bomberbaz

Have you looked at this 

Sky-Watcher Evolux 82ED OTA | First Light Optics

A pillar sounds like it could come in useful, do you have a picture of your rig set up?

Andy, have a look in this thread for some help with your query. There are quite a few, myself included who use the AZ GTi for imaging but I am not aware of people using an OTA any heavier than around 2kg.

I know @AstroNebulee uses a 72ED. However the 80ED is over 2kg heavier at 4.1kg and if you are wanting to image down the line, you are going to be too heavy I think.

Remember that you will have a guidescope, cameras and counter balance bar + weight  to add to that, not to mention cables which all adds to the weight onto a mount rated up to 5kg.

I use the SW Evoguide + field flattener for my imaging, it's wide field setup which suits the mount well.

HTH

Steve

10 hours ago, Alan White said:

So do you have a picture of the new RACI fitted to your Dob Steve?

Be interested to see how it looks.

I will put a picture up next time it gets used (looks at weather forecast) although it's unlikely to be very soon. 

It's last outing was on the side of the Sky-Tee 2 with the ED100 on the other side and a RDF on the centre one. 

7 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

+1 for the Vixen NPLs, at least at longer focal lengths (the eye relief gets a bit tight below the 11 mil). They're sharp and very cheap! 

Their only problem, which they share with other Plossls, is a narrow FOV (50°). People nowadays want a wider view. There are many companies making EPs with 70°+, at a price of course.

'Goldlines' are a cheap Chinese range of EPs under various names which do the job for little money, though I think the NPLs and BST Starguiders are much better.

As per my learned friend and expanding on my earlier post. If you are on a budget, you really can't go wrong if your stock range of glass is drawn from these eyepieces although it does depend upon your intended use.

That said, one must also give consideration to the appropriateness of a zoom/barlow combination.  

Again, it depends on your own personal aim! 

haha, remember asking thi9s very same question 8 years (ish) since. I said it looked like a bat with feet outstretched below. 

Evoguide+FF on the SW AZ-GTi along with a ZWO 183MC and ZWO Dual Band / Astronomik L2. 4.5 hours total data.

Don't think my rig will take this any further but I am happy to get where I am.  Think there is possibly a better result than my effort at processing but not tonight.

Maybe I have taken too much out of it, always we are to critical of our efforts.

I have had another play with the data and tinkered with the exposure/contrast/darkness then cropped the rough edges out, hope I haven't overdone it.

25 minutes ago, allworlds said:

13 years on, does the advice here from @The Warthog still hold?

I'm getting back into the hobby after some years of doing very little. Compared to the breakneck pace of "tech", it feels like most of the telescopes and mounts I remember are still around. But eyepieces? Plossls seem way cheaper than I remember, Revelation appear to have ceased to be, Astro Essentials have arrived, and I read people talking about "goldlines" whatever they are.

I used the astro essentials 26mm briefly but didn't get on because of eye relief although as far as clarity goes, couldn't fault it. I think the higher powered ones would be fine for ER.

The Vixen plossls are lovely and very much worth the cost. Currently only have a 25mm one. I did have a pair of them for binoviewing but sold one and the binoviewer, doubt I will sell the one I retained. Very easy eyepiece to get along with and no false colour at all. Well worth considering.

I have one of the astro essentials ones on order, from the picture it looks to be a nuetral colour.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/uv-ir-filters/astro-essentials-uvir-cut-filter-125-2.html

I have the ZWO version also, although I have nothing to compare to I will say it seems fine to me. 

4 hours ago, IB20 said:

What is the collective noun for EPs? A goggle?

OOh erm what about money-pit 🤣

13 hours ago, Spile said:

For me an app on a tablet and a RACI finder view are all I need to find my targets.

Wish I had made this revelation (to me) a little earlier, it will mean more use for the ED100.

I am actually moving my Telrad along as it will no longer gets used on the back of my RACI finding exploits. It had been stuck on my dob gathering dust.

1 hour ago, Mike Q said:

The catch to making setting circles work, digital or otherwise all depends on how accurately you align everything.  Mine is a fixed circle so I have to get zero pointed as close to true north as possible.  I am usually inside of one degree one way or the other.  Now with this said I have a full on go to on order at this time.  So eventually i will have to learn how to do that too. 

Done that before with  a SW !" flextube Mike, still have a goto mount but I am using for solar only plus my mini imaging rig.

I won't go big goto again but I would like a tracking platform for my DOB.  So many times recently it would have been great to have one but that's another story. 

14 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

The setting circle and angle gauge make finding stuff easy.   It is like GPS for your scope.  I like the laser too.  People ask what are you looking at and you press the button and say that. 

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.

1 hour ago, Mike Q said:

I started with a RACI then added a laser, then went to a setting circle and angle gauge.  Now i hardly use the RACI or laser.  

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) 

8 hours ago, NGC 1502 said:

Great to hear that your starhopping is successful 👍

Manually finding objects definitely gets easier the more practice you get. After a while finding previously difficult objects becomes routine.  Then you’ll find yourself finding more difficult stuff, then that too becomes routine……

For those who use a “bells and whistles” scope- please don’t take the above in the wrong way.  The best way to do astronomy is the one that works for you….not what works for me😊

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

1 hour ago, lvan said:

Sorry if i missed it but what scope were you using?

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

On 24/09/2022 at 16:28, Dark Raven said:

New camera is ready and waiting. 😀

I managed to gather the baseline without cooling, but the weather is not cooperating... 😕

 

 

any results to report on yet