Space Hopper

On 25/09/2019 at 11:01, Kenza said:

Thanks for the info. I know about the nosepiece. I don’t think there will be a problem to reach focus, CFF has 180 mm backfocus. I reckon that should be enough.

With a big 2" Everbrite, i'd say not. 

My advice is to use a Baader prism with the Mk V and keep the Everbrite for cyclops viewing with 2" glass.

Well chaps : turns out my 'guesstimate' price of £899 wasn't too far wide of the mark.

I'm hearing (From the CN site) it will ship in December, and will cost.....

.........wait for it..........drumroll..........

$1245 USD  😲

Thats around £970 at the current exchange rate.

Good lord above.

We must be bonkers.

I won't be buying one : it will be interesting how many make it over the pond to the UK

but i bet they all get snapped up pretty sharpish !

The joys of equatorial mounts.....

A distant memory thank goodness.

On 17/10/2019 at 16:12, Alien 13 said:

The scary thing is that we will get hit by a comet at some point in the future but could take several million years or next year....

Alan

I can think of one place where i wish a comet would hit............

When the seeing plays ball, there is no finer object in the night sky.

I've only seen it in decent seeing the once with my new refractor ; that was mid September time,

and in moments of good to better seeing it looked pretty similar to your image, the main difference

being i saw the planets shadow on the rings much more distinctively with it being further past opposition.

Great image DK 🙂

I (and others i'm sure) had the email at the start of July saying it had gone into production

with the first units due to ship mid August with the initial orders to be delivered by the end of September.

Its all gone a bit quiet ; they have obviously either hit a delay or who knows what ?

Anyone else heard anything ?

Remember we in the UK will only see the first three quarters of this event as the sun will set while the transit is still in progress.

Just checked and i'm working 08:00-17:00

Thats no good. I'll have to have a day off.

Hi Tim,

Welcome. Great advice on here, everyones really friendly and helpful.

I'm Derby based, work in Notts, and i know a fair few observers from all over those parts.

I'm not sure if i'm allowed to link it, but theres another more localised forum as well you can check out.

https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/?_fromLogout=1

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.....

On 20/09/2019 at 16:43, FLO said:

Will leave this here for the weekend 🙂 

Will post more photos and details in the sponsor section early next week. 

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

17 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Saturn is mush from here. At x73, the maximum it will hold, I can see rings and that's about it!

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.

15 hours ago, Rob Sellent said:

Great idea

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.

6 hours ago, dweller25 said:

@bluesilver

For comparison - I have a 180mm Russian Intes Micro Maksutov that visually slightly out performs my Japanese 128mm APO.

BUT the Mak has cooling vents at the front and a cooling fan at the back to remove warm air from the entire system and it also clears the  warm boundary layer off the surface of the primary mirror - absolutely essential if you want to get the best out of a Maksutov design without waiting for hours for it to cool.

If you can find an Intes Micro Mak then it would be worth considering as once cooled they are very sharp - although they are expensive.

However - as others have said try an off axis mask made from cardboard on your Newtonian and judge the results.

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

7 hours ago, Sunshine said:

for a third of the price of a good 120mm APO you can get a 150mm Mak and it will wipe the floor with the APO on planetary and lunar.

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.