the Newt (one came up for £90!), and I have loved it, but I still had the 100ED itch, so now have a new Skywatcher 100ED on the way (if the retailer ever gets stock). So I will now have both, and have probably doubled up, but I shall do a comparison anyway out of interest!

I know this is way back Alan, but did you ever do this shootout?

Bummer Chris, really surprising. Larger diameter tube over the top sounds sensible - perhaps you will inadvertently invent a brilliant new way to create rigidity!

Looking good so far Chris. You deserve a new observatory! 👍 I had the pleasure of briefly sitting in your old one and I was very impressed, an astronomers dream in fact. I shall watch this thread with interest. 🙂

Interesting, I was getting sky flashes too, I am on the Suffolk/Essex Coast! There were a few wispy clouds, but mostly clear, however the sky was really bright even at midnight, and very few stars could be seen Whatever was in the atmosphere last night must have helped to carry the light from the lightning flashes a long distance?

I was out briefly with the Tal 100RS tonight - the sky was bright and transparency poor, but seeing was really good, I say Pickering 7 at least. I have stuck a scale into my zoom eyepiece to better judge the focal length I’m operating at. I was getting a split on the close pair at 14mm (x71) but not quite at 15mm (x66). Very pleasing result helped by the good seeing I think. Had a quick squint at Mars for the first time this year and , although fairly low, it was very crisp, with the polar cap very obvious and some surface shading visible. Large, gibbous and sharply defined, it was far cry from the boiling red featureless disc that I have observed in the past. Bodes well for the upcoming months.

I can’t offer any expert opinion on how to make it any better - I just think it looks stunning. Would make an amazing picture to grace a room.

Thanks for the vid Chris. Very informative (including the info about M13) and well done on the result - very nice. That looks like a lovely scope - wish I had one like that!

Thanks Ruud and thanks for suggestion about lunar eclipses. Funnily enough I did also briefly look at the rising moon last night and it was lovely to see framed in such a wide field and in so much detail. 🙂

Good suggestion Louis, I’ll give that a go next time out.

Good to see so many people seeing this for the first time. 👍

My first 2" eyepiece arrived recently - a Panaview 38mm. Beautifully put together, with large eye lens and very solid twist up eye cup. My only scope which will take it at the moment is my Tal100RS, so on a largely cloudy night I managed a quick first light. Problem - the Tal did not quite have enough in focus - literally by a few mm - to get sharp focus. So close yet so far. I have an SCT fit 2" diagonal which is slightly lower profile - as luck would have it I managed to convert it normal use by removing the SCT nosepiece and replacing with my Hyperion 2" fine tuning rings, which had exactly the right thread! This new diagonal provided another 5mm of focus travel and I found I could fully focus. First views looked very nice and I noticed how the depth of focus was very long - completely the opposite "snapping to focus"! Star shapes were good for 80% of the diameter but any issues beyond that were not really that noticeable unless specifically looking. Star colours were revealed very nicely, normally the Tal gives a yellow cast to everything, but the scope now seemed more like an APO to an achro. Some other points. Due to the diameter of the eyepiece I found my nose (which is possibly bordering on large) got in the way and I had to turn my head to get my eye fully on the eyepiece. Not an issue though just different. The twist up plastic eye cup worked brilliantly to keep the eye at exactly the right distance from the lens and shield from extraneous light. Onto some limited observing between the clouds. The ET cluster looked tiny as did some other well known clusters, and M13 was a tiny hazy blob - I realised this was an eyepiece which is suited to very specific things - either sweeping the milky way or viewing large extended objects - none were visible between the clouds sadly. Unfortunately the bright sky and rapidly rising moon meant that the eyepiece could not really shine - dark skies are definitely required and I can imagine how good this eyepiece would be in the inky blackness of a winter's night. I would also be tempted to travel to a dark site to get the best from it. I would think a 2" UHC or OIII would work really well for the extended nebulae - sadly I have just invested in 1.25" versions and will not be upgrading soon unless a cheap one appears. I've just remebered I have a 2" skywatcher light pollution filter which I have used for imaging in the past - might give that a go next time. I'll have another go next time out and share the results.

I haven't tried the 1.3x element, but I notice it does have a long screw thread and many (possibly most) eyepieces don't have enough room inside the barrel to take it, but could be useful even if it works with just one eyepiece in your collection. It's my first barlow and I got it for use with my zoom primarily for looking at doubles and so far it has worked superbly.

Sorry to hear that, very frustrating. I wonder if binoviewers might help a bit? I've no experience with them myself by wonder if (a) it might be easier to see more detail at x100 and (b) using both eyes might reduce the effect of floaters? Perhaps others with more experience of binoviewers can help? Just out of interest, why can you go no larger than a C6?

Fantastic first light report and so glad you got to share it with your son. Lets hope he's got the bug too! Those 8" dobs work so well. Yes it is is possible to barlow a zoom - I recently bought a Baader 2.25x barlow which works brilliantly with my 8-24mm zoom, and a snip at £39!.

It did look a bit dodgy for a sec there!

My new Panaview 38mm 2” courtesy of @HollyHound . It’s big, really big, comparison with standard 1.25” zoom eyepiece shown below. Looking forward to getting first light tonight with my Tal100RS.

I am going to move heaven and earth to attend this one - very exciting.

I’m waiting too. The order cancellation sounds worrying, although I guess I would prefer a cancellation to just being strung along. Good luck with yours. I sold mine a couple of weeks ago - first time I have ever sold a scope and I’m missing it already!!

Fascinating results. I have also often wondered what effect a ‘four way aperture mask’ would work - now I know!

Still wating for the new scope to arrive!! Will be another two weeks according to the supplier, but I'm not holding my breath. But rest assured I WILL be doing this comparsion!

Thanks John, it is a joy to use. The only issue is the tube sometimes hitting the tripod legs (like last night as Epsilon Lyrae was virtually overhead) but can be rectified by lifting the whole setup and rotating (which has the advantage of keeping the RA and DEC cables in the right place). Bit of a faff though.

Nice report Peter - looks like the 150ED is a winner for planets. And I think that I have problems!

Managed to get out with the 150PL Newt and the 66mm frac to have a slightly more scientific go at Epsilon Lyrae. I estimated the seeing as around Pickering 4/5 (fair to good) so just about ok for this challenge. Jupiter and Saturn were 'boiling' low dowon over the rooftops. Zenithstar 66mm: At x75 the wide pair was split and the harder pair resolved and fleetingly split in moments of stillness. At x90 the harder pair was split most of the time. 150PL: Performance was actually not much better than the small frac, I guess down to the seeing. At x90 the harder pair was split fairly easily, but at x80 was more like a resolve. Note: Most of the magnifications are approximate (possibly as much as plus or minus 10) as the zoom I was using has a VERY rough scale. The zoom was used with the x2.25 barlow. Interestingly when I first looked through the 150PL at x90 I couldn't really make out the split of the harder pair, but when I went back to the scope 2 minutes later it was clear as a bell. I subsequently had a go at Zeta Herculis with the 150PL. Using the zoom and the x2.25 barlow I couldn't see anything at any magnification for sure, possibly a brightening of the already broken diffraction ring. Using a 5mm e/p plus the barlow I could definitely make out the secondary and checking the position angle proved I had bagged it. But it took a magnification of x540 to achieve it - the star was fair galloping accross the FOV!! Backing off the magnification using the zoom showed that the brightening I had seen was indeed where the secondary is, but I wouldn't have been confident with that alone. One point to note is that even at x540, the 150PL + Skytee (no counterweight) + 2" tripod arrangement was supremely stable, any vibrations dampening out almost immediately.

A mere six scopes here (soon to be seven). I have a lot of fun observing with different scopes during a session and comparing the views. And of course I use different scopes for different objects, different conditions, different occasions and different moods. And I have a scope for Sunday best. 🙂