johninderby

A thought. 🤔

They shoud make an extender with short screw together sections so you could assemble an extender to your own own requirements. 

Or am I being to logical. 😁

Probably be too expensive anyway. 🤔

Assuming your laser colimator is collimated it's self yes fit it into the drawtube without the diagonal. An easy way to tell if the beam is centered is to print out a pistol target on thin paper and place it over the objective making sure it is centred. Then you can see the red dot on the target.. 

5 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Fixed pier for sure.

Don’t need to do any welding as it’s just a plain tube. Drill three new bolt holes in the side at the cut end and job done.

Just need one of these. 🙂

Although do have an angle grinder with a diamond blade. 🤔

The EQ6 one is bigger diameter so couldn’t just swap the ends over. 🙁

Baffles me as to why Skywatcher doesn’t produce a shorter pillar extension. It’s not as if they need to make special parts. 🤔

It’s pretty straight forward. This Youtube vid will give you the idea.

You will need a usb motor controler to control the focuser from your PC as the focuser is just a dc motor and the stock control box just alters the voltage.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/hitecastro-dc-focus-controller.html

Which contains an Opticstar 2x 2” Telextender. Same as the ES and Meade versions and a great buy a £99.00 delivered. 👍🏻

Makes for quite a tall setup in the focuser. Need to get a parfocal ring for the Morpheus as it won’t quite fit all the way into the telextender.

A box from Opticstar. 🤔

Flextube OTAs weigh about 1kg more than the solid tube versions. All the bits needed to make the flextube bit work weigh more than just a bit of tube.

I’ve weighed a 10” flextube OTA and a solid tube 10”. The flextube GOTO overall weight is a few kg more than a solid tube dob due to the added weight of the GOTO system.

Used to have a Stellarvue 80mm with the spilt tube. When split into two parts the scope was very compact and would easily fit in a carry on bag.

Don’t know why that transportation solution isn’t used more often. 🤔

Never actually seen one of these scopes. Will be interesting to see what you think of it. 🤔

A 10” Skywatcher I used to have.

Just a higher quality scope. Just about every part has been upgraded and improved compared to the Skywatcher.

The 8” is easy for most to move about. The 10” requires a bit more strength but still no problem for most. Usually ypu lift the tube off the base and move both parts separately. The 12” is a big step up in size and weight and harder to move about.

The big advantage of a dob over an EQ mounted newt is there is no setting up when you move them to a new location. 

 I like the Bresser dobs as they don’t need the improvements that the Skywatchers really do. Already done for you. Well worth the bit higher price. Also the alt bearings are proper full sized ones and the tube can just be dropped onto the base. The big alt bearings also make great carry handles. As the tube is mounted using tube rings the tube can be moved for balamce or rotated to put the eyepiece at the right angle.

Bresser Messier 10” Dob

Too many get stressed about how adding anything that affects focal length of an SCT or Mak is going mess things up when the changes in focal lengt are actually a very small percentage that will only have a minimal effect. A bit of a non problem unless you are using a binoviewer which can introduce it’s own problems.

Relax and just use the scope. 🙂

FLO has a nice range of ADM and Primaluce  Losmandy dovetail bars. I recently bought one of the Altair Losmandy dovetails and that is nice and solid as well.

The OTA is the same although on the SE it is mounted using a standard dovetail so can be removed and fitted to another mount, On the CPC it isn’t removable.The SE mount just barely manages to cope with the weight of the OTA wheras on the CPC 8 is rock solid.

The 8SE is light and portable and can be carried complte but the CPC is far heavier and not as easy to carry about. You really want to carry the tripod seperately.

The Evolution 8 is another version worth considering. Single arm with removable OTA and seems to be a sturdier mount.

10 minutes ago, Stu said:

Wasn't that a ruse to put the Germans off the scent of radar? Must have resulted in alot of carrots being eaten!

 

So the tale goes. Lot of disinformation around at the time.

Strangely enough the Germans were the first to use naval radar....in 1916. Worked but had one rather big problem . Firing the guns shattered all the super fragile tubes in the radar gear so they gave up on it.

You could use an EQ6 tripod and the short EQ6 extender then a Geoptik EQ5 adapter but a rather expensive way of doing it.

Eating carrots could help your night vision, but only if you’re deficient in beta-carotene. Most people in the UK have enough in their systen already so adding the bit extra from carrots isn’t going to help.

The objectives are proably the claimed size but the prisim can reduce the usable apeture. Informative thread on CN.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/532533-why-have-so-many-binos-a-smaller-real-aperture/

IHave you got a copy of the full V5 hand control manual? Here’s the Orion Synscan V5 manual which is the same hand control.

https://uk.telescope.com/assets/product_files/instructions/IN_620_Rev_C_SynScan_Hand_Controller.pdf

Think Meade shot themselves in the foot reputation wise a few years ago when they rushed out out a new line of SCTs before they had fully developed and tested them and the resulting disaster of scopes that just didn’t work properly has left a lastimg perception among SCT buyers that Meade are poor quality. No longer deserved as they have sorted out the problems but it’s hard to overcome so much negative press.

For some reason this thread makes me think of this. 😁