bomberbaz

I already have a mounted laser, now I have replaced the batteries it came with with decent lithium ones it gives me a great (and legal) beam. I will try it next time with the laser, think it may be useful to use given there is no need to get lined up like you do with a RDF.

I got a pair of 8.8mm copies of the ES eyepiece. Sources tell me they are excellent copies from Opticstar, rather than cheapo knockoffs. Also the prices were very similar. I tried them in my TS Optics 82mm Duplet giant bino's and the kidney beaning was horrendous, made them unusable. I am currently using 2x 24mm APM UFF which are pretty much the same as the panoptics. I also have in the APM in 18mm and have a pair of 10mm on order. I am waiting to test the bins with 10mm eyepieces before I consider upping the power anymore. I am of the opinion they will get to circa x60 or maybe a little further before any false colour issues start to show but I am waiting to test with the 10mm before I take it further. The main reason for this delay in going any further than 10mm (X47) is stability of view. When using the bins with the 18mm recently outdoors in their first real use in a dark site the parallelogram was a little shaky with the bins on them. Due at least in part to having too much counterweight on, I wait for a smaller one for a more even balance. Instead of the extra wide field ES I might be tempted to consider the ES 62 degree version in 9mm or maybe the BST starguiders in 8mm with a 60 degree FOV. It is the latter of the two mentioned that I am thinking of as a possible final pair for the bins.

Wow yet more lovely glass there, have to stop reading this thread, it is in danger of costing me money!!

Similar setup to mine in many ways that mate tbh, I also have a set for my fracs which tend are lighter than the set I use for the 14" dob. Then I have a small set for the grab and go ( More on the G&G in DIY when I finally finish the build). I need to rearrange all of my glass in their cases and replace the foam, they are all looking a little tatty these days. Foam not EP's 😄 Hope to get that done this next week and will post up the pictures once done, looking good.

Some lovely glass in that top case there stu but my OCD is going mental here as they don't run concurrent 😆 Are the two sets used for differing rigs?

Thanks Robin. I have looked in the past and a quick look around shows them to be comparable to the astronomik in terms of h beta line pass and about as tight as the TV. However they are the same cost of the TV so just pipped by the TV. What I did find were some Svbony h beta filters at only £49. However again bandpass lets it down at only 80% of the h beta line but how important is this likely to be. Opening thread edited.

Hello all. I am considering buying a pair of 1.25 H Beta filters for my bins, my first proper outing with them has convinced me they will be of great use in finding objects that respond to this line of light well. EG california. I have narrowed it down to the three below which are Blue line, Optolong; Turquoise line, astronomik and finally yellow tele vue. Price wise it is £68, £89 and £99 respectively. However I have now thought myself into a position of stalemate. See chart below for bandpass information. So the TV filter has the best bandpass and tightest filter by far. Then astronomik and optolong. I am a little stuck on which way to go, highest quality is TV with ease. So I have ruled Astronomik are out here as for the extra tenner TV is available. However optolong vs TV is difference of £62 for a pair of filters. So my question is has anyone compared these two filters and what results were there? I would expect there to be some minor difference but my suspicion is that it will be unlikely to be significant so I have to make the decision of high quality for very high quality. So if any of you have comparisons or simply how they have found either of the filters (Optolong or Tele Vue) I would be very grateful. Does anyone have any links to comparisons on other websites such as CNights? Doesn't have to be these filteres, just comparisons as this may help me past the current impasse and reach a decision. Also if there are any filters in the £100 price bracket I have overlooked then again information would be useful. FYI I have discounted ES H Beta, quite a slack bandpass and both cost and availability of Orion's version have left me to push them out of the equation too.

Bit of everything to report upon here, doesn't really fit anywhere on it's own so plopped it in here. Please move if not appropriate. Tonight was a clear night, first truly good one (albeit very cold) in a good while. Up for first time or meaningful first time use were my TS Optics 82 Duplet Binocular and my recently acquired Parallelogram 3S Pro binocular mount. Other things on first meaningful outing were the 365 metal finder and all of the glass in use which were pairs of astro essential 32mm plossl, APM 24 and 18 UFF eyepieces. My astro software of preferred choice is the ever versatile sky safari 6 (SS6), this is used as an astro map only. I won't witter on about the APM eyepieces because their pedigree is well regarded although the only thing I will say is the UFF (ultra flat field) stamp is not at all overstated, they behaved superb in the F5.75 bins. So onto the mount, first class, absolutely love it. Wish I had got my self one of these and big bins years ago. I had to do a little bit of tinkering when I received the mount at the AZ as it was quite stiff. There appears to be an issue with the bearing being sticky, I reported this issue back to the vendor and he is sending me out two new bearing to replace the ones I have. Don't get me wrong, they are useable but maybe need running in. Putting that to one side as tonight as it caused no problems at all, I put the mount through it paces first. Aiming at lower down objects first, namely M42 then up to Capella, Hyades, Plieades and finally Mirfak which was at Zenith, no problems at all. Dropping onto each of these was simplicity itself and the added range of movement in this mount made it all the more easy. I realise these are easy objects to find but this wasn't my point, the aim was to test the manoeuvrability and stability of the mount when loaded up with circa 4kg of bins and glass (need to weigh this) at one end and 6kg on the counterweight arm. Suffice to say it came out with flying colours and this part of the night passed with me feeling very pleased with results thus far. Now the bins did not come with a mount/bracket/shoe for a finder, just a very basic iron type gun sight on the carry handle, nope not good enough so mounted a vixen style shoe onto the handle. There are already two pre drilled and threaded holes, why can't they simply put a shoe on for you is my thought but hey, cost me nothing as I had a spare shoe so leave that small gripe there. I have bought a 365 Astronomy metal finder, it is in my opinion far superior to every other vixen mounted finder in the same price range. Solid, multi reticule, doesn't lose collimation, worked perfect on the bins tonight. A telrad would have been impractical for bins. Ok so I can easily find DSO's, the finder combined with SS6 and the nice FOV of the bins made finding things easy. Some of you will know I often use pushto or goto but tonight I was cruising out there without these technological aids. Never more than a few minutes finding DSO with many things instant. I put some of this down to the image at the eyepiece being the same as the image seen on SS6. I will not witter through everything as it was more of a try and see what the bins are capable of rather that spend time on the things I was aiming to see. Notable objects that I hit which were surprising were North American Neb. This wasn't a stand out view but a haze over the darkness behind it and the central dark nebula between the NA and pelican really stood out. Nevertheless, I count this as a good start. TV UHC filter used with a 4.2mm exit pupil. I did try again later with the 32mm plossl with larger Expupil (5,4nn) but results were inconclusive. Next the Veil, mixed results here which actually turned into good news and a look at the map back at home told me why. I had mistaken 49 cyg for 52 cyg so what I thought was an extremely weak witches broom was in fact the central part of the veil and the eastern veil stood out quite strongly. (Hey first real mistake with new bins, ain't that bad) Again used the TV UHC and same EP set as above. A quick look at M31 and then thought, well lets have a little try at M33 but I won't see anything. Blow me down how wrong was I, not only did I see it but I saw it easily, my gast was flabbered. It popped straight into view at the first attempt at finding it and by using averted vision I was even able to tease out some of the beautiful structure that is a trademark of this DSO. 18mm Ep with 3.1mm Expupil (FOV for these EP is 2.5 degree but it still framed M31 nicely) I also popped up to have a quick gander at M81/82 and these were yet again easy to find and I think when I receive my 10mm UFF EP's, they will be well worth a 2nd visit using more power. 18mm Now round to Orion and Taurus, I wanted to have a go at M78 (casper) and the crab. Again both were found, the latter was the easiest but casper didn't take that long and stood out surprisingly well against the sky. Neither needed filters and again both responded better to more power/smaller exit pupil. First 24mm (4.2mm Expupil) then 18mm Finally whilst in the area I had a look around alnitak. I wasn't expecting anything but tapping the mount and blinking gave a glimpse of hint of the flame but not enough to convince me I had seen it. All in I had a fabulous but shortish session, I found lots of DSO and I haven't mention a clusters I landed on, more for finding purposes than viewing. I left cos it was blooming freezing on my feet despite thermal socks and artic boots that concrete was bad news. So yes, I consider my bins and associated bits to be one of my better purchases but they are definitely a dark site piece of kit. I was under bortle 4/SQM 20.5 skies tonight and would love to try these under really dark skies (B3/21.5+) Thanks for reading. cheers steve

The best and most honest reviews are found on places like SGL, CN, etc. We have nothing to gain from telling the truth and so personally if I am uncertain about something in which I may be interested, I am happy to either ask the question in open forum or if I know of someone who owns or has experience of a certain product, message them for opinion. I know many of you are of a similar mind. However and sadly, not everyone out there knows of these wealth of knowledge forums. Google searches do not point you in the direction of useful forums unless you state forum rather than website.

Get well soon mate. Glad to know the symptoms are mild. Good resolution too, my intention is to do the same, starting on Wednesday evening all being well.

I have a small plastic case for my grab n go, got it a while back. Can't find where I got it from and amazon have similar but at £28 quid probably over budget

Just wondering whether to buy some lacquer too, afterall I don't want it chipping after the effort that is going into it. I will post up into DIY section, I am taking pictures of before and after so will be showing it all off in a few weeks. It will be (to my eyes at least) superb.

40 years ago i worked in a spraying shop and was reasonably accomplished, albeit an apprentice. But you are very right, things do go wrong quickly, overspray being probably the biggest one. Also 40 years is a long time and given Peter's pedigree, I was happy to accept his offer of help . Thanks for the near suggestion though, haha.

I have a mate who is friends with her who is himself an accomplished photographer. I am thinking this is simply a case of can you string an article together for us and we'll bung you £xx hundred quid. Her resume shows she is actually very accomplished and it is disappointing to see people of her calibre posting tripe like that. Gemma is content director of science and space magazines How It Works and All About Space, history magazines All About History and History of War as well as Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) kids education brand Future Genius. She is the author of several books including "Quantum Physics in Minutes", "Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual to the Large Hadron Collider" and "Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual to the Milky Way". She holds a degree in physical sciences, a Master’s in astrophysics and a PhD in computational astrophysics. She was elected as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2011. Previously, she worked for Nature's journal, Scientific Reports, and created scientific industry reports for the Institute of Physics and the British Antarctic Survey. She has covered stories and features for publications such as Physics World, Astronomy Now and Astrobiology Magazine.

Glad you also got a view for NYE, get some 8x40 for your car though, haha

Very in depth report and makes a lot of sense. In essence of the report and being an F5.8 pair of 82mm bins my thoughts, although wrong were giving results that are not that far away from what the true result is "likely to be" using the correct formula. I think I will be fine with three of the eyepiece sets although the 8.8mm are being returned. Horrible kidney beaning, I can't work with that. A pair of 10mm apm uff will be used instead.

Again a short session of 20 minutes as there was a brief break in the cloud, I didn't have time for hunting around so it was easy target session around the east/s-east. (interesting area which happens to have worst light pollution) I clapped in the 18mm APM UFF which give x26 and a 2.5 degree FOV. Briefly I spent a few minutes on M42, Hyades, Pleiades and Capella. I had to use the 18mm as I wanted to try out the TV UHC filters on Orion neb using the APM 24mm but I accidentally dropped one and damaged the thread area of the barrel. Thankfully the rest is undamaged and visually there is no problem but annoying much. Anyway, back to result; Orion was decent but quite low and it was a little murky, can't wait to get to a darker site to view it with the bins but I know the prospects are there. Capella was nice to sweep around with the FOV picking out so much of the lovely pin points of stars. Finally, Plieades was gorgeous, no nebulosity but beautiful to get it into the FOV with so much more surrounding area in it and the pièce de résistance was Hyades. I have viewed it many times before with my other bins but never seen it so beautiful before. So many more stars, everything so much brighter, just so amazing that I am at a loss for more description but suffice to say, it was a cracking 20 minute session.

Didn't realise it was that fine John, do you have links to any data on this. Would be interested to read up some more on this as my F4.9 dob needs a collimation but just not gotten round to it. Think main issue is the secondary is too high but obviously the whole lot will go out when I remove the mirror to washer it out. Sorry OP, I digress.

Really peter, that would be amazing, I shall send you a pm

I have a 60mm F12 OTA that I want to respray, it comes apart quite easily but just wanted any suggestions or experiences of doing it yourself. I am considering the option to do the respray myself but want to take as much advice as possible first before I make any attempts. I have sent out a few emails regarding having it done professionally but had no replies just yet! TIA Steve

Through all the murk outside, tonight one single star shone through it, guess which one ?

The glass in my signature gives the following magnifications Eyepieces mm Magnify AFOV Exit Pupil mm TFOV degrees 8.8 53 82 1.5 1.54 18 26 65 3.1 2.49 24 20 65 4.2 3.32 32 15 52 5.6 3.54 The 8.8 fits in with my total area idea and the exit pupil isn't too small. I will let you know how I get on once I have chance for an in the field proper outing

I notice you have 25x100 bins mark, what do you take them up to assuming they have interchangeable ep's?

My TS 82mm bins got their first outing last night, I really enjoyed the short period of time they got used but there is no way on earth I would sell my scopes. As mentioned above I see bins as a different experience than my big dob or refractors. They all have a place to work together.

Ok so hopefully someone with more experience can help here. I bought the TS 82mm astro binocular with the intention of low powered viewing on larger DSO such as M31, N/America neb, California nebula and asterisms etc but this query is more about magnification for galaxies. In a thread I was involved with earlier this year one thing came to my attention was I had been using insufficient power on many galaxy targets, someone gave a rule of thumb for at least 10x magnification per inch of aperture. I pay attention to rule of thumb as there is often a lot of experience gone into these ROT's. In this case I found it very useful and wish I had been aware of this earlier. (see below) On a recent visit to Galloway I was able to test this ROT out to it's fullest and confirmed I had on many occasion not been making full use of the aperture pull of my OTA. Since then I have born this rule of thumb in mind and even exceeded it with pleasant results. Anyway, question concerns the ROT when applied to Bins. When using binocular do you double the magnification of the aperture you are using because you have double objectives, in my case 82mm. This gives circa 3.25" = 32.5 magnification x 2 = 65. Or, and what I think it should actually be is the equivalent area of the two combined objectives viewed as one. In this case two 82mm objectives are roughly the same in area as a 127mm, ergo 5 inch. So 50 times as a rule of thumb. I hope this makes sense and I am not over thinking things, Anybody have any thoughts on this? TIA Steve