bomberbaz

I have noticed dewing especially without the light shroud so personally I wouldn't be without it. The tape he attaches draws very little power, far less than a dew strap I bought online over here but still keeps the secondary clear. I also bought the covers and these keep it lovely and clean when not in use.

Wowser, good shout and welcome to the club, did you also get the primary cooling and secondary heating too?

Sounds like a focusing issue. If you are seeing a large ish fuzzy blob with a black shadow then that is the problem. Try adjusting the focuser until all you see is a small crisp dot, this is jupiter. The jovian moons should also come into focus and the secondary mirror shadow will be gone. Try it on the moon then swing round to jupiter without altering focus and you will be there. Note. Using the 25mm on the moon may show the secondary, it did in the 100p i used to have.

I am so glad you posted this review up about the scopetech. Note the review is for a Tak version which is identical to the scopetech. I had been wondering about the performance of this. The fact it is made in Japan and the same standard as a Tak says an awful lot. Seems near ED performance from an F10 achro is possible when done right. I can only assume they are using top quality glass to get such good results. Comes with 2 quality ortho's as well, what's not to like. If I didn't already have an 80mm frac, I would be very, very tempted to buy one of these.

Can't remember if i am honest but it was under 200 quid extra, still worth it though. I have seen deeper and further with this that i have with any other scope I have had. It is easy to transport and assemble and the DSC system finds hard to find fuzzy's to within quarter of a degree. In short it is everything I ever wanted in one.

Managed to add more data last night (full moon) although was having tracking issues. I did some tweaking on the tracking and it started to behave a little better managing 0.8/9 as an average but this is widefield. Struggling a bit with red tint in the image although maybe I am being over critical. Both images put up to show you the old one at the top with the new data one at the bottom. Much better detail in the bottom one. My intention is to try adding a further hour to 90 minutes data without the dual band filter to try to get the dust to pop out a little better without adding as much to the nebula. We shall see how that pans out. Any helpful remarks or criticism is welcome. New data version below

I was thinking about how to do this the other week and my thoughts were to polar align first using the air, then switch to the Synscan app, connect the camera to a laptop to do a 2 star align. Then disconnect the laptop and connect to my PC (big screen) via USB3 powered (jumper) cable and away you go. Works in theory but not sure about in practice. Viewing from the conservatory sounds quite comfortable but only on nights with a moon. I am more into visual than imaging and new moon dark skies have their place for me behind the eyepiece. Some of you may have read this already.

Gorgeous, loving the background data, stephans quintet is remarkable. Sadly images like this are probably beyond my little rig so I can only marvel at images like this.

In absence of the likelihood of me ever getting my large dob there I will happily settle for another few nights off the golf course car park in Monreith, Galloway. It is touching B2 but the best thing is there was no apparent LP hot spots on the horizons due to the fact you are 50 M down behind a hill but the south is perfectly clear. What I would give to get to skies like those in the picture though, stunning.

Short video of new stars, star formation and clusters etc discoveries in the Tarantula Nebula (LMC) courtesy of NASA. Inspiring stuff.

Been having a rethink and I can specifically say I need greymouser to add an amendment to his will and suddenly get very ill 😂 Only joking, I am happy to wait 😁

I ran a usb3 camera (224mc) from my pc via a booster type cable. Mine was temperamental on the pc box's usb extensions but ran fine on the motherboards core sockets.

We all have one thing, the one item we keep looking at in the shop window, be it real or virtual. We keep telling ourself we can't afford it or do we really need it or what if swmbo finds out how much it costs etc. But whatever it is, we all know we will eventually buy it 😂 I'll start of course. My current No1 item is a modest ES 62D 26mm eyepiece. (Rare as rocking horse pooh by all accounts) Why, I have a need for an eyepiece with a bigger exit pupil for nebula viewing than my 24 APM that is still 1.25". Sadly not that exciting so hopefully some of you can liven things up a little!

Cheers buddy, no chance of it. He will have to make do withth h20 and a 2x barlow. Thanks for trying

Thanks Dave, a daytime result would yield near identical results I think, cheers. Steve

You could help Dave. Assuming the difference in focal position between 0.96 - 1 25 eyepieces is equally correlated in frac and reflector, could you simply fit a H20 then do like you said and hold a 8-24 zoom to advise your findings. It is only the difference in the drawtube travel between the 2 that I need to know.

Thanks dave, didn’t actually take that fully into account. Given I have no idea about the focus point of a H20 0.965 vs a 1.25 zoom I will hold off. I do know someone who can help in this matter though, cheers.

I have an novice acquaintance who has a decent tasco 115/900 reflector which is EQ mounted. The tripod is reasonably solid. The mount head has a badly worn gear in RA in one spot only. So I removed the counterweight and bar then set the mount to work in alt-az. Seems quite solid and functional in this mode plus is much easier to use for a complete novice. Anyway, happy enough with that part given it was a well meant gift from his swmbo. Suggesting a brand new setup wasn't really an option. The issue is It is fitted for older 0.95 eyepieces and after discussing options he doesn't want to go to the bother of the replacement focuser. I am thinking a 1.25 adaptor with a zoom would work well. My understanding is that using a 8-24 zoom with the relatively narrow fov will minimise any vignetting, thoughts? Also is there anything else i am over looking. Cheers all Steve

Just added a little more data to this and reprocessed. I tried to get a more eroded star image and be less aggressive on getting the nebula to show. I like this new one, looks more natural than the august one at the top. The top image was done back in mid august, the other new image is from today.

I bought the APM 24 mentioned in this thread off the back of something you put into another thread I wrote some while back, it framed IC434 / HH perfectly in my scope with a shade under 1 degree FOV.

haha, very droll Jeremy

There has been a lot of information around around the use of visual filters, some people like to use them, some people not so and I fall into the former camp. It depends what you are viewing, scope size has a bearing and some objects are pretty much invisible without a filter. So I decided to stoke the filter fire a little myself by carrying out some of my own research. The equipment used is my Taurus 14" with DSC, a range of fixed focal length and zoom eyepieces and filters used are Astronomik. I made good use of my observing hood, I never really appreciated the benefit of a hood until I got one 18 months or so since. Being able to relax your eyes and get to the eyepiece in absolute dark is something all astronomers should experience and it sits in my bits n bobs bag which accompanies me to every nights observing. (Unlike my observing chair) These findings are all kind of personal but I believe certain aspects are more universal such as exit pupil to sky brightness correlation as an example. More on this later. I know of information going around regarding rules of thumb or theories for filters, when to use them, what type of eyepiece to use with them and on what object to use them as well. I wanted to see if some of these hold water or are simply off the cuff ways of making your opinion known and/or closing a discussion. So my main concern that i wasn't getting the best out of my equipment (no changing room jokes please) but in particular with regard to nebula viewing. After my most recent trip to Galloway (visit B ) in Bortle 2 skies I was reviewing some of my findings, comparing with my previous visit A about 4 years previous and found that for all my planning, I had neglected my exit pupil size planning for OIII sensitive nebula. In visit B I had simply used my Nikon 17mm, more for the lovely wide FOV and completely overlooked exit pupil. The Nikon gives me 3.5mm exit pupil which I personally think is the lower end size for use in more light polluted skies, certainly not Bortle 2. Previously during visit A to Galloway I had used a smaller dob, larger 22mm eyepiece with an exit pupil of 4.8mm. My previous notes (from visit A) showed some objects viewed had been a better resolved than from my visit B which made me think and it was this that prompted me to look into filters in more depth. I do think that all visual astronomy is more complicated than at first people think. In particular viewing nebula which adds an extra layer of complication to this aspect of astronomy as you are throwing another layer into the mix, namely a filter. For those who are unsure as to what I am driving at the brightness of a nebula and thus the ability to see it via a filter has many variables but given a scenario where certain aspects are equal. And we all use say and 12" dob and a identical 8-24 zoom there are limited variables. These are sky quality/location, quality of your filter, magnification/exit pupil (these are directly correlated) and finally experience. The latter is a big thing as I recently proved to myself for the umpteenth time but that's another story. Primarily i am focusing on the third variable, magnification/exit pupil but this does bring into it the quality of filter variable. Anyway, my last few trips out I have been experimenting with different exit pupil sizes for line filters (OIII/HB) and to a lesser extent, UHC narrowband. I am not going to go through every single test or object but in broad terms I selected all emission type nebula with a mix of diffuse & planetary. I didn't bother with reflection type objects as these tend to behave differently. I did lean towards more faint nebula because a lot of planetary are seen relatively easy due to their size and relative high surface brightness. I tested out at three sites of varying darkness (SQM 20.25-21.15). My HB/OIII system was to start with a 24mm APM (It's my goto line filter) and vary between other ranges from 17mm to 28mm. The exit pupil range goes from 3.5mm to 5.8mm. (magnification variance 100-61) For UHC I varied all the way from 5.8 to 1.6mm exit pupils. That's 28 to 8mm eyepiece or mag 61-214 😱 My finding at all sites were identical but in the darkest skies, the results were slightly less conclusive for line filters HB filter targets were a mix of sharpless, NGC and IC catalogue. Performance at exit pupil size of lower than 4mm (baader zoom at 20mm) had a low responsiveness of nebula. I saw very little at these low exit pupil sizes and given the low actual brightness of these objects in general and tight bandpass of HB it is not surprising to me to find this. I did manage a very feint NGC 1499 and campbell's H star but nothing else verified. The most responsive eyepiece in my scope was the 24mm APM UFF which gave a 4.9mm Ex pupil. On campbell's H star I found a slightly larger exit pupil may have been an advantage but this was inconclusive. I would also point out that this Ep (24mm apm) and filter combination gave me my only successful view of the horsehead nebula. I had a similar result with my OIII filter, however at the darkest sites I found that a 26mm eyepiece might have offered slightly more than the 24mm, it was hard to tell, possibly equal view at times, on occasion I simply called it a draw. To be fair the 26mm eyepiece didn't help as the eye relief was awful so I simply gave up trying and called it a draw. For information purposes the 26mm gives a 5.35mm exit pupil vs the 4.9mm. A difference in area of light collected of 15% so something to think about for me here. Staying on the OIII I did find it more responsive to higher magnification/lower exit pupil than the HB although at my good to very good skies where tests took place the benefit of this were less on diffuse objects than on brighter planetary. Pushing the magnification on diffuse nebula (EG Pacman) allowed me to tease out a little better detail in the brighter areas but the overall image was less resolved than at lower magnification/larger exit pupil. For comparison purposes the 17mm Nikon gives an exit pupil that is nearly 60% less in area than a 24mm eyepiece. (0.243 vs 0.096 sq cm) Regarding UHC. I did, if I am honest become too pre-occupied with line filter testing and only did limited testing on this filter class. I find that UHC and OIII are more closely aligned than UHC/HB filters. I don't know what the full technicalities of this are other than I find OIII seems to be greater light emitting than HB. UHC filters have the greatest range of variation of exit pupil response, have the greatest overall range of responsive objects (arguably) of the three filters and certainly should be the first filter you buy if you're on a limited budget. I can happily pop the UHC/zoom combination and take it up to x140 on planetary. Beyond this and no filter vs filter becomes the question, I am then pushing the exit pupil below 2mm, the skies are pitch black and many nebula readily pop into view anyway without a filter. Even on diffuse nebula (of which I only did a couple) I was able to push it to the same x140 but the benefit was limited, if any and I doubt I would make a habit of doing this. I think optimum for UHC is much more varied, ranging an exit pupil anything from 3.5-6mm (at dark skies) with the ability to still be effective all the way down to 2mm. As mentioned beyond this your maybe as well without a filter. When you compare a nebula viewed via a UHC against a line filter your liable to find two major differences, the UHC will probably be brighter but the line filter will yield more detail due to it's much narrower bandpass. I found the nebula that fits this comparable best was the crescent (NGC6888). Very bright and apparent viewed in UHC and easy to observe, notably darker in OIII but the detail was superb, much more of a 3D effect at the expense of brightness. For the record the OIII view easily wins imho. Based upon these results my possible search for another eyepiece for OIII has been shelved. If I can pick up the right EP at 26mm I might bite but I am in no rush. I did make a post querying a 20mm EP as a potential suitor for this position some time back, I am glad I didn't bite before looking into this matter more closely. The HB filters long used rule of thumb 5mm exit pupil seems to hold true to me. This is the rule that a 5mm exit pupil holds the perfect combination of line reduced light and what hits the retina. (think that's right) Anyway, it was this rule that helped me bag the Horsehead last year The fact OIII seems to have the same was not unsurprising although my caveat ref 26mm possibly being better in ultra dark skies is interesting and something I will look into when opportunity arises. The above is very subjective because my eyes are not the same as yours, your equipment is not the same as mine and so results may vary. Other research (reading webpages from various sources mainly) I have carried out suggests that filters used under light polluted conditions should have a smaller exit pupil/more magnification to darken the skies more to improve the contrast. I do know this works but I also know from experience that under severe light pollution (like my garden), you should simply stick to planets or other bright objects and save your filters for darker skies. The darker, the better I feel I still have unsolved questions regarding both OIII and HB. But for now I am happy that my current set of available tools as it were are up to the job in hand.

I could have kicked myself I was so annoyed as this was the second time out I had forgotten my seat. I had even written on the bottom of my observing notes, "Don't forget seat" in bold type, fgs. 🙄 My observing site is just off the side of the road very near the stone circle. I was looking at the stone circle area as the southern aspect is more level, next time I go up there I will arrive a bit earlier to see if there is a second spot I can try out. 👌

Sorry my bad, I thought I read different, sorry for confusion. ZWO ASI 120MM Mini USB 2.0 Mono Camera | First Light Optics £149, best thing is it's very lightweight

Yes a cracking report, seems you had a similar experience to myself albeit with a different range of equipment. You mention the baader has a narrower bandpass, according to my findings they may be too narrow. The Baader filter seems to cut out most of the secondary 495.9 wavelength, the result will be to reduce both brightness and contrast. SearchLight Spectra Viewer from Semrock As like me you enjoy your nebula, I have always found this to be a useful guide. Filter Performance Comparisons - Astronomical Filters - Articles - Articles - Cloudy Nights cheers steve