johninderby

A favourite of Sir Martin Rees the Astronomer Royal. Martin was kind enough to send me a load of info on Will Hay a few years ago. 👍🏻

There quite a few good astro shops out there that give great service.

• FLO
• Harrison Telescopes 
• Opticstar
• RVO
• 365Astronomy
• Telescope Express

Had a new scope from Astroshop the other week but unfotunately they sent me an old used scope of the wrong type by mistake. Had to wait about two weeks while the “wrong” scope was shipped back to them and the right one shipped out. All good in the end though. Just a bit of a delay.

59 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I think if you want to pay his rates, Elon Musk could drop a solar powered remote controlled telescope on the Moon within 12 months of you paying your deposit!

Probably take longer to design and build the scope than anything else.

 

And the service bill when a cable comes loose. 🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀

The drawtube extention piece comes with the scope. Unscrew the top part of the drawtube and screw on the extenstion tube and then screw the top part onto the extension tube.

Find contrast on the Bresser is excellent as the Bresser has proper anti-reflection coating inside instead of just paint.

Have you fitted the extension piece to the focuser? Won’t focus properly with an eyepiece without it. 

1 hour ago, Paul M said:

Imagine the glare with a "full Earth" hanging in the sky! No doubt beautiful but it'll mess up your night vision

Anyway, I see a market for suitably modified EQ mounts. Corrected for sidereal rate and selenographic Lat/Long and you're away!

OK when will the first online remote telescope for hire on the moon be available. 😁😁😁

8 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Unless I see photo's, I'll not believe you've got em! 

Oh do stop it. 😁🤣😀

A digital Hasselblad just isn’t as special. 🙁Altough sure they are very fine digital cameras. 🙂

https://www.hasselblad.com

2 minutes ago, Paul M said:

 

 

 

Ok, ok!

Just the tripod and accessory tray then? 😬

Yes indeed. Surprising they don’t use the same mount for each instead if producing two seperate designs. Would think it would save money for them? 

The 4SE and 5SE share the same mount and as mentioned the 6SE and 8SE share the same mount.

Another option woud be the AZ-GTI version with WiFi so uses a tablet or smartphone to control the scope instead of a handset. Slightly more expensive. Has Freedom Find so can be moved manually without losing alignment. Can also be used with a handset if you wanted to (not included).

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-az-gti-wifi/sky-watcher-skymax-127-az-gti.html

Nope. Totaly different motors and internal components. They are quite different inside.

The 200p is a good basic dob for those with a tight budget. Yes you can get better dobs but the prce goes up and the 200p can be improved a lot a bit at a time so you can spread the cost out.

They are the same OTA but the mounts are completely different although they look similar and perform about the same.

Skywatcher vs Celestron price differences are down to the way they are imported. More a case of the UK dealers get a much better deal on Skywatcher. The Celestron distributor is now stopping selling the beginners scopes to astronomy dealers and selling them the non-astro shops. Totaly crazy idea. 🙄

7 hours ago, russ.will said:

@johninderbySome questions if I may?

Which length Bob's Knobs are they - 35mm?

I assume it's the tiny grub screws on the focuser base that allow the focuser to rotate?

Did you do anything to ease the action of the base?

Russ

Secondary screws are M5 x 30mm

I bought my 290 for lunar / planetary with my 8”:Claasical Cassegrain f/12 which should be a good match. 🙂

3 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

An early delivery of Luna Cognita greeted me this morning. A serious looking three volume set that I can't wait to delve into. After all, there's nothing else to do!

Now the wait for mine to arrive. 🙂

21 minutes ago, Dave1 said:

Nice mods.Did you put the bearing around the focuser nob?

Reamed out the hole for the focuser shaft and press fitted the flanged bearing into the dust cover. The rear dust cover is held on by three bolts so easy to remove when the knob is removed. Underneath is the metal backplate.

Couple of little mods. 🙂

After the sort of first light last night (haze and clouds🙁) found the finder just got in the way of the eyepiece so moved the finder shoe over a bit. Found under the old location there were two sets of mounting holes so filled the threaded holes with grub screws and the plain holes with nuts and bolts. 

Fitted a flanged bearing to the focuser shaft where it passes through the rear dust cover.

And a gratuitous photo of the neighbours cat relaxing on the patio while I worked. 😁

Hi

Sold it to buy the Rowan AZ100 mount but would like to get another one sometime.

Just used in Alt-Az mode and worked well even when just using the solar system align for quick setup. GOTO was pretty good even so. So convieient when lunar or planetary observing to not have to align the mount but just skew to the target and start tracking.

The AZ-EQ6 would be stronger but also a lot heavier to move. The AZ-EQ5 was easy enough to move outside minus any counterweinpgts on the Berlebach. Not exactly grab’n’go but easy enough.

Yes the barlow you have should be OK. Better if it’s a decent quality barlow but even a cheap one will be good enough to experiment with. 

Are you talking about camera lenses or eyepieces?  If it is eyepieces then no. As mentioned you need a barlow.

29 minutes ago, russ.will said:

@johninderbySome questions if I may?

Which length Bob's Knobs are they - 35mm?

I assume it's the tiny grub screws on the focuser base that allow the focuser to rotate?

Did you do anything to ease the action of the base?

Russ

The secondary knobs are simply black stainless steel thunb screws bought of Amazon.. Can’t remember the length but will have a look for the originals and let you know.

Yes the grub screws in rhe sides of the focuser base let you rotate it. 

Found the best thing for the base was simply polishing the metal textured ring with metal polish and making sure the centre bolt wasn’t too tight.

10 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Can it be fitted with a 2" SCT visual back?

Ues it has a standard SCT thread on the back. 

Just now, SyedT said:

I've tried all of the ZWO cameras, and they all oversample. I think it's fairly unavoidable due to the FL and pixel sizes being used. 

Hopefully someone will be along with the same scope and tell what camera they are using. 🤔