RobertI

Just awesome Matt, an amazing object taken with some amazing equipment (127 Televue Apo on a 10 Micron mount I believe) and in a superb location. Your excellent processing skills bringing out the best. If this is cheating, then I want some of it!

Thanks Steve, Eddington Lodge is literally round the corner, I had a guided tour for future reference, superb set up, definitely want to give them a go sometime, you’ll have a great time. 👍 I was thinking how amazing the views would be through those dobs as I was peering through my 72mm glass!

Thanks Lurcher, I’m kind of wishing I had bought my 130P to Cornwall for its greater light grasp. Being so light weight it sits nicely on even the smallest mounts, the Giro WR on a heavy duty photo tripod carries it fine as long as you don’t go mad on the magnification!

As you can see it’s a pretty dark site....

Currently spending a week in Cornwall with fabulously dark and transparent skies. The cabin we are staying in has an unobstructed southerly aspect and we are treated to views of objects we can never normally see clearly from home. On our second day here the thin crescent moon had set early so armed with my 72ED frac on the Giro WR, with the Milky Way sparkling overhead, I explored Sagittarius and surrounding regions. Starting with Saturn and Jupiter, a surprising amount detail was visible considering their miserly elevation and the scope's small aperture. At 86x (the highest I could go) Saturn's equatorial banding was easily seen as was the Cassini division. Jupiter showed many light and dark bands and I think the GRS would have easily been seen if it was visible. Next onto some DSOs: The Wild Duck cluster M11 was beautiful, compact, rich and well defined. It seemed like there was an awful lot more to see and would benefit from a more magnification and aperture. The Eagle Nebula was well bounded and roughly circular with scattering of stars within. The Swan Nebula was an unmistakable swan shape, very bright and well defined. My favourite object of the night. The Lagoon Nebula was a very bright and large area of nebulosity filling most if the eyepiece field of view with with the 10mm Hyperion giving 43x. The Triffid Nebula was smaller than the others and try as I might I could not see the dark lanes. Then a walk around the rest of the sky, including: The Saturn Nebula - easy to find and appeared as a small, fuzzy oval shape, more aperture and magnification needed for this one. The Veil - the east and west portions were easily visible, slightly enhanced with a UHCE filter with lots of faint nebulosity visible in between. The 'wall' of the North American clearly visible with UHC. The Dumbell, M27, looked wonderful, clearly showing the fainter parts of the oval I viewed numerous OCs the length of the milky way from the double cluster in Perseus, through Cassiopeia, Cygnus and Aquila through to M25 in Sagittarius. The session lasted from 12:00 to about 02:30, by which time my feet were getting cold and the noises from the nearby woods were starting to freak me out!

Nice piece of work Bill, lovely capture and interesting background info. 👍

Thanks Roy, yes I had come to the same conclusion, I do have 2” mirror diagonal which I have used with the Tal and I don’t recall the same problem, but I didn’t use it on the night as I couldn’t get enough in focus with the Hyperions (the focus point is a long way in on the Tal). I really need to get a decent 1.25” mirror diagonal for it with a shorter light path - I have a couple on my list. 👍

Exciting news, congratulations, I’ve bought a number of imaging items from Ian and attended one of his imaging workshops, top fellow (and a fellow Rush fan 😎). Sounds like a very sensible and beneficial move all round. I just hope you don’t get referred to the monopolies and mergers commission! 😉

Great Chris, I never realised it was so easy to do this. Some nice colour and detail on Jupiter, I reckon under the right conditions that camera/scope combo could produce some very nice stacked images. 👍

Lovely little scope, looks fab on the Sphinx.

Good Lord!

Fascinating design and beautifully put together little scope.

Full write up of the evening's activities, I have to say it was one of the most trouble free sessions I have had, probably because I took the time to prepare properly. Once the clouds rolled away, the conditions were excellent, with reasonably good seeing and excellent transparency. The SkyProdigy self aligned and was (mostly) spot on with the gotos all night. Even the neighbours played ball! At 11pm the sky was still very light but by midnight was nice and dark (by summer standards). Equipment: Tal 100RS Achro with with Hyperion 10mm e/p + 14mm tuning ring (and cheap Celestron prism diagonal) giving 140x 130P Hertitage Newt with 5mm BST giving 130x. The difference in magnification and use of a prism diagonal in the Tal may well have made the comparison a bit pointless (opinions welcome!), but observations were as follows: Izar - Beautiful coloured double, with bright orange primary and significantly fainter whiter secondary separated by 2.9". Both scopes split the pair easily, but was cleaner in the Tal with a more significant black line between the two (additional magnification coming into play here?) but also still easily and immediately split in the 130P. The orange of the primary was more obvious in the Tal, looking whiter but still light orange in the Newt. The colour contrast between the two was also more obvious in the Tal. It should be noted that everything in the Tal looks more yellow, I guess a feature of being an Achro? I don't know if there is a problem with the Tal or the diagonal, but the Izar showed a redenning on one side, a CA type effect, but only to the west of the FOV. Not really noticable on any other stars during the session. Xi Bootes - Another fine double with a yellow primary and redder secondary separated by around 5". This time the colour difference was easier to discern in the Newt. Pi Bootes - Two white components, one slightly brighter than the other, separated by 5". Very nice in both scopes. Epsilon Lyrae - Again easily split in both scopes, but the Tal showed a cleaner darker line between the closer and more difficult pair. Generally the stars appeared 'tighter' and whiter in Newt but the sky background was brighter and resulting contrast between object and background slightly less good. I don't know if this was a feature of the slightly lower magnification, particularly the 'tighter' stars? A couple of well know DSOs to finish the shoot out: M57 - Surprisingly bright in both scopes, with brightening towards the outer edge of the ring and and 'milky' inner hole. Very slighly brighter and noticably whiter in the Heritage but little to choose between them. M13 - Again, a very close run thing, with both scopes revealing myriad stars, especially with averted vision, with so many on the edge of being resolved, but the Heritage was the winner here with slightly more stars resolved. In terms of using the scopes, they couldn't be more different. The wobbly helical focusser of the Heritage was a distinct pain in the bum, making accurate focussing really hard as the the star raced around the FOV every time the focusser was touched, not helped by the slightly wobbly mount. The Tal by comparison was an absolute joy to focus. For the first time I used a stool to observe with the Tal and I have to say it was really relaxing and something I shall do in future. Observing near the Zenith was a pain in the bum (or back) and the slow mo controls were just about within reach above my head - not really a sustainable way to observe. No such problem with the Newt which from a standing position always seemed to have the eyepiece available to the eye, and best when near the zenith. So in conclusion both scopes gave great results optically, though I think the Tal was perhaps operating a bit below what it should. They couldn't be more different but they are fun to use and either one would be fine as my only scope. As usual I am looking at how to make things even better, and I have concluded the best next step would be........a 100ED or 120ED on an AZ-EQ5!!! 😁

Final scores just in and the result is.....drum roll......pretty much a draw! Full report tomorrow but based on a very limited set of objects and similar mags (approx 130x) , the frac was very slightly better at splitting doubles (although I didn’t try really close splits) with slightly better ability to show colour contrast , and the Newt had very slightly better resolving on globs and slightly brighter view. Frac seemed to show a darker sky and the Newt had, surprisingly, tighter stars, but this didn’t translate into better splitting ability. More tomorrow.

Two scopes set up and ready for tonight’s observing session. Tal 100R on a Skytee and Heritage 130P on a SkyProdigy. Hoping to view some nice doubles in and around Bootes and possibly some DSOs if sky is dark enough. 👍

Entertaining and informative video Chris, you’re getting very good at this! 🙂 Seems like the tripod has been improved from the old SLT which was one of the weak points I gather so that’s good news. Shame about the Wi-Fi problems though. Looking forward to seeing how it performs under the stars. I’d also be interested to know whether you feel the Celestron sky portal app has enough objects in it.

Great report Steve, your enthusiasm makes it a fun read, it must have been amazing. The globs must have been spectacular, I know things start to get interesting when I move up the aperture range to my 8”, so 14” must have been something else. Some of the galaxies sounded spectacular too, most of them are just blobs in my scopes. Glad you enjoyed it, hope I can visit Les Granges one day.

Btw, I have failed to get Jocular working, it may just be my 8 year old laptop which has been loaded with various junk over the years, I may need to try with a clean new laptop!

Great results Martin, I particularly like the globs. I can’t judge colour accuracy (apart from M57!) especially on my small phone screen, but the colours have come through very well. It’s good news that you can use plenty of luminance without washing out the colour, definitely seems to be a problem with SLL.

Lol, if I find myself at a pecuniary advantage when the product is available, I shall gladly oblige. 😉

Crikey, that’s a lot later than originally planned, must be costing them a small fortune to get to market. Fingers crossed because it looks like a great product.

Has anyone received one of these new mounts yet?

Great review Chris, nicely put together, good to see an honest and realistic assessment of the package. 🎖️ As you say it is a bit odd that Maks and SCTs don't come with dew shields when every refractor I have seen has one as standard! Overall it looks like a very neat and ligtweight package, with the tripod being the weak point, but not actually as bad as I had previously thought. 👍

Thanks John, good to get confirmation.

Crikey, that's 425x and .25mm exit pupil by my reckoning! That it worked well was a testament to the eyepiece, and to your eyes.....and the scope...and the seeing. Perhaps I'm just a wimp with my low powers!