DirkSteele

I could watch content like that all day. Great video.

Mine would probably accuse me of adultery. My APM LZOS scopes would be jealous of the Takahashi scopes, and the Taks would be suffering green eyed monster towards the LZOS, with all of them wondering why I keep playing the field rather than just committing to one of them.

And the oldest scope, the C11 would be wondering if it is really lost all of its lustre as it is never used any more.

😉

34 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Beautiful telescope! I have always had an attraction to LZOS telescopes. What is the FL on the 115? I’m guessing around 800.

805mm

23 minutes ago, John said:

Have you seen Matthew lately ? 😄

 

Ha, still young enough (sort of) to get away with it!

Last night was the BSIA star party in Regent’s Park. One attendee lent me his NV device which was a lot of fun but I did some transitional observing too! Took my APM LZOS 115 f/7. 
 

Here with the NV device.

And with the Televue 24mm Panoptic. Likely pointing at NGC 457 or the Double Cluster when I snapped the pic.

Baker Street Irregular Astronomers star party in Regent’s Park last night. We did solar early in the session and then waited for darkness to fall. Did a brief shoot out between these weighty lads using my APM LZOS 115 as well.

I have certainly found myself thinking about the Heritage 130 for air travel. The ability to compress down and put on a photo tripod certainly makes me think. Would need to make a shroud for the top half but I do think those extra mm would really pay dividends at a dark site.

Might make my Fc-100DC a bit redundant as it was bought for this purpose (copying @Stu on how to disassemble and pack for flying) and might raise more than an eyebrow from my wife! Scope 10 might put me in the dog house.

The forecast for last nights Baker Street Irregular Astronomers star party in Regent’s Park promised clear skies and they delivered. One attendee came along with a Night Vision device (purchased from SGLs very own @GavStar) and he let me use for the back end of the meeting when it was getting dark (we had done some solar in the earlier part of the evening).

Using a manual mount, under London light pollution and a darkening but not completely dark for most of the session sky, it made my life quite a bit easier! Can see why some have got in to it. Rather surprised some attendees by how quick I can star hop as well. Who needs GoTo? 😉

Very quickly had a queue behind my scope.

Started with M3

Moved on to M13

NGC 457 (the ET cluster) in Cassiopeia

M103

The Double Cluster

Tried for M57, but was a bit low in the muck and the low power EP was making it distinctly stellar in appearance so even though I know it was there as was in the right spot, not a definitive spot

Didn’t just use enhancement though, revisited 457 and the DC with a regular eyepiece before grabbing M44 and M35 which were harder than they should be but was looking back across the Hub building and staff has turned on some lights to clean up.

Had a quick peak at Albireo to finish.

Here is my APM LZOS with the NV device.

A few posts back I showed that I had purchased volumes 2 and 3 of the The Night Sky Observers Guide. I mentioned the need to complete things left me somewhat exposed as Volume 1 appeared to be out of print. Well it did not take long to post a wanted advert in the SGL classifieds. It was answered quickly. big thanks to @Plantins.

Now I just need to pick up Volume 4.

See, I told you!! 😉

It might look like an APM LZOS triplet at last night’s Baker Street star party, but I promise a Takahashi is very much on show.

Awesome work. A great project to undertake.

Had a nice view of M3 last session with my Canon 15x50is binoculars.  Showed a remarkable amount of granulation across the face considering it was 50mm aperture.

4 hours ago, JeremyS said:

When I started on the Ethos journey 2 years ago knew I wouldn’t rest until I’d completed the set……

Snap! A real favourite of mine. Was taking a look at rather large Kite sitting at the top of a tree when I took this pic.

Recently picked up the 13mm too but not used much yet. I fear the need to complete sets may also grab me now I have two.

Good service again. Added some books and another Oklop bag for my smaller APM LZOS refractors . Ordered late evening on Tuesday, dispatched, Wednesday and arrived Thursday. Incredibly well paid as well.

Adding a few more books to my library after the delivery last week. This haul courtesy of FLO. One issue is I do not own The Night Sky Guide Volume 1 and it it seems to be out of stock everywhere. The completion-ist part of my personality will scratch away at me if I cannot locate a copy.

While I greatly admire those who make their own scopes, I lack those skills but I am curious to learn a bit more, hence two more of the books.

Also bought another Oklop bag. This time for two smaller APM LZOS scopes. It’s my third one and I quite like them.

I would also note, that while you mention wanting to view the planets (as above, better in the second half of the year), it is also not astronomically dark now until around 10:30pm so deep sky objects will be better after this time.  Unfortunately, we are not too far away from no astronomical darkness for a few months in the UK, not that it has ever stopped me before.

Awesome report. Would love to take a tour like that.

My proudest moment of reviewing scopes and other Astro equipment over the last 10+ years was receiving an email from Al Nagler asking if he could cite several passages from the review of the 21mm Ethos and the Delos eyepiece reviews on my site and include a link to the full review. I had a astro club meeting that evening and I couldn't stop smiling the whole meeting. Which was noticed more than once.

Nice review.  Seems like a bargain eyepiece, even noting some of the short comings you highlighted.  

On that, Sidgwick gives the formula 4 x (1.22 x wavelength x Focal Ratio²) to calculate depth of focus.  As it is proportional to focal ratio squared, the f/7.4 Tak would have 2.2x the depth of focus compared to the f/5 Dobsonian.  I wonder if that might be a contributor to your perception of poor field curvature in the 12-inch?  Intrinsically, the Dob with its 1,520mm focal length should show less curved field than the 740mm focal length Tak (though the relationship between field curvature and focal length is not quite as straight forward as with a Newtonian, but it still primarily focal length).  Perhaps the focal ratio is also stressing the zoom.  Virtually all eyepieces look good at f/10, but f/4-5 tends to sort the run of the mill from the superstars.

26 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

@DirkSteele Hi, what a great selection to add to your astronomy related collection! This might sound silly, but do you yet own "Turn Left At Orion"? It's great book! 

Been on the shelf for many years. I was already pretty experienced by the time it was published but I bought to see why so many recommended it to beginners. Short answer is it is great.

Big delivery of books to add to the Astronomy library. 

The one I most excited about has recently been published. The Binocular Handbook by Holger Merlitz. If you know binocular reviews online you probably consider Holger a preeminent reviewer of them. A scientist by profession, he brings a lot of technical know how to the table. Hoping to learn plenty of new things to improve my own ability to review optics.

It is an interesting question.  I am not sure your thought experiment of a 5inch vs 8inch would see the smaller scope beat on any object (caveat shortly), but having been doing this for a very long time and used more scopes than I can count, I have found high quality refractors typically make up for 2-3 inch deficiency in aperture by the improved contrast against obstructed scopes where the same extent of detail can be seen even if the image itself is dimmer.  The obvious exception is something like M33.  That is very low surface brightness and I have had scopes quite a bit bigger than 8" fail to show it where as a 4-5" scope shows it pretty easily.  Something like the E and F stars in the trapezium mentioned above also does not surprise me.  If seeing is decent, those two stars are a good test for spherical abberation in smaller scopes as the dim stars against bright glowing nebula means they are smeared out by SA and rendered invisible.  The impact of extra diffraction from spider vanes and secondary could have a similar impact.

Monthly Baker Street Astronomers meeting in Regent’s Park. Saw some lightning and a few rain showers but did manage some lovely views of the moon during breaks in the cloud. Sadly, sucker holes abounded tonight so not much else was seen.

I am very fortunate. My in-laws own a place only a mile or two from the path of totality so looks like this will be my first total solar eclipse since France in 1999. 

Decent session for about 3 hours. A lot of open clusters. Started with M35 (bit close to the moon) before moving on to the three Messier OCs in Auriga before setting up camp in Cassiopeia for a while and taking in about a dozen. Swung over to M3 to take in someone old rather than young before heading to Hercules and M13 and M92. Also had a quick look at M51 and M81/82 before finishing with M57 which had just cleared the tree line.

Was colder than I expected so was not quite dressed appropriately (weekend away) but clouds stopped play just before 1am.