bingevader

No need to apologise, John, the information you posted is still useful for anyone else reading the thread who might be wondering about 2" EPs.

2" EPs certainly aren't always better.

My plossls are probably the clearest and sharpest EPs I have, you just can't fit much in them!

I had the 7mm and still have the 5mm X-Cel LX EPs and they were very decent EPs in my 'scopes.

Heating on in September!?

What is this country coming to!

Always pays to read!
I just thought it was a tongue in cheek thread referring to a newly purchased Tak!🤦‍♂️ 🤭🤣

The EP holder is nice too btw, honest!

Hello and welcome.

On 14/08/2023 at 08:48, Richard N said:

His friend let him down I felt. Frankly, an 8 inch Dob is by no means always the right path to take. As it was, when I got home I researched some good quality binos for him and suggested they would be far more useful. I suspect that he will never get interested in astonomy after such a bad start but who knows? All a bit sad really. Still, if he gets good binos, they will have much more utility for him than that 8 inch Dob.

Should have come to SGL!

I think as a forum community we have always been very good at asking all the appropriate questions before suggesting anyone settle on a specific 'scope.

Why are you upgrading?

What is missing from what you already have?

I'm probably not the best person to ask anyway!

I've been 'upgrading' my EPs for the last 25 years.

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Let's think about the word 'before' in the phrase 'Before the Big Bang.'

'Before' requires there to be a point on the timeline, a point which separates before from after on that timeline. (The present is also such a point, but it is constantly moving, whereas the point which separates before from after can be arbitrarily defined and fixed.)

If we consider time to be a dimension which came into being at the big bang, there is no 'before' which can be placed on it because that dimension wasn't there. Accepting this isn't easy, but who wants easy? The idea that time wasn't there doesn't necessarily mean that nothing was there. Existence may have been going on in different dimensions, meaning that there was nothing 'before' the BB but there may have been something 'outside' it.

Also, the idea that there is a past, a moving present and a future is what kind of idea?  It is, dear friends, a theory and it is a theory which has taken some heavy knocks from theoretical physicists... I'm convinced we need a more generalized theory of time.

Olly

We can do nothing but consider.

How do we know that time as a dimension only come into 'being' (?) at the big bang?

If we take that as the premise for discarding it, then what of these other dimensions you mention?

If they existed, then why not time as a dimension also?

Or the 'outside' theory doesn't work.

There was nothing at all (including time), or there was something, and then all somethings are possible.

Although the photos we brought back showed more vivid colour, we definitely saw colour with the naked eye in Norway.

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau

Thanks, read it now!  But I will have to stick by my original comment and quote the article in saying maybe I am not, "many people". My experience, totally subjective and scientifically unproven, was of black, no grey or speckling.

I'm resisting the Spinal Tap reference to their Black Album, but only just!

On 10/04/2023 at 19:03, ollypenrice said:

No, I'm not having this. To quote Wittgenstein (and give my point a bit of gravitas ) language is public and if I asked you, or anyone else looking at my car, what colour it was you would say black. You would not say, 'It has no colour, it manifests the absence of colour.'  Come on now, admit it! 

Olly

But that's just language as you say, or semantics. We label everything. I don't break everything down into its constituent parts, but I recognise that that is what they are, a table, a cloud, a rainbow. Yes, of course, I would say a car is black, however, maybe not if I see yours now!

On 10/04/2023 at 18:23, vlaiv said:

Similarly - black is not absence of light - it is thing of contrast. You need to have something that is white in order to perceive something as black. If you have no reference (in absence of all light) - most people "see" sort of dark gray (see link I provided few posts up).

Maybe I'm not most people! That mine I was talking about: no shades of grey, no light what so ever, nothing hitting the retina, no something that is white, no reference, no dark grey, just black.

I couldn't see anything about black in the link, but I did skim read it.

9 hours ago, Moonshed said:

2) It must have always existed and could not have been created.

Not sure about this one. It's nothing. It never existed and never will.

I know this is diverging slightly from the nothingness, but I thought black wasn't a colour, but an absence of colour.

White being a mixture of all colours that we can split with a prism.

If you go down a mine and turn all the lights off, there's no shades of grey, just black.

The 7mm Nirvana is rather good in my 8" 'scope.

On 03/02/2023 at 17:30, Pete Presland said:

I saw it again on Wednesday morning, i thought it seemed a little duller and more diffuse than a couple of days previously. That may have been down to the sky conditions though.

It's moving away from us too though, so will dim as it does. its magnitude is dropping off rapidly at the moment.

When I first started with the ETX90, I had 2 Eps and a 2x barlow and they covered most of the bases (and still do as a grab and go or holiday 'scope).

Now however, although I don't have loads of eps, I do have more than 3! I find it depends on what I am looking at and the conditions.

At high magnification, you can never have too many, because the small difference in focal length can lead to a large difference in magnification.

Some nights on the planets I've been able to use the 6mm for fantastic views.

Other nights I have to drop back a mm or two (or more) to get a clear image.

The moon will take even more magnification to the point that the floaters get in the way!

The longer focal length eps I tend to use for the deep sky objects.

I like framing an object in it's surrounding sky, rather than going for as much magnification as possible.

I don't need as many at this end, but it's handy to have a spare or two if you are using filters.

I use one for star hopping to an object and then swap to the filtered ep for the better view (or any view at all with some objects!).

My ep numbers have grown a bit with the slow migration to 82º eps for wider field views and longer drift time.

The others haven't gone because I use them in school where we might have several 'scopes all needing eps.

Just my tuppence.

5 hours ago, thunderbird02 said:

I do not know whether this is the right place or not, but I came across this site whilst researching some telescopes, and I noticed that johninderby  was a avid user of this site, he was my cousin and this is to 

inform whoever it concerns that John passed away in October last year.

Oh goodness. Thanks for letting us know. God bless you and your family. Rest in Peace John. Thanks for all you did for SGL.

Just now, Franklin said:

I handle all my gear with same care and attention you would have when holding a new born child!

Uh, no. A Nagler is replaceable.

However, as others have said, the EP looks like it's been taken apart with very little care.

I'd have to ask the seller why, before even thinking of purchasing it.

There's a good reason it's at a knock down price.

20 hours ago, Stu said:

Of course that means low power but the nice wide fields of view suit targets like the Veil or NAN.

My filters are 2", so it's only ever going to be low power and wide field for me.

2 years later...

I enjoy seeing old threads revived when they are still relevant, rather than starting a new one.

I can't see why darkening the view would mean you couldn't use a filter on a smaller 'scope, but I'm sure someone will correct me if this is the case.

I have an O-lll filter, but it's barely been out of the box since I've had it.

I've seen the Veil nebula with a UHC filter and my 8" 'scope.

The filter did darken the background to the point that I couldn't see stars, but I've always assumed that that was the point.

You're trying to cut out bandwidths of light other than those that will help you see the nebula more clearly.

But as I said, I'm not sure why that would mean you couldn't use a smaller 'scope.

I have the 5mm and 7mm X-Cel LX EPs and have always found them to be very good in an 8" Dob at f/5.91.

6 hours ago, Zermelo said:

The 4mm not quite as much, it sometimes seems to suffer a bit in iffy conditions.

Don't all EPs?

I have the 4mm and 7mm Nirvanas and like them a lot, but don't wear glasses to observe either.

Was hoping for stars, but now it's cloud and rain. Would have settled for some decent rugby, but that looks grim too. About to observe some wine flowing from a bottle into a glass instead.

Just to throw another 'scope into the mix!

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/sky-watcher-heritage-150p-flextube-dobsonian-telescope.html

Great beginner's 'scope, slightly larger mirror than the 102 and very easy to set up and use.

If he is just short sighted (or long sighted for that matter), he can just take off the glasses.

If it's an astigmatism, then he'll need the glasses.

I'm short sighted, it's what I do.