bomberbaz

I researched this method myself and it had been my intention to install one to my Taurus dob, however after listening to a respected members advice I decided to have the makers install a DSC. To be fair the setting circle and gauge are basically diy DSC, just a lot lower tech and more importantly a lot cheaper.

Well I also use either a laser or rdf to get me close, the laser is more fun though. I do also have the angle gauge too, really must give it a whirl sometime. I think the more things you try the better, just gives you something to fall back on.

Bet one of these would work well Nigel Sky-Watcher Evolux 82ED OTA | First Light Optics

Not sure what your trying to achieve but the 224MC is primarily seen as a planetary camera hence why a barlow might be useful although specifically a 2.5, Not sure where that comes from. The type of barlow magnification would depend as much upon the focal length of the scope it is attached to as well as the camera itself. A 200p gives the two images of Jupiter with and without barlow when using the 224mc. The 2x would be a reasonable image to me but others may want to try and get some more out of it. A camera will pick up a any poor image quality far more than your eye ever can when an image of "an object" is made and your looking at it on a screen. So to be honest it might be better just trying your barlow out and seeing what's what. If it's no good, you could consider buying something better. (There is always the classified section on these forums) Tele extenders (a type of barlow) are preferred by some or a traditional 3 glass element (or more) barlow are generally better quality but I am not an expert.

Beast and a half. My wife would be really happy with that in the lounge (not really)

As your signature says, your a low tech, old school kinda guy and what you do works for you. I wish I had your patience. Sadly, not my greatest virtue although improving with age as this post testifies too. (Like a fine wine) 😆 Personally and to clarify I have actually had the tools for a while, just never used them hence the new to me (should have stated in use). I just wish I had tried earlier!

I was observing last week and two farm vehicles big mothers with 50 squillion watt headlights (I turned away to preserve my NV but they seemed mahoosive) passed me by from my roadside pitch with what seemed like 6 inches of my observing spot. I stood, with my back to road in front of the dob to make sure they didn't hit the dob which I realised was far to close to said road. It was quite scary actually. 😬

Ok so nothing new here, many of us have done star hopping with a RACI finder but last night I did it for the first time with my new to me RACI finder with accompanying EP and found it a cinch. Just thought I would go through the equipment used and how I couldn't fail even with horrid milky skies later on. These days technology is getting easier to use and my eyesight goes from bad to worse every eye checkup so this was something of a revelation for me. Finder - TS Optics 80mm RACI (F4.2) with helical focuser coupled with a TS Optics 20mm - 70 degree illuminated reticule eyepiece. When coupled together you obviously get a nice crosshair to aid with centering but also an extremely useable x16.5 magnification and 4.8 degrees FOV. In case you don't know, this is an illuminated reticule crosshair 😂 Map - Sky Safari 6 Plus which, like some others has a telrad overlay which as we know gives a 4, 2 & 0.5 degree reticule. In this case the main interest is the 4 degree which sits just inside my eyepiece FOV so they marry together perfectly. In my eyepiece I can see pretty much every star in the 4 degree circle. Now I have mentioned this before but for those that do not know my home skies are blooming awful because of severe LP, I struggle to see the Albireo double naked eye and that's a mag 3. Last night with the setup above I was mainly hopping using stars of around 5 but did occasionally go down as far as a 7. However I could easily have gone much deeper but there are sufficient stars under 7 to negate such. It even managed to find the dumbbell which to me was amazing. Officially I have Bortle 6-7 skies here but locally it feels like an 8. I started at a suitable bright-ish starter star and from there with phone in hand, app open it was very quick to move from one star to the next, easy to refer back to SS6+ all the time and no remembering long star hops, (something I am useless at),. The telrad overlay gave excellent reference compared to finder FOV in the map and I moved accross the sky in good time from one target to the next, and the crosshair is great for centering stars if needed as the FOV is obviously very large & well, it just helps . As mentioned later on the skies got quite milky with high mist but the finder setup still punched through sufficiently to continue hopping. It is a bit difficult to get across how impressed I was with this setup but previously when using a basic 50x10 raci finder from my home the results were dismal and last night it was both satisfying and quite a pleasure. 2.5 hours seemed to fly by. One other point worth noting it is pretty low tech so even technophobes should master this with out too many problems. The fact you are reading this should mean you could handle the setup 😅

I have seen a few times on hear a mention of the Leica Zoom and that it is a cracking zoom, but the only one I have seen is a spotting scope zoom. I did a bit of looking around (far too much spare time these days) and found there are a lot of spotting scope zooms from some notable providers such as Nikon, Swarovski and similar but do these make a suitable companion for an astronomy scope. For one you have to get one with a bayonet 1.25" fitting although I have no doubt a connection could be made with the various adaptors available these days. Two is the specifications used by these providers for spotting zooms bear no resemblance to the enticements, sorry I mean descriptions 😂 we see for dedicated astronomy eyepiece. I know zooms are generally quite tight in AFOV when compared to some of the ultra wide astro glass, so nothing new there in that the spotting variety seem to be of a similar disposition. But what is the difference, if indeed any to astronomy mainstream zooms such as a Baader MkIII? cheers

A Taurus 350 Pro dob, 14" in the old scale with DSC. As per my signature 👍

Yay it has arrived. Bought a head strap with side fitting for the thinner torch. Very well made, no cheap elastic and of a woven low stretch fabric. Thanks @Greymouser for the pointer. 👍 Perfect size to accept my red torch of which I have two. First pic torch with just me and my happy face 😁 2nd torch on low power and third with home made diffuser on. Needless to say the latter will be used. Very easy to operate, on off button at rear of torch and simple push button affair, plus always red so no accidental white light worries. It is actually quite a bit duller than it looks in the picture (tried and tested already) and I have no concerns about using it. We are Borg!

If you are thinking of getting one of these, now would be a good time. Unistellar eVscope eQuinox - Rother Valley Optics Ltd

any results to report on yet

finance officer, 😂 my brother in law refers to his other half as the entertainments manager when I ask if they are coming out

No, although to be fair I haven't really looked for it

Both is the simple answer. If it is settled and protected from any winds, open. Any wind about and/or exposed site then put shroud on.

I got to thinking about this after the recent, "how many EP's do you have" thread. In this someone referenced the minimum you might need and @Don Pensack posted up with the following rule of thumb type working out which is magnification per inch of telescope. Low power: 3.5-10x/inch Medium power: 10-20x/inch High Power: 20-30x/inch UltraHigh power: 30-50x/inch I am not saying this is wrong or right although it probably lends itself better to the USA where skies are usually more settled than the UK. I think those powers are over optimistic for my UK skies where we have the joys of the polar jet stream to contend with which often sits on top of us. Often mentioned on this forum as the maximum power one should work on over here is a simple x200, where anything more than this should be seen as a bonus. This simple rule does away for the x power/inch calculation but does it actually make things simpler for anyone, especially the beginner. Most of us have read or are at least familiar with this thread. It seems simple to seasoned observers but to a complete novice maybe not so, although it does align itself with the x200 rule of thumb which makes it all simpler but what does anyone else think? Is the x200 rule realistic for the UK skies or are there any of us who are regularly pumping it up to far higher levels? Personally I have kind of disregarded the x200 RoT, although not entirely as it does always stick in the back of my mind when observing. Instead, I do kind of use Don's formula although not in the same scale and also in that I have a range I consider lower, medium and high power as well as glass I consider for those moments when seeing is excelling normal conditions and one can ramp it up. If I am talking about my dob I have glass at 2 sizes for low power, 3 size med, 2 size high and a TV Nagler zoom for ultra-high power moments. Incidentally these work out at roughly 7x per inch aperture so I think there definitely is something in this way of calculating your eyepiece range. However as I travelled further down this rabbit hole I am reminded of the 2x aperture in millimetres. For my scope that's x700 as a maximum. 🙀 EEK! Imagine trying to track your object manually at that level, the highest magnification where I manually tracked and coped with it ok were times 420 mag, I doubt I will go higher than that often if indeed at all. At the end of the day though, does it all matter. You can have an eyepiece case stuffed full of glass but I can guarantee most of you, me included always reach for a particular eyepiece when you know what the task in hand is. For me the Nikon12.5mm eyepiece is my galaxy hunting EP of choice. (X140 = X10 per inch aperture) without fail and my line filter eyepiece the APM 24. Those two alone cover probably around 70% of what I observe. That said, every one has been used at least once in my last two sessions. So for all the formula of what you need, filling gaps in the eyepiece armoury as EG "I have a space between the 8 and 12mm eyepieces" and so on, do we buy what we want, or what we really need? Oh and I have said this before, I have no intention of selling any of my perceived excess eyepieces because as soon as I do, you can bet your life I would be reaching for it when on a session. 😂😂

Report from last nights (27/09/2022) foray into the deep dark night sky. I did something different last night and I won’t be doing it again because although it was enjoyable, it was awkward. Ok all I did was not make a viewing list. I like to do this because I can also pre input this into sky safari for use with the scope DSC system. Also means the paper version of the same list can form a viewing reference but I am sure many of you do similar. Actually I also forgot my contacts so rather than fight with glasses misting, I went viewing commando style. Because of my astigmatism this meant less than perfect stars but to be totally honest, it wasn't that bad and I may yet learn to live without either glasses or contacts when observing. Anyway, got to my close by darkish site (30 mins drive), forgot to measure my skies but seemed remarkably light last night around my observing spot or maybe my eyes are just getting better. I could easily see details around me and find either my observing chair or footstool without needing the torch. I am changing the footstool by the way, it’s single height isn’t working well for me, I need something with dual height. Back to lists, I need to prepare a list with objects high up but preferably not at zenith. My back is stiff this morning through stooping to view at the eyepiece from aforementioned footstool. Early on tried I planetary but it wasn’t settled enough, so decided to leave that until later. Tested the scope performance on a few doubles to see how things were in that aspect and a little fuzzy but not awful. A quick peep at the dumbbell showed this to be very clear and bright so seeing appeared good. Excellent, onto nebula it was. I did my usual nebula favourites (Eyepiece 24mm APM UFF and astronomic OII/UHC – exit pupil 4.95mm), experimenting with UHC and OIII on objects the veil, crescent, M27 already mentioned, N.Am neb plus some new ones and this part made the night more interesting. I managed for the first time to get the soul nebula, nothing dramatic, but I was happy enough with what I did see to call it in. I also bagged vdB 1 nebula just off Caph which is a reflection nebula and was incredibly hard to see. IC 59 Gamma Cassiopeiae was also a faint detection but my favourite new target from last night, the Pacman nebula also in Cassiopeiae. A little beauty visual and very much along the lines of the crescent (This could be my new favourite nebula). I tried both UHC and OIII and although both worked, the OIII gave the best view to my eyes with good structure and shape very much as per it’s name. I find this (OIII filter best) slightly surprising as it is listed as being an HII region although reports I have read point towards it being sensitive to OIII spectrum. I am not sure exactly how this works and warrants further investigation. Time for some galaxy bashing now (Eyepiece Nikon Nav 12.5mm x140). Started round at M101 which was just visible. Despite its apparent opacity it did yield some fairly strong hints of spiral structure using averted and blinking vision techniques. From here I moved to the right for my old favourites of M81,82 and the garland, M82 being the best out of these three with some excellent structure around the middle section. (I may sketch this next time out, it really is a lovely object to view) I stayed in this area to see how deep I could go. Moving through a range of NGC galaxy above bodes to see how deep I could get. I moved through objects going as deep as circa 130-140M LY and brightness stated up to 12.1 on SS6 plus, but as 13.2 on stellarium. More investigation needed here on which is true and a further reminder of the need for the pre prepared lists. However I seem to be reminded that someone told me on a visit to dunsop bridge that stellarium magnitudes tend to be lower than they should be. Was it you @Uplooker? Finishing off galaxy hunting with a swing around to M33 which was there but difficult, not really yielding any detail to speak of. And a night wouldn’t be complete without saying hello to Andromeda. I then dropped down to M45 to see if the higher magnification/darker background would help with seeing some of it’s reflection and boom! as good as I can recall seeing it. Lots of bright nebulosity with hints of swirl that we often see in the images of this beautiful DSO. Very satisfying and this warranted a little time so got comfy and drank in the views. I have to say the Nikon eyepiece performed impeccably here and really does hit the sweet spot for galaxy viewing although that said, I must try further experimenting and differing magnification. It was getting later now so did a quick doubles bash hitting Rasalgethi, 95 Herc, Mizar, Albireo, Omicron1 and 53 Cygni. Splits were lovely down to x215 which was needed on 53 Cyg, first time splitting that and very satisfactory and wouldn't mind getting this with the frac. Slight problems occuring when doing the doubles in that whilst doing this I noticed the Baader zoom kept suffering from misting, has anyone else suffered with this, do I need an eyepiece heater? Strange as it didn't occur with anything else I used. Finishing off time I took in Nepture, Uranus (no moons seen) then Saturn was next, easily getting the cassini division and hitting Iapetus, titan and rhea although it took me a good whilst at the eyepiece to confirm these and needed averted vision. Then onto Jupiter. Have to say it was a bit of a disappointment after all the other great objects before it. Finally I had a few minutes on each of M2 and M15 (love a globular) as I had the right eyepiece in the scope before calling it a night. Tired but satisfied it had been an excellent session. In closing I took both eyepiece case instead of my usual specific dob eyepiece case. Having the added flexibility of zooms, shorter fixed eyepiece and a tele extender from my other eyepiece case made the evening that much more enjoyable although the levels to which I experiment are dropping these days. One other thing I did notice was neither the TS 28mm or the Nikon 17mm saw any use during the night although these do see more action on clusters and I purposely steered clear of these on a moonless night. Looking forward to another clear night, now where is my sketching pad 😁

great for busting doubles and globulars

Hope this is ok to post here. Just seen this on the news and was blown away, incredible footage.

Indeed, Dart, or parts thereof could fly straight and out the other side. Unlikely though.

I know others have posted links but this is for NASA TV media. Live stream on youtube of the crash. ETA and destruction of DART 00.14 GMT, 7.14pm Eastern time.

Seems to be a lot of rather disparaging reviews on there Michael, although it is apparently collimatable.

Some interesting opinions on here, nothing wrong with not having the eyepiece bug, certainly helps your wallet. When I first started my glasses wearing kind of dictated what I used to buy as I too have astigmatism, but I pay little notice to it these days as I use contact lens which all but eradicate it. I don't even bother with contacts when looking through my refractors as the exit pupil is so small for most eyepieces that the astigmatism is not really a noticeable problem. I believe it's called learning to live with your disabilities. Personally, some of my most recent eyepiece purchases have been impulse buys rather than I really need them buys. (Baader and Nagler zooms to name two) However, I have had the Nikons in my signature for five + years and I have no intention/wish/need to sell them. The TS and APM 24 are similarly long term and no plan to move on. I like the extra wide views of the first three and the flat field the 24mm APM gives. I also like to know I am holding a thing of beauty when I pick it up, a piece of fine engineering with years of design experience in its making, something that I know holds its value very well and will serve me well for the rest of my observing days. All the others in my sig are more recent but when purchasing I used my experience of what I already have to pick most of them. And I have confidence that I will have no need to replace any of them even if "eyepiece provider" makes a new, super-duper range of glass. Hmm, am I actually saying I no longer have the bug 🤣 Steve

This is a very good option and one to consider. However there is a very lot to be said for this option and generally has a wider range within the three eyepiece and barlow selection. (checked cost and it's 74 quid posted to most of the uk, some parts of Scotland cost more) Viewing wise I would not expect there to be very much between them in terms of quality oh and by the way, they are referred to as eyepieces and not lens.