miguel87

With any given telescope you could in theory achieve any magnification that you want. Just change the eyepiece.

The focal length of the telescope is the only other factor in magnification, not the aperture. So for example my telescope has a focal length of 1000mm. So a 20mm eyepiece gives me 50x magnification (1000÷20) if I want to zoom in a bit I could put an 18mm eyepiece in and get 55.5x mag (1000÷18).

So if you are looking to achieve a particular view, you need to to find the right eyepiece for your telescope.

You could frame the two galaxies in almost any telescope. More aperture just means the quality of the picture will be better, no bigger or smaller.

And F number makes little difference visually.

I love my BST 12mm in my f5 newt. Performs virtually as well as the Vixen SLV. Much better than my 20mm Vixen NPL

They are all stored on my phone so I cant link them but I can share a couple.

23 minutes ago, CloudMagnet said:

It definetly fits as I use it on my EQ5, it only focuses with the 1x zoom but it honestly makes polar aligning painless rather than the usual yoga session without it.

All you do it fit that brass ring over the end of the polar scope and rotate the eyepiece until you find focus. I find that you can also polar align at lot earlier in the evening than you would just using the standard scope as you can keep your eye steadier- saves time later in the night for other setup work.

Great thankyou, might look into that. Honestly the standard angle of the eq5 polar scope is hilarious and I am relatively flexible. Must be impossible for many people to look through.

Of course a red dot finder or telrad might be easier than a finder scope (personal preference, many would disagree).

Glad you are exploring astronomy!

I have a fair few sketches which show roughly what you might expect under bortle 4 skies with an 8 inch reflector. Depends what information you are after.

3 minutes ago, Sprint said:

Hi yes view finder / finder scope.

Please dont take my inexperience as ignorance, im slowly forming a picture!

If anyone needs any knowledge regarding motorsport engineering, chassis setup, vehicle electrics im a font of knowledge! 😆 So much fun learning something COMPLETELY new!

No not at all. It's good that you are asking the right questions. I dont mean to come across as rude I am just trying to be as honest as possible.

The beauty of looking at galaxies is about WHAT you are looking at, the time and distances involved. Not how they look. Honestly, it is lots of slightly different grey smudges that are VERY faint. If you look at your fully illuminated phone screen whilst observing a galaxy your view will be lost entirely! The brightness of the phone will ruin your night vision and the galaxy will not be visible until your eyes adapt to the darkness again.

The 72mm frac with a finder scope will be a nice beginner scope I think. You could observe the moon, open clusters, venus and its phases, Jupiter's moons, saturn and a very small image of its rings. Bright nebula such as M42 (no colour or sharp detail) and many more things. But, a small frac is not a good telescope for viewing detail in deep sky objects.

1 minute ago, Sprint said:

For example would it be possible to use a Skywatcher Apo 72 ED DS Pro for observation with the addition of viewfinder etc or just impractical?

I guarantee you will not see galaxy spiral arms in a 72mm frac. No way.

What do you mean by viewfinder? Like a finder scope?

Seeing galaxy arms or swirls as you describe is not wallet friendly.

To see these visually requires a good dark site, I would say bortle 3 or less which is rural. I dont think even good suburban would be enough. And probably 10 or twelve inches of aperture. And good conditions. I have never seen detailed spiral arms. Maybe a hint of shape on andromeda when I was in exmoor with my 8 inch a couple of years ago. I think if you are expecting to see spiral galaxies you might want to try going to try out some scopes at a star party or similar because 99% of the time we dont see this at all. Just the faintest of smudges. I was observing the crab nebula this week but it was so faint in my 8 inch that I could not look directly at it, it would disappear so I had to use averted vision.

As for magnification you underestimate the size of galaxies. Even at 31x mag, the entire andromeda galaxy is too big to fit in my view. However, you would need incredibly dark skies to see the whole structure so we are usually just observing the faint hint of the bright core. I dont think you will find many people observing galaxies at 200x mag

And yes f5 or lower is considered fast.

2 hours ago, MarkAR said:

How about a SW AZ EQ6, can be set up as Alt Az or EQ (for RA tracking).

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I would never use AZ mode so wouldnt be a selling point for me. But if the clutches or motor are significantly better then I would look at is as a possible solution.

2 hours ago, CloudMagnet said:

On the polar scope issue, I found the best way to solve that was to use a right-angled eyepiece like the one in the link below. Makes polar aligning much less stressful.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-right-angled-eyepiece-for-polar-scopes.html

 

That looks useful, I wonder if polar scopes are a standard diameter? Would this definitely fit the eq5 polar scope? Would I ignore the mini focusser currently on the polar scope?

Thanks

F ratio isnt super important and I wouldnt go any faster than 5 to start with but going over F6 would not be a problem, just that the scope will get larger to handle.

Yhe main thing you want is aperture. In my opinion, if you want to enjoy deep sky objects then get as much aperture as you can afford and move around to wherever you are going to observe from.

Also magnification isnt too important (unless you meant to say 200mm aperture). Magnification for galaxies might be somewhere between 20x and 100x, roughly speaking, depends on the galaxy as some are bigger than others. However, higher magnification always dims an image so if you want to preserve a dim object, keep magnification low.

If you meant 200mm then that is about 8 inches.  You can see galaxies with less, I had a 5 inch for years. But obviously it gets easier with more aperture and darker skies.

Personally I have never had success with bins, I cant hold them steady enough haha!

Do you know what number on the bortle scale your home skies are?

Galaxies usually stand out because of their size. Like one of the stars in your field of view has been smudged by something. The light isnt a precise point, it's a diffuse, very faint puff of smoke. You might be suprised how big the faint area is that you are looking for.

I also am a fan of the telrad finder on any scope. Its the only finder I ever use. 

This is a professional photo of exactly the same object,

3 minutes ago, Sprint said:

I/we are keen to learn the skies so going for manual, use some books and apps to 'get our eye in' starting out, a decent tripod / mount is a must i think from a manually tracking POV.

Another big factor reading around is user height vs scope type / viewfinder straight or 90deg. I suppose a refractor would be easiest with drum stool - im 6' 4" and my missus is 5' 6" so changing seat height would be easier than scope height right?

I do see that a refractor would be easier to keep clean / no foreigns can get inside of it like a Dob / Newt?

It would seem i was optimistic on the nebulae, obviously the images i have seen are from extremely high power massive scopes - fail 😆🙈

Even basic scopes can track with the additional of a fairly cheap motor.

Yes the lovely long exposure photos are gorgeous a long way from what we see with our eyes. This is my image of what I saw of the black eye galaxy in bortle 4 skies with an 8 inch newtonian reflector after studying the object for 15 minutes or so.

I guess cleaning might be easier but best bet is just to never touch or clean optics, just keep them covered when not in use, only take the cap off literally when you are observing. Cleaning regularly is likely to scratch optics. I have never cleaned any of my mirrors.

The difference between 1.25 and 2 is obviously the cost, but also they screw directly onto an eyepiece. So the one you buy depends what eyepieces you have and which ones you intend to use the filter on.

1.25 eyepieces are standard issue, cheaper, not generally capable of views as wide as 2 inch eyepieces.

2 inch eyepieces are more expensive, heavier but can offer stunning wide open views.

Most people tend to have 1 or 2 (or more) 2 inch eyepieces for low magnification, large nebula, large open clusters or even to make it easier when searching or star hopping.

I personally dont think filters are a beginner purchase. I have viewed through 2 different ones but never owned one myself. Nothing beats a dark sky! I'm sure other might recommend a UHC filter or similar but they wont work with moon, planets, clusters or galaxies and tend to be specific to certain types of object.

If your main interest is deep sky objects like nebula then a DOB or reflector is definitely your best bet for any given budget.

Of course you can get gorgeous images of such objects in a frac but it will cost you.

Do you want a scope that tracks objects or are you happy to keep gently moving a telescope to follow them?

That is roughly correct yes although cool down time isnt usually a big factor for people. More likely to come down to portability if you want to travel with it and cost. Collimation is straight forward after a couple of goes so dont let it put you off completely.

Dont expect to see any colour in nebula, at all. I have seen SLIGHT green in M42 once in more than ten years stargazing.

You can see M81 and 82 in any type of scope over about 3 or 4 inches depending on how dark your sky is.

What is the logical upgrade for my EQ5 mount?

I have a 200p and use it purely for visual astronomy and often sketching. I like to be able to RA track for relaxing observing and sketching but I do not want goto and I dont do any astrophotography.

My reasons for thinking about an upgrade are that the clutches are not as secure as I would like them to be, even after being 'wound in' (one of the screws sheared of last time I did this so will not be adjustable if it needs taking in again in the future).

Also the polar alignment scope is a real pain to look through!

Finally the motor has its quirks. There is some 'slack' I think because after backtracking I cant just leave the motor to run without fast forwarding a little, otherwise it doesnt move. And sometimes, even with fresh batteries there is a delay of 5 seconds or more before it lurches into action.

Any opinions welcome.

Yeah I can totally see the temptation. Even looking at a less than perfectly corrected 70° AFOV is a very different experience to the typical 50° plossl.

I cant believe you can get 100° plus these days and I cant really image seeing that through an eyepiece. For the sake of my wallet and the weight on my focusser tube, I plan not to go there for the foreseeable future!

Best laid plans etc etc

Just got my 12mm BST starguider in the post. My mismatched collection of Vixen SLV 6mm & 9mm, new 12mm, 20mm Vixen NPL and 32mm 2inch SW panaview (only 5 eyepieces) together with tal barlow should be all I ever need. 

If the starguider is as good as I have read, then I do not plan to upgrade any until they break or I lose them!

I'm pretty sure they cover the range of what my scope is capable of (200p EQ5). Barlowed 6mm gives 333x magnification and my panaview gives 31x mag with a modest 70° AFOV.

Yes, I could upgrade in optical quality, obviously. But that comes at a price and my eyepiece set is essentially a good quality but budget collection.

Nevertheless, I think it is all I will ever need, which I think is pretty good going at £300 quid for the lot.

I was sad enough to pump the numbers into this great website to visualise the range of my eyepieces. This doesnt include any barlowed eyepieces.

Thanks for all the positive feedback. These are the rest that I had the chance to upload yesterday. Now need to to some more observing. Fingers crossed for wednesday night.

4 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Can’t see the point for the sake of £10 as the parts to make one would cost as much.... 👍👍

Yeah absolutely. If I had the spare time and the knowledge maybe. But I have a full time job, a 2 year old and NONE of the equipment required or knowledge. Would cost me over £100 and take me weeks!

Thanks for the info, I have been getting frustrated at losing night vision when sketching with my custom ed nail varnish torch!

Have just ordered myself a black diamond spot lite 160.

Will update after I test it out.

Thanks Mike, I didnt try sketching for a long time because I am not artistic at all and I didnt think it would add anything to my observing.

I am definitely converted now. I think my red torch is too bright tho because my view gets damaged after starting my sketches.

13 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I'd expect that as stopping down of aperture increases it will introduce increasing amounts of vignetting.

 

That makes sense. I think I have it, probably wont last long tho!

Thanks for the replies