Ratlet

I feel robbed that he used a ruler for scale rather than a tin of beans.  Or is that just eyepeices?

I thought about getting one of those, but went for a 102 ED.  Thank God.  My bank balance is suffering enough without a scope that is optimised for binoviewing.  And believe me, I've been ogling the binoviewers with both eyes.

I get a thoroughly indecent feeling when I think back to first seeing the veil with my 5" Newt.  Did it without a filter first and it was almost like one of those magic eye posters.  I could just suddenly see this slight difference in the dark.  Almost like a difference in texture rather than colour or shade.  Dropped in my SV202 Dual Band (doing double duty as an O3) and it just popped right out.  Magnificent.  I can't even remember if I tried the dob on it.

Or M33.  That was a belter.  Did a REALLY rough sketch because I was convinced I could see this faint blob but had a nagging doubt.  I'd star hopped to it so confidence was low.  Came in and checked Stellarium and there it was, the stars lined up.

I also like the thought that the photons from stars have been flying through space, largely unimpeded and ignorant of the universe only to end their enterally brief existence on the retina of some teuchter.  2.73 million years of vacuum and sporadic hydrogen atoms, waiting to make a beardy weirdo smile.

But, uh... back on topic.

Rather than going up by 2 inches for more of the same, have you considered going down a few inches for a wide field view?

I'm with @bosun21.  I had a similar experience with a Tair 3 used for imaging here:

It was pretty wild with fungus, but cleaned up nicely.  Had one of the elements in the wrong way round and you can see the impact on page 2.

Weirdly I was looking athe the same thing.  A guy in the us is selling them:

https://mwdastronomy.com/wp/product/autofocus-clutch-manual-release/

No idea on the quality, but looks good

4 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

With my 12" globulars are impressive. Galaxies are just grey smudges.

Whenever I get carried away about astronomy at work I always make it clear that I have absolutely no idea why looking at various flavours of gray smudges brings me such joy, because that's what most of the objects look like, but it does.

But Globular clusters in a big dob is something else.  Just spectacular.

6 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

The Star Trek telescope was Georgiou's family heirloom; she, Saru and Burnham used the scope to get a visual on an unidentified object. It was passed on to Burnham in Georgiou's will.

I'll guarantee that they did that because they knew someone would have a moan about the scope used lol.

Don't think you'll see a massive difference going from 8 to 10".  It's pretty diffuse.  I've not seen any detail with my 10" from bortle 4, but that because I've not spent a lot of time trying and as with any issues I have the problem is between the eyepiece and the ground.

For me there are some objects that benefit from a wider fov than my dob provides and my 5" newt does better because the shorter focal length (big fan of Auriga open clusters at low power).   I think Andromeda would benefit from a wider fov than the 10" could provide as you'll gain more context to make spotting the detail easier.

Since they are lithium ion does that mean if they hit you it would qualify as a salt and battery?

Don't have much to contribute of the light pollution filter side of things, but I'm a big proponent of stacking the moon and sky glow filter with a yellow.  I use it all the time when I'm doing planetary and find it helps quite a bit.  I like to call it the Baargain Contrast Booster because it's a fraction of the cost of the baader version.

7 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Yes but becoming a Vampire is a high price to pay 🧛‍♂️🦇 Regards Andrew 

I already work lots of night shift.  Does anyone know the carrying capacity of a bat?  Would be dead easy to get to a dark sky site.  

Ooh, but I'd have to give up garlic and replace it with neds.  Pretty sure if I tried snacking on some of the locals who are out after dark round me I'd fail a drugs test at work.

Swings and roundabouts eh?

2 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Just because you don't have a reflection in a mirror @JeremyS is no reason to dislike Newts 😅 

Regards Andrew 

Wouldn't that be great?  Presumably if your head isn't causing a reflection, then you wouldn't interfere with the light path.  You could replace the secondary with an eyepiece.  You could do visual with a RASA at F2!

Thanks mate.  Would be interested in seeing the control box also, or rather how you've mounted the box that controls the focuser 

I think like a lot of things in astronomy they either bug you or you don't really notice them.  Generally I don't notice them, but I really started with a newt and moved onto a dob.  Just started with a refractor so check back with me in a year and see how I feel (assuming the clouds part at some point).

To be clear, they are there, but i don't find they interfere (I've not had one cover a double star yet).

I also grew up with Hubble and for me DSO images look more authentic with the spikes.  It wouldn't surprise me if there is a trend in a decade or so for spiders making the JWST diffraction pattern.

You can't get rid of them but you can make them worse by not having the spider aligned.

Stu beat me to some of the links.  More discussion here:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/495707-spider-and-secondary-diffraction-what-to-do-what-to-avoid/

11 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

I would say a slight shift in focal length and the Svbony 7-21 is one of the sharpest out there - if you can stand the narrow field of view.

That's what did me in for a lot of zooms.  The fov generally is quite tight and only gets tighter as you zoom.  One of the reasons I like the 3-8mm is it doesn't change.

I've got the 8-24mm zoom.  Good views but tight fov.  Quite a heavy eyepiece though.

1 minute ago, Nik271 said:

Mars is small but very bright, it may appear colourless initially under low magnification becauseof this excessive brightness. I sometimes experience this with Jupiter using a large scope. If you allow more time for your eye to adapt you should start to see red hues. Otherwise something is wrong with the scope.

I suspect it's too bright as well.  Had this for the longest time in 2022 with all the planets when viewing through the 130pds.  Any and all contrast was gone and it was almost like someone was shining a light through a picture of the planets.

I found that higher power could help, however the eyepiece made a difference.  My BST 8mm is great for DSO but for some reason the image it produced for planets has terrible contrast and is 'over exposed'.  My 3-8mm svbony at 8mm produced a much better image.

I also found that using a cheap yellow and moon and sky glow filter helped, it gives a similar 'cut' to a baader contrast booster but with a yellow cast (it also costs about £10 for both filters.  Just get cheap ones).

You can also use a variable polarising filter which will dim the view.  If you're using a Barlow put one bit in the Barlow and the other on the eyepiece and you just need to rotate the eyepiece to dim the view.

9 hours ago, SwiMatt said:

Just came back from my observation spot in the woods where I had a session of a  couple of hours with tons of objects of all sorts. Transparency was bad, only Alpha and Beta Ursae Minori were visible.

Started by trying out to see Sirius' pup... impossible task, but Sirius looked like a twinkling caleidoscope, which was fun! So, seeing wasn't great either! I spent some time on Orion: beautiful M42 with trapezium with only 4 stars at 100-150x; then NGC 1981 and Collinder 69 (around Lambda Orionis). Sigma Orionis is a beautiful triple easy to split, and with averted vision I could split in 3 components also Struve 761 in the same FOV. Great great view.

Next area was Gemini and Auriga, I looked at the clusters M35, M36, M37 and M38, all beautiful. I had a tougher time to find M37, since I keep forgetting how much dimmer than M36 it is! M38 is my fav of the four with its cross pattern. Turn towards Perseus and the double cluster just fits the FOV at 60x.

Finally I swung around to find some fuzzies: M3 was underwhelming, but that's also the worse side of the sky in terms of sky pollution. M94 in Canes Venaticii looks almost stellar at 60x and shows some fuzziness at higher magnification (by comparison with the only star in the field of view, which came into focus easily even at 150x). I finally looked at a couple of double stars, namely Cor Caroli and Algieba.

I finished the night with a look at some fun objects in the 10x50 binoculars: Beehive, Pleiades, Kemble's cascade, double cluster, Stock 2 (barely visible) and the funny Cheshire Cat in Auriga. Fun fact, tonight I split Mizar for the first time without visual aid.

It was a fun (and cold) night! And realized that the best astronomy buy of 2024 was the string to hold my glasses around my neck... it makes me 40 years wiser

I love my glasses string.  I wear a fishing vest when I'm out and if my glasses go in one of those pockets they're effectively gone forever.

2 hours ago, wookie1965 said:

All excited when this arrived until I unpacked it there are smudges on the inside of the optical cell maybe I can clean that

Worse is it won't take 1.25mm eyepieces and the vixen plates I have don't fit it needs narrower ones. 

Did they clean it with a banana peel?

Do you have any pictures of the finished unit?  Are you still using it?  I'm thinking of building one myself...

My absolute top tip is to either scan or photograph them and upload them here.  I love seeing sketches.  You'll get good feedback and often people will see things in your sketch that you didn't realise was significant.

The cloudy nights sketching sub forum is also pretty positive and a good place to post them.

11 minutes ago, Elp said:

Don't worry, it's not Tak related. Actually it is, a different sort of Tak.

Tak-umar?

41 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I think if this image were any better it might make Hubble blush!

I did a quick google to check that statement.  Honestly I think it already does!

https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2006/14/1876-Image.html

If it weren't for the diffraction spikes I think you'd struggle to tell them apart.

8 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Truly awesome Alan. Thanks for sharing it, it really makes observing it visually so much more fascinating. Your image is exactly how I see it visually through my 4" refractor! With a large dose of imagination of course!! 

Averted imagination is it mike?

I use a Uni POSCA pen for my white stars.  It's got a fibre tip.  I've sometimes found that ballpoint style can leave a sort of ring instead of a dot.

Some cheap black card stock can be a bit of a mare for blending. It doesn't seem to want to play ball and the pencil/pastel just dusts off.

I also second Mary McIntyre on youtube.  She also presents the Radio Astronomy Podcast from Sky at night.  Her youtube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Spiceyspiney

I'd also suggest going for normal pencil on paper.   It's a bit harder I guess to relate to what you see to what you sketch, but you can invert the image in basically any photoediting software and it's like hitting a bit I WIN button.  Makes them look awesome.

Sketching from photos is good practice, but you end up with LOADS more stars in a photo than you'd see through an eyepiece which can complicate matters.  Using other people's sketches as a reference can sometimes be easier, or some really old astro photos done with film/.

I really need to get out sketching again

You might want to consider some 90 degree elbow connectors if going for super short cables.  I had a near miss last year with my camera where the mount rotated too much and put a fair bit of strain on the cable.  A 90 degree connector would just pull the cable out if there was too much tension.  

What angle do you have the scope at when you collimate?  I made the mistake of collimating with it flat when I tilted it up to observe the mirror would shift slightly and affect the collimation.  Now I collimate at 45°.

I'm not doubting Mr Spock's diagnosis (he knows far more than me) and is probably correct, it's just afaik there is nothing to be done about astigmatism, so I'm grasping at straws.  Also I think the GIFs you post have a fair bit of seeing going on and there are bits in the second gif that makes the star look out of alignment from the diffraction rings.