Space Hopper

Very nice purchase John. And it looks very well cared for considering its age. A true heirloom scope. Yes, tomorrow night try it on Jupiter. Theres a double transit event : Europa and Ganymede. Around 21:30hrs i think. I'm impressed the AZ100 can handle it with no counterweight. Also impressed that you can binoview with it with the HW. Not many scopes have the back focus to do that. I take it you are using a GPC ?

Absolutely. I think the concrete base is the issue here. Moving the rig onto the grass (even with the rubber feet) should be a big improvement. I use rubber feet / Planet / DM6 on grass regularly and have no issues with wobbles at higher powers (unless i start jumping up and down) and i'd expect the AZ100 to be the same. The DM6 creator (Tom Peters) actually recommends having no rubber feet or spikes etc at all and even supply their own tripods that way. Just the bare wood (its not tapered at the bottom of the legs) standing on the grass or whatever.

It could be the screw-in 'rubber feet' on the Berlebach, causing a few wobbles (more noticeable with a long focal length) Can you swap them for the spikes, and set up on the grass and see if that improves things ?

Hope you don't mind me butting in, and not wanting to take the topic off course but, how do you find the DZ compared to your earlier DC ?? Much difference apart from the extra 80mm fl ?

Its nice to have the versatility to be able to remove that section and have all that extra backfocus. Not many scopes have that option, and i think its sound thinking from Takahashi. More manufactures should do it. Versatile and all bases covered. I'm sure you'll be fine putting a load onto it ; those rack and pinions can take a fair old load. Nice scope, and really well made like all Taks. I had a good look at RVOs Taks on display at last weekends IAS. Very nice indeed.

The Vic was my first PC as well. 1982 or was it 81 ?? Followed by the C64 and an Amiga after. Those were the days ! 😃

Simply because of their superior thermal management characteristics. A 2" HW has over the double the size (in area) heat dissipation window that a 1.25" wedge has. To users of scopes 4" and above thats important. If i was to use a 1.25" HW with my scope it would very quickly overheat enough to be a burn hazard, or even be destroyed entirely. But if you are only using a 60 or 70mm refractor you'd probably be ok with a 1.25" A bigger scope though demands a suitably sized wedge. And thats a 2"

It makes the sun go green !! 😃 Mainly it enhances the contrast of sunspots, especially the penumbra area. It enhances the granularity as well. To me though i find the enhancements quite subtle. It also makes sense if you have an achromat refractor rather than an apo. But whether its worth £160 on its own is open to debate.

Interestingly, as an Apple user who subscribes to Apple music for £15 / month if i was to go 'all in' and pay £30 / per month and get the cloud data, the fitness and tv app, and the arcade and news apps all together, within the 'News app' i'd have available over 100 monthly magazines, one of which is BBC Sky at Night. Although i'm not interested in the arcade and don't watch too much tv, i'm half temped.

Thanks for the reassurance ; thats good to know. Theres actually a picture on the Baader HW box showing it set up on a German Zeiss 200mm refractor scope. I definitely smelt something getting very hot earlier though, i wonder if there was some dust / debris inside that was starting to burn a bit ? I always used the wedge before with a smaller sized refractor, most recently a 105mm / 650 short tube. Although the heat window got a bit warm, even in the height of summer, it never got really hot like it threatened to today. You can't be too careful though with the sun and in future i will observe in short intervals just to be on the safe side. That is until i buy another smaller scope.......

Yes, i'm the same and have used the 2" Baader version. Its very good, but i'm not sure i can recommend anyone paying £160 for it ? Mine was part of the Baader HW 'with filter set' purchased late 2014.

Hi guys, As we have an eclipse coming up, i'd thought i'd dust off the Herschel wedge and have a practice run with some sun bothering. A beautiful day here in Derby with not a cloud in the sky. It also gave me the chance to try out my new zoom eyepiece on the sun for the first time. It performed well, although i found using a lower power setting gave the more pleasing views. There was nothing too exciting to see sunspot wise, with 'region 3124' showing close to the limb being the standout group. Not long after i thought i may have some problems with the wedge / scope combo. After a few minutes of viewing i thought that i could smell something getting overly hot, and sure enough a finger on the wedge's heat window confirmed it. Not burning hot, but much hotter than i'd seen before when using my last scope (105mm aperture) which only rendered it 'gently warm'. I've read the recommended refractor size to use with the HW is 80mm - 120mm approx and anything much bigger can cause a heat build up. This was the first time i'd used my 140mm scope for HW Solar, and i'd kind of taken warnings of using bigger apertures with a grain of salt. Now i know it's an issue, i'll only be having much shorter viewing and imaging runs and make sure the scope is pointed away from the sun at regular intervals to let the wedge cool a bit. I also worry a bit about using an 'oiled triplet optic' for Solar viewing with a HW but TEC assure me this is fine. Heres a couple of images, just prime focus using a Canon EOS R and 2x Powermate (1960mm focal length) iso 100, 1/320 sec. Tweaked and cropped using MAC Photos. Thanks for looking.

Difficult to precisely calculate with a moving mirror type scope, but when you extend the lightpath beyond a certain point the scopes focal length will rise more and more. I think its over 3mm of extra focal length per mm of lightpath added. So theres always extra magnification. Other issues as well such as a bit of aperture loss, a bit of contrast loss, and a bit of extra SA, but they shouldn't degrade the views too much. Good to hear you are enjoying the 2 eyed views 🙂👍🏼

Fascinating stuff. Great capture ; i love things like this 👍🏼

Thanks for everyone involved for putting on a great show over the last two days. Excellent talks, and loads of astro goodies on display to drool over.

Another vote for the 24mm Panoptic. But 2 of them together in the bino Also have a 12.5mm Docter which is pretty special too

Looking forward to the show and the Allan Chapman lecture Saturday afternoon.

They now have their own fit if you order via FLO. Same as a standard EQ6 i think. Unless the AZ75 differs from the AZ100 ?

Terrestrially, you are looking through a lot more stuff, ie, rising air currents, heat plumes etc, pollution and other things so this limits what you can see clearly without the image breaking down. Looking upwards at the stars things are a bit clearer, as long as you are not looking too low down where you'll get the same issues as above. An example of this is the moon when its low in the sky, which will look a bit distorted by our atmosphere. Ignore the 500x bit. Thats just marketing hype to entice you in. Generally as a guide, use the aperture of your scope in mm, then double it. This will give you a realistic high end magnification upto about 250x max.

Another recommendation for W&W dew heaters Why not pop down to next weeks IAS astro show next Friday + Saturday week ? Not too far from you ; Barbara will be there and she'll sort you out with some.

No doubt they have an exceptional optical pedigree, but i'd also consider saving some money and looking at the Canon is 10x30. When you hit the image stabiliser button 'all will become clear'

Wowzers Louis !! Thats some collection you have there........all bases covered !!

13 for me a well if you count my 2 Powermates. 4 x 2 binoviewing pairs 24, 19 , 15 & 12mm For mono i have 35mm, 12.5mm and a 7-15mm zoom. I have no plans for anything else, but sometimes i'm tempted to see if i can get a used pair of Nagler 11mm (now discontinued) and trade / sell in my 12mm pair which are only 60º fov and the Naglers 82º would be nice at high power. But i'm pretty happy with my current glass. Favourites are the 24 and 19 Panoptics and the 12.5mm Docter UWA

Think you have to have 50 'posts'

Good to hear some of you guys got to see something, at least. I think i spent more time looking into my coffee cup, than i did at any stars, moon and planets.