Space Hopper

I've not had the chance to see it in the Dob : i have an opportunity next weekend at a darksite if it ever stops raining. But maybe it will have moved too far south by then for me to see it.....? I did see it at Kelling last month when it was in the Pegasus square with my refractor. I was quite impressed with it ; although faint, it was the first comet i'd seen for a good few years. Maybe Panstarrs next spring will put on a half decent show ?

My thoughts were to keep my rich field Newtonian, then sell off all my other gear (WO FLT132, 98, TS70, Meade ACF SCT 6", C9.25) and put it towards a new quality refractor which will take me into retirement and beyond. The refractors been great so far, but i still enjoy those low power rich field views with the 12".

I want to live in La Palma !! (or at least visit someday) I'm guessing you have over 200+ clear nights over there per year......compared to Derby's 20 🙄 Seriously though.....welcome to the lounge 😀

I'll be there Friday. Maybe, i can get a fellow astro nutter to travel down with me, but usually i'm 'billy no mates' at these things.

I left for home this morning, so dodged it. We hit something similar at 14:30 near East Mids Airport, and it looked like a Supercell.... I bet it was the same system that got to you guys 2+ hours later. I hope everyones kit is ok.....

Any chance of this making an early appearance at Kelling or Novembers IAS.......?? 🙂

Not all the time....... I've had 2 good sessions with it since i've had my new scope, and another 2 not so good. 3 nights ago (Thursday) the seeing seemed a load better, very good in fact. I could see 80% of Cassini, the shadow of Saturn on its rings, a clear distinct band on the planet, and 3 sometimes 5 moons. It took 196x quite happily. Its always a beautiful sight to me, no matter how bad the conditions are.

I'm guessing that like all the moons on theses distant planets, there are times when they are too close to their parent planets, and there are times when their elongations are advantageous to allow us to spot them more easily. Triton is on the bucket list with my new scope, any of Uranus' moons would be great also. And theres Trap E & F and maybe Sirius B as well if i'm lucky........

I have a 12" F4 and have not detected it, but with a Newtonian things often conspire against. So its probably wishful thinking that i can track it down in a 5.5" refractor.....

I think i'm the only DM6 user on here, and together with the Nexus DSC they are a formidable combo. I love mine.......i would'nt consider it 'grab and go, but its not too far off.

I like it. Size XL please if you can get me one 😉 Thanks chaps for all the 'big-ups'

Back in 2008 i decided to purchase my first large aperture refractor, and at the time back then had my heart set on a TEC140 from the US after reading the glowing reviews over on the CN forum. They were a premium price, (too much in fact) and with no UK dealers around then i decided against importing one privately. I opted for a William Optics FLT132 (one of the early models) and it served me very well, and despite a few niggles, it provided me with some memorable views. Fast forward 10 years, and is often the case in this hobby i had quietly amassed 6 telescopes and various accessories, some bought second hand, which weren't getting a whole lot of use. I decided i'd put my name down for the scope i'd always wanted, and figured i could raise a good proportion of the funds needed for the TEC by having a clearout. I sold off 5 scopes, electing to keep just my OO 12" Dobsonian : (My WO 132, My second hand WO FLT 98, my 70mm F5 astrograph, my C9.25 and my used Meade 6" SCT all went to new homes) I also sold off all my 2" eyepieces (i was sorry to say goodbye to the 31 Nagler) a Paracorr, a pair of binocs, and a few other miscellaneous bits and bobs. Once the sales were completed, i'd raised nearly two thirds of the funds needed for the TEC, so with some savings, i hit the 'buy' button and forwarded my deposit. Towards the end of 2017, TEC announced they were discontinuing the 'ED' designed 140mm after producing over 750 units in 15 years - due to the scarcity of the FPL53 blanks in that size. Yuri Petrunin, CEO at TEC, opted to switch the design to Fluorite, which was already being used in their larger 160mm (and above) refractors. The changeover, together with a few production delays, and an already full order book for the old design, made the normal 6 month wait time rather longer..... I was actually promised the scope 6 months ago, which i thought a little optimistic, and then it all went a bit quiet. I wasn't too worried, it just gave me the extra time needed to save up my pennies. When Rupert, from Astrograph, got in touch at the end of August to say the scope had arrived, a full 13 months had elapsed since i put my initial order and deposit in place. As far as i know, i'm the first customer in the UK to receive one. While i'm here, i must say that despite the long wait, i've had excellent service from Rupert. He's been in touch regularly, and kept me up to speed all the way. I've brought from him before, and its always been a pleasure to buy from him. He even delivers the scopes personally himself. He spent an hour and a half with me, showed me the scope, and how to set it up for imaging, and we had a good natter over a cup of coffee about all things astro. The scope itself, looks pretty similar to my old FLT132. Its the same F7, a very slightly larger 140mm aperture at 980mm focal length. It even has the same focuser. It actually feels a tad lighter to me, maybe thats the lens design or possibly a thinner tube ? The suppled case is a lot smaller than my WO case which had wheels and weighed a ton, and is a much lower profile size, making transportation a whole lot easier. This one with scope inside weighs around 15kg i think, compared to the hernia inducing 22kg of the old scope. I opted for a carry handle and extra dovetail for future imaging, and also purchased the optional TEC 0.9x corrector which is a sizeable chunk of glass in its own right. One of the main reasons why i went for this particular scope is its design. Its an oil spaced triplet with a centre CaF2 Fluorite element. With only 2 glass to air surfaces (rather than the 6 in air spaces designs) cool down times are significantly reduced. I'm let to believe the scope will perform to its full potential in as little as 45 mins which is a big plus for me. A big, big plus. Its already had its first light, a daytime session this afternoon to check focusing with the binoviewer. Theres no issues there : i managed focus comfortably with no corrector in place with a full 18mm back focus remaining on the Feathertouch. Daytime views of distant objects looked rather fine, with treetops in particular very sharply defined against the blue sky. A blue sky ???? Its clear ?? 😯 Isn't the weather normally dire when a new scope arrives ? Well not this time for a change.....😀 Thanks for reading.

TEC 140 FL triplet oil spaced apo. (number #32) The first one in the UK, i believe. 13 month wait time.

Are you sure they are the rings...? Sorry, i'm not so sure....but if they indeed are, well done I thought they were way too faint too be seen by amateur scopes, and indeed the likes of Hubble are needed to tease them out from Earth. Reason being, rather than being made of reflective ice particles, they are mainly comprised of unreflective dust.

Sadly, it looks like a lot of the Russian stuff will become increasingly hard to get hold of. Post below from a year ago by vendor Markus Ludes with regard to the demise of Intes Micro in particular. It seems a lot of the opticians who worked for the likes of Intes , Intes Micro, STF, Lomo, Yelena and the like have either retired, or are primarily working on military type applications. LZOS APO's are also becoming a rarity with only very limited production runs for 'off the shelf' type scopes. Which is why i've got my name down on the list for one before they disappear too. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/623980-maksutov-telescopes-future/#entry8679000

Really.......?? Not in my experience.

........and remember, Saturn is currently at its worst at the moment from a visual perspective for us Northern hemisphere bods. A bit too low down in the south to reveal much in the way of detail. But thing are starting to improve, and its slowly starting to climb out of the southern murk. Jupiter 'will catch it up' next year as well and they'll make a distinctive pairing.

A beauty. I've often thought about a C11 Edge.

Very nice. John tried to persuade me to buy one at the IAS a couple of years ago, and he offered me a nice discount too. But i didn't take the plunge that day. I was ever so slightly tempted and had the funds, but i was saving that up for my refractor. I really like refractors and i've read the OMC 200 is perhaps not best suited to UK skys Best of luck with the new scope ; it looks a beauty and i hope it gives you some great views / images.

I'm a little late with this discussion. Two of my own mounts : I purchased a Discmounts DM6 from the US when we were getting $1.70 / £ (2015 i think) Manual alt-az only yet is designed to carry upto a 150mm refractor / 11" SCT class of scope. Its excellent and i've fitted encoders / Nexus DSC to it. No slow motion controls though, but it doesn't really need it. I wouldn't say it was easy grab / go, but its fairly straightforward to manage. It has a pier extension for a larger refractor as well. I would say a Berlebach Planet is a minimum spec tripod for a Tec 140. Or a Losmandy FHD. I used to own a WO 132 FLT which is a similar size / weight to a Tec 140 but used a Berlebach Uni with it. Borderline, but is ok for visual I also purchased a TTS-Panther at the beginning of 2018, but then sold all of my refractors and Cats, and some other gear with a plan to save and purchase a new refractor, a kind of retirement present and thats still where i'm at. So i have the mounts but not the Tec 140 !!!

Cloudy in Derby mainly ; with the odd clearer bit here and there Had a quick look with the binocs, but it wasn't clear enough to get the scope out.

Wow..! I thought you'd see a few mm, but 1.5" ?? 😵 Thats a big difference. Little wonder you're seeing comets for stars.

Good idea. It will be interesting to see the results. Eddgie is a top man on the CN site. I've learnt alot from him. It does indeed sound like you have a touch of focuser sag. When i first purchased my old OO 10" i could see noticable sag when using my old N31 eyepiece (1 kg load) OO focusers didn't ever have enough out focus with a 2" eyepiece so you were always forced to use an extension. The bottom line : the older type OO focusers are not up to the job a lot of the time. Certainly not for a heavy binoviewer setup. Mine weighs 1.85kg fully loaded and cheap, crappy focusers are simply not designed to carry that sort of weight. The Moonlite is a good starting point, but even that could eventually start to fail as Eddgie points out and it happened to him. But he's a prolific user and observer, and to 'wear out' a focusers bearings takes a bit of doing. The extravagant solution would be to spend £600- £700 on a Feathertouch which are bomb proof and last a lifetime, or invest in the cheaper Moonlite (£300 ish with kit) which is a lovely focuser and should do the job ok with normal usage. Mine certainly works well enough. I cant do the binoviewer laser test with mine as i only have a 2" laser, but i'd be very interested to try it out with an 1.25" given the chance. I've no reportable issues with the thin rolled tube 'flexing' either. It may flex a tiny tiny amount, but i've not seen any degradation in performance. I've thought about doing a tube upgrade, as another chap on here has done recently to a carbon fibre tube, but its not on the top of my list of priorities at the moment. I don't get too concerned with collimation at all with my F4 either : it seems to hold it pretty well with only minute adjustments needed with my Glatters. All 3 power settings with my 24P's yield good views and star shapes. Ok : the outer 10% of the fov may not be perfect but its not too noticable for me and my 52yr old eyes. I get 60x 90x and 120x magnifications which is ideal for most deep sky work and other stuff as well, and i often do a whole session with just the 24 eyepieces alone. The photo below shows my old OO scope and its rather poor focuser which had the in built extender in it. Even fully racked out i had to unseat the eyepiece by a centimetre to reach focus. Although the image doesn't show it that well there was an obvious sag with that 1Kg eyepiece in that position. No surprise really. The focuser worked well enough otherwise with 1.25" glass, but fell well short of what i personally required.

I'm not sure you should 'remove it'. Its designed to 'extend' to enable you to focus. Note how mine is extended a touch. Nice system you have there. In fact its a beauty. I love the 45mm OCS. Mine is a 40mm as its an Earthwin. It works well enough, but with an F4 the 45 OCS is a good move.

A Coma Corrector is not needed with the OPs binoviewer set up. The OCS will remove it sufficiently for it not to be as issue. Baader do a similar item for use in their own systems. Regarding collimation, i've never had a problem with my own F4 which i find just as easy to do as when i had my old 10" F6.3 (i also use the excellent Glatter / Tublug combo)