Space Hopper

Despite the quite favourable forecast for tonight, we were almost completely clouded out here in Derby. Occultation by clouds !! I could put my mortgage on that happening ! 🙄 I will reconvene on December 5th.

No, it never slips. Changing height (to whatever position) takes a second. Dead easy for anyone to do. Simply lift seat upwards, slide up or down to required height, then push seat back down again to lock. Theres also adjustment to alter he tilt of the seat, but i find i dont need to use this. It also tilts left and right as you sit on it, which is great if your moving the scope around a bit. There are various colours that the seat pad comes in, i think available colours are on the website.

My German needs some attention Steve, but i get the drift of it ! 😀 Looking at that, i'm sure you could do it and increase the downward range of it. However, when i had my old Orion Optics Dob (300 F4) i found it was ok as it was. If i was looking at something low down the bottom setting was fine and i simple leaned forward to observe as low as was needed without needing to 'squat' so to speak !! 😃 They are good chairs, and as i mentioned, FLO used to stock them at one time.

Military related, i would think. Whether its military from this world (or another) is open to debate of course........

Forgot to mention @Dave scutt it tilts side to side as well. It does everything you need it to.

I missed the start of this thread, but thought i'd link my own observing chair. FLO actually stocked them for a time, but no longer, but they are still available from Germany. Its called a 'Mey' musicians stool, available from Thomann UK and is designed for an orchestra musician playing a large brass type of instrument. But they make excellent astro observing chairs as well. They raise up and down in seconds with ease (no pins to fiddle about with in the dark) I use an alt-az mount and a near 1 metre focal length refractor, and its ideal for that. And its very sturdily built. Trust me its pretty well indestructible. And i'm over 100kg 😳 Cost is now £129, but you get what you pay for here. If i remember mine was around £89 about 8 years ago, so, like everything, its gone up a fair bit. But i highly recommend them. HTH, Rob. https://www.thomann.de/gb/mey_chair_systems_af6_kl_bk.htm

Thanks for the heads up. I'll look out for it 😀🔭

I've got some 50ft trees to the south as well but they are about 50 yds away. But Saturn this year, has just about cleared a portion of them. And Jupiter is now way above them !

In a lot of ways Jules, i actually prefer my 10x30is to my 15x50is simply because they are so much lighter on my 55 yr old arms. I think they are an amazing bit of kit. Everyone should have a pair ! 😀

Don't underestimate that scopes ability to deliver at 450x magnification 😉 Surface details on Ganymede for example would be a piece of cake.

Yes, although the star diagonal you have is a beauty, a big 2" Baader like that is not that well suited to binoviewing, simply because of its large lightpath. And mm's can really count in the binoviewing world on whether you can focus or not. All depends on what scope you have. If you have a refractor that is optimised for imaging, you may well be ok. And with a catadioptric scope, theres no issue at all.

........and you can of course simply screw the max 2 directly onto the female T2 on the diagonal if you don't fancy the 'quick change' option. But this can make changing or installing GPCs a bit tiresome

By the way.......you need a T2 quickchanger to go on to the female T2 thread on the prism / mirror diagonal. Just noticed the price of them has nearly doubled since i brought my own i'm afraid. https://www.baader-planetarium.com/en/baader-heavy-duty-t-2-quickchanger-(t-2-part-06a).html

The T2 - 32mm prism is ideal as said above, if you want to save on those precious in-focus mm. Careful with the Baader 2" nose pieces : they are a bit short with an unwelcome undercut, although i think the newer ones have the safety kerfs which are much better. I don't like undercuts : when cold and damp set in the compression ring ( if you have one) can lose purchase on a heavy binoviewer and eyepiece rig. This has happened to me before resulting in the bino rotating itself 180º. Not good. After this i changed to a 'smoothbore' type 2" nose. Problem solved.

Buy this one & you won't look back. As used by Trevor Jones (Astrobackyard) https://www.torchdirect.co.uk/coast-led-head-torch/coast-hl4-led-head-torch.html Make sure its the HL4 model only you order. Others look much the same ; but its the HL4 that has the red light option.

Nice report , and good to hear you are enjoying the bino viewers.

Reassuring. And both my mounts are relatively bomb-proof.

Maybe some do, but not all of them. Do you mean the linear viewers like the Bresser ? That has a field stop of 22mm

I've always used a prism based viewer (Baader) for low power viewing without the gpc as i can focus ok, and at low power (about 40x) with the 24's you don't really notice any aberrations etc.

A sorry tale indeed, and what a shower some of these courier / parcel carriers are. Disgraceful. Did you ever get to the bottom of what the 'blue haze' on the mirror actually was ??

Not a 'disaster' !! (I always have a feeling of trepidation reading a headline like this, expecting smashed up optics) Just a few teething problems with new gear. But you'll soon get into the swing of things, and some nice views await. Have you looked on YouTube for some setup advice......??

Thanks for the translation 👍

Sorry @Chandra You'll have to help me here. My Spanish is not very good. However, i get the drift, and the graphics are nice.