Space Hopper

Be careful not to over tighten things as i've heard they can be problematic (the reducer) to remove. Maybe put a spot of lubricant on the threads.....?

Refractors with 980mm and 650mm focal lengths and a humble Canon EOS R mirrorless (full frame) Currently saving towards a reducer / flattener.

@Dek Rowan Astro Not sure if this has been asked before Derek, but once the motorisation is up and running will the mount have any imaging potential at all ?? And by that i mean 30 sec stacked images, nothing longer exposure wise. Thanks.

What attracted me to my refractor ? The 140 ? Its reputation. (And i'd dreamed of owning one for 10 years.) A very well respected reputation gained over nearly 20 years of production. It really shines in all departments. From rich field to high power lunar and planetary, DSO's, double stars, beautiful star shapes and colours, rapid cooldown, easily manageable size and weight (less than 9kg) a lovely focuser, and enough aperture to show me pretty much everything i can see considering my local conditions. And a stellar imager, it ticks all the boxes. Expensive ? Yes, it was. But maybe not crazy expensive like say, the Tak Toa 150 which is over double the outlay. Its hopefully a telescope i will have till the end. No regrets. Life is way too short.

They certainly sound nice and quiet when Rowan posted the slew test video. Looking forward to following the progress.....

24 and 19mm Panoptic pairs (bino) and my 12.5mm Docter ultra wide (cyclpos) Currently i have nothing more powerful than 12mm so with the Docter i use a 2x or 4x amplifier to crank up it power.

As much as i can get away with !! I often use Rigel as a guide, if it splits well and seems stable than its a go for hunting others. Plenty of times though that it looks a bit mushy and the seeing is simply not up to it. I still have had no success with Sirius pup yet. And its not for the want of trying. More likely to be consistently poor seeing and my deteriorating 54 yr old eyes ! 🧐

Mu Cephei is a beauty. I remember looking at it with my 140 refractor last year, and it was a stunning sight. I'm interested in red and carbon stars as well and plan to observe them a lot more.

Thanks for the tip ; i'll get in touch with Marcus. Its always a difficult thing to get right : so many different sized mounting rails and tube rings and thread sizes that getting one to fit is near on impossible. I've no idea where my original tube rings for my 105 came from : possibly the scrap pile. They were so big and heavy, and bizarrely they only had 'Whitworth threads'. No metric sized holes at all. Where did they come from ? Certainly not Germany. Although having a new pair custom made was expensive, i bet they've removed nearly a kilo of weight off the scope setup. I really like the 'More Blue' rings that FLO sell, but unfortunately non of their range would fit my tube.

My Nexus DSC must be worth a mention.

For the binoviewer enthusiasts..... Optic is 105/650 F6.2 No. 509 Strehl is .979 if i remember correctly. APM supplied it with tube rings that felt like they were made of lead, so i had Orion Optics custom make me some lightweight lower profile ones. It has a Losmandy rail, but i've not managed to source a suitable handle for her yet. I was half thinking of selling it as its not seen a whole lot of use this year, and i generally prefer my larger refractor if i'm having a visual session on Lunar / planets etc. I must post some more pics and did out the interferometry report.

...or rather, the start of it. A warm bed is always a nice consolation prize !

Thats got my attention.......🙂

M33 is a non starter for me from light pollution central. But given a dark site its a piece of cake with just a pair of good binocs.

My aurora app has been alerting me since 21:00hrs Wednesday (red alert 300+ nT) and i've been on the lookout for it driving from Liverpool to Sheffield. Whilst in the dark sky Hope valley i looked north a few times and there was some evidence of activity, but it was very subtle. I reckon a few 30 second exposures would have teased a bit of it out though.......?? Maybe one day i'll actually see some ! 😀

Its a mount i've been looking at as well ; problem is there are non for sale. Anywhere. Not in the UK anyway.

Push the boat out Esprit 100.

This is a great post. A subject i've struggled to get my head round and at 54, something i NEED to get my head round. Thanks to the OP and all other comments above.

In my experience most 'imaging optimised' refractors should be able to binoview natively as they usually have a big focusing range to allow for cameras, filter wheels, OAGs etc. And you know you have plenty of in-focus range when you can add a Herschel wedge into the train and STILL reach focus with no gpc etc.

+1 for a pier option. I'd probably have brought my own AZ100 by now if it was available.

I used to use Maplins for flight cases, but as sadly they are no more have had to look further afield. Astroshop EU is a place i've ordered from who seem pretty good, but there are other options.... https://www.astroshop.eu/telescope-accessories/transport-storage/multi-purpose-cases/15_60_60

A good flight case or musical instrument case. Usually they have removable 'cubed foam' pieces so you can customise the inside to your requirements. Heres a case i had a few years ago

.....and there was me thinking it had 4 'blades' rather than 3. That might explain why i've not seen it 🤭

I'm interested to know the focusing range. Does it have a scale on it. I find when binoviewing i need around a 70mm range to work with low power / high power with my Baader system. Its difficult and the tube ideally needs to be just the right length. But with the OCA i thought it would be easier. If you adjust it so you can get focus with the low power arm in, with the focuser almost fully raked in, are you then running out of out focus in high power mode ?

Captain......the stars ? They've gone !! (Pavel Andreivech Checkov) Great image 🙂👍🏼