bomberbaz

5 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

I'm laughing imagining you standing in your garden motionless,  staring up at Orion for two hours straight 😂

in just his longjohns, surely he will still be cold 🤣

2 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

How do you find the IS binoculars compared to a normal pair of binoculars. I have an old pair of prinlux 7x50 bins and was thinking if researching for a pair of IS ones

Lee 

A dream to use lee and these are very lightweight. As an example of their capability, you can see the same through 10x30 stabalised as you can in normal 10x50. 

I am guessing that the 16x42 I just bought will be close to 15x70's in capabilities. 

I hope to give them a whirl this weekend and will report my first light.  

I did a review of all 8" dobs available from FLO, details can be found in the link below. I prefered the stellalyra.

Decided to upgrade my bins from the current Canon 10x30 IS to some Bresser 16x42 IS. 

Quick check on terrestrial views show image just as steady although seems a little sharper.

Weight wise they are the same but the Bresser seem to have a better built feel to them.

Bring on the clear skies. 

Just wanted to know if anyone has these and what their findings are.

Interesting they quote a modified Ortho design but want to know how that stands up in reality. StellaLyra 30mm 2" KITAKARU RPL Eyepiece | First Light Optics

Cheers all

Steve

Hi and welcome to SGL. 

So you have a very broad range of requirements there, something that is not really possible from that budget. There are very many different strands to astronomy and you are trying to cover a very large part of it so your going to need help.

I am not trying to fob you off here but you need better help that could be achieved online by finding and visiting a local astronomy centre/club and discussing face to face so you can get to the hub of what you really want for $300. 

3 minutes ago, LDW1 said:

I like that scope, right now Telescopes Canada shows them at $349 C + tax and shipping that s where I bought mine for that price, last summer. But with new stock the price might go up a bit, I think through the Svbony site it might be $20-30 more but the shipping might be higher. As I said with my 40mm Panoptic and my collection of Morpheus eps the stars are pinpoint and the views are great.

A bit more expensive in the UK but posted I paid equivalent of $460 C.

It looks perfect for my needs and I had grown weary researching plus the svbony just seemed to be perfect for the price. (Sub £300 GBP)

I have only read a few of the posts so sorry if I am repeating others.

I have actually been looking at eyepieces tonight potentially for an F5.5 frac and so could be right in the bolt hole with what I am commenting.

These are something new but are a clone of APM UFF's:  StellaLyra Telescope Eyepieces for Sale Online | First Light Optics, the ultra flat field versions. 

I am drawn to the 30mm for my needs but I already own the APM 24,18 & 10 versions which get used in an F4.7 pair of bins. (I also use a 24mm in my F4.8 dob)

They are simply superb to use but the only downside is the FOV isn't giving you a lot more than you already have, nothing in the case of the 10mm.

However what they are superb and will give you pretty much a flat, well correct image across the entire fov.

Something a lot of people overlook is that a well corrected eyepiece with a narrower FOV (65 degree in this case)  is actually giving you a better return than a poorly corrected UWA type eyepiece. EG 100% performance of 65 degree is 65, 75% of 80 is 60. 

Given you are using an F5  OTA then consideration of performance needs to be top next to price.

7 minutes ago, LDW1 said:

My 90mm Svbony, f5.5 is pretty pinpoint even compared to my f5.4 Televue NP101, on the great seeing nites in my Bortle 4 backyard.

How are you find the svbony, you seem to get a lot of scope at a very reasonable price. Dual speed focuser is great for the price. 

1 hour ago, R26 oldtimer said:

If the 114 Newtonian has a focal length of 1000mm, it's better to steer clear...

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/183319-jones-bird-how-to-avoid-it/

 

Beat me to it, first thing that came into my mind on reading the OP's question.

12 hours ago, Stu said:

I’m interested to know why you are thinking of pairing them up, as they are similar focal lengths, would a wider field scope such as an 80ED or f7 100mm not add something different?

I was toying with the idea of using a pair of long focal length for outreach although not done much of that recently tbh, then maybe slapping a reducer in the TAL to bring down the FL for a wider field option in the field. However @RobertI comment below seems to kibosh that idea. 

However the main reason is I am missing a shorter FL scope. I used to use a reduced mak but that got sold and wish now I hadn't done so.

12 hours ago, RobertI said:

As for build quality, it’s very solid, the focuser is an ok single speed Crayford, it has a rotatable focuser tube and a removable dew shield. It doesn’t feel cheap but also doesn’t feel special or refined. One point is that with a 2” diagonal there is insufficient in focus, so I have to use a 1.25” diagonal and cannot accommodate 2” eyepieces as a result. 

So I could still put a SW 0.85 reducer on the 100ED which would leave me with a TAL @F10 and the 100ED reduced to F7.65 but a quick view of a eyepiece spreadsheet shows the differences between the F10 tal & F7.65 100ED is pretty small.

Maybe I should be looking at a richfield refractor . The stellamira F6 110mmED or even the Bresser 102 F5.9 are both reasonable options.

Either would barlow up to give me the longer FL frac if/when needed. The former is a far better bit of kit although quite a bit heavier and the latter comes it much less expensive. Given it is for richfield viewing and not planetary, would taking the lower cost option be that big a deal?

As always I end up thinking myself into a corner!

Cheers all for your responses so far.

Steve

Has anybody got one of these Tal OTA's that can give me some feedback please. They are obviously 100mm and F10 so I would have thought pretty good with CA. I also believe the strehl ratio is superb on them and they are well made. But how does this pan out to the following:

• What is the weight like
• How is the Colour correction 
• Overall construction and aesthetics
• has anyone run a side by side with a 100ED scope or similar modern OTA

For anyone wondering I am just thinking about another OTA to use in conjunction with my own 100ED on the Skytee setup which has a spare clamp since the 127 mak went.

Cheers all.

Plenty of watching material here. I actually came across this on prime but it's available here for free. 33 interesting videos to watch.

Who doesn't love a bit of green, well plus white, oh and black with silver!

Now on PC I can see this better, agree with the walking noise.

Spikes, could there have been a hair or similar actually inside the tube. A good clean would be my first course of action.

Washing line, telephone line, tv arial or similar in the light path

12 hours ago, Clarkey said:

I would certainly be interested in your results. I currently run 2 min subs, but the theory tells me I should be looking at much lower. I have thought about reducing further, but the amount of data it would produce per image would be pretty serious. A full night session is already about 10 Gb and takes a lot of number crunching.

I think I'm going to need a bigger drive......

I will keep you abreast of my results once I havea decent data grab. I calculated that a 6 hour data grab would be circa 60gb in size.

That is some processing pile not to mention the data transfer itself from the asiair will be an overnight job. 

On 28/01/2023 at 11:00, DSviewer said:

I read that if ZWOs such as the 294 have amp glow then Dark Frames a must

Not darks, dark flats. However I now know the answer is yes.

Thanks for answering though.

14 minutes ago, Veloman said:

Haven't graduated to grass yet- still on the patio.

Ah patios, you have another potential issue there. If your patio is solid such as stone, then ignore the rest of this post, but if it's wood, take note.

Wood patios or decking is actually surprisingly springy. Putting your scope onto one of these will add to steadiness issues with the scope and should be avoided.

Even my stone laid patio does have some bounce in it and although it won't be a problem for visual, it does affect my imaging rig. 

I recently carried out sharpcap sensor calibration for my badly light poluted garden, consequently I have dramatically shortened my exposure time and I am so far feeling pretty optimistic. 2 minutes to 15 seconds as default.

Now both images below have just less than 1 hours total integration which can be clearly seen from the noise in the image, this is clearly expected with so little data.

However what I also did was to run a comparison of similar integration time using exposure times of two minutes, my previous default and I have found the results are tidier. Tighter stars being the main thing but less gunk within the results. 

I aim to try and get  a decent amount of like for like data (4 hours plus) to show a direct comparison and put up some results to show hopefully that the optimisation works.

I would incidentally be interested to hear from anyone else who uses the same.

Steve

Depends how long a few years is! The skies are stil there although there are some changes, a few novas, some comets, more light polution and very many more eyepieces and other astro gadgets. Welcome back. 

No problems with either @StefanS89, that looks a little worrying.

When did yoy get it and where have you been keeping it stored?

On 26/01/2023 at 10:58, Budgie1 said:

From what I could work out; the JPEG version is like a thumbnail & is used for the likes of the ASIAir app & ASIStudio for quick preview of the images, rather than opening the full FITS file. 

On 26/01/2023 at 10:59, iantaylor2uk said:

The small jpg files are the images that are shown on the tablet during imaging. The FITS files are the full sized images used for processing.

 

So I can safely delete them can I?

I had to up my dec settings twice recently, same warning as well.

Try uninstall and reinstall lee. However before you do check you phones own software is up to date. 

The images takes by the ZWO setup I use are saved as FITS which are the ones used for processing. Can anyone tell me the reason for it saving all the data duplicate (rather roughly) in jpeg format too?