bomberbaz

Techically your scope should go up to mag x260 so a 7mm barlowed would work but imho you are pushing it to the maximum. Technical magnifications and reality don't always go together. My first scope was the same as yours and when I barlowed a 7mm x-cel in the same I found the view had suffered a little at this magnification but was still ok. Inexperience at that time led me to expect more than was realistic if I am honest though. 130*F5 = 650. 650/3.5 = mag x185. On a good night with good seeing conditions though should give nice planetary views and also be useful on planetary nebula. A 6 barlowed giving near time 220 I think might be too much for the scope but again, my opinion only. An 8mm BST barlowed is giving x162 which would give a slightly smaller but better resolved view. See below for both 7 & 8 mm eyepieces barlowed on Jupiter. The difference at the eyepiece as you can see will not be significant. I am sure others will have their own thoughts on this. Personally I think the 8mm will be a more usefull addition and basically replace the 10mm which you may already have found is not the best.

I wasn't sure if this is the right place but just thought I would give a quick overview of the Concenter. I looked through the forums yesterday but couldn't find anything specific to it in recent times although it was frequently mentioned. When mentioned in various threads it was largely given a thumbs up and I would just like to add to them. It arrived from Teleskop Express extremely well wrapped, probably over the top but I like this in providers if I am honest, it shows there care about the service the provide. The item is the size of a medium sized eyepiece but is very light and is protected by a bolt case. Attached pictures for scale. The body is a black plastic type material with a clear plastic disk with rings on it inserted in the front of the viewing part, it is these that do the collimation. It is a little expensive for what it apparently is but does it work? It does not come with printed instructions although these can be obtained directly from the TE website and will be simple to print off so not a major issue although a one page paper guide should have been included in my opinion. Instructions are here. LINK Fitting this into the 2" focuser it is a nice and snug fit. Again this impresses me and it mean chances of collimation issues here are brought almost to zero. I don't know if this will be the same with all focusers but this is the basic one that came with the 10" Orion XTi. Using it is a little tricky at first, the fact I wear glasses didn't help as I found my head drifting to the side ever so slightly as I checked the collimation rings but with practice I was managing to control my head movements and keep my eyeball central. I wouldn't read too much into this though, it is like anything new, it takes a little while to adjust. I also got used to the glasses after a bit of adjusting my fit. I am not going to talk you through step by step the process. In basic Janet and John speak though, concentric rings in the clear plastic element line up with a round secondary mirror and a round primary mirror, when all spaces are even, you are collimated. The link above has the full process. I will tell you is that the results were a perfectly collimated scope. I checked it with a collimated hotech laser and a cheshire and it was spot on. I have collimated with laser, cheshire and collimating cap in the past but straight away I feel this gives me more confidence that I have done the job right. If you have never been fully comfortable with a cheshire/cap combo or happy with the collimation of laser or just want to be extra sure your collimation is spot on, then this is worth every penny spent. Steve

I have the AZ GTi

I converted mine to EQ mode, dead simple. Quite a few videos on youtube abuot it too. I use mine all the time in eq mode without problem.

Om another note the supplied tripod the az gti comes with is not the best. I think you can tighten it up a lttle to make it less shaky but I didn't know this at the time. Still glad I upgraded. I upgraded mine to the steel tripod supplied by FLO which is far better. It is noticeably heavier though.

Is 64mb enough or do you mean GB?

looking forwar to trying this out when my new dob arrives, don't think my 10" orion will cut the magnfication or detail like your describing. Might try it if condtions ever allow though.

Thannks for the replies. You see I am thinking of strapping my white light and HA scope onto it, should be fun combinaton. Or maybe a night time combination of a frac and mak for hopping between open cluster, globs and doubles. Like I say, nothing definate yet, just testing the waters as it were. Steve.

Just checked the pictures and I see what you mean Don, should have checked beforehand, sorry bud. Steve

have you collimated it since you got it Baz, how far in is the primary. Perhaps this is screwed in quite a way and is pushing your focuser to far out.

Hello all. I "may" be considering buying a new mount, still testing out existing option but may opt for the skytee. What I do know about this mount is it can hold up to 3 OTA's although it comes ready for 2 as standard. 2 is all I need though. Various sites quote various weight carrying capacity but FLO recommend 20KG total. More than I would need by some margin. It will fit on my existing steel tripod and reports I have read is that it is rock solid on this. The clamps are vixen style and are reportedly a bit of a weak link. Likelihood is it will only ever have one heavy-ish OTA (5-6kg or less) and one light one (2kg or less) so would likely immeditely upgrade at least one of the clamps. I also realise I will need a counter weight to accommodate odd sized ota's. What I want to know is are the two sides of the mount permanently locked to move together of can they be unlocked and are the tracking controls able to be usable with the cable style ones. I also welcome anyone else's thoughts and feedback on this mount. TIA Steve

sadly my forcast has nver been anything other than rain, and as I type this it has just started raining.

Sorry @Don Pensack surely if you add height to the focuser you are then having to wind the focuser in further to compensate or did I misunderstand what you meant? Would pushing pushing your primary mirror up 5mm not be another option assuming that is there is enough travel! Steve

My thoughts are you will get far better results with the 150 and also find it a little easier to use. Good first scope too that should keep you going for a good while.

may be worth just hanging fire baz and using the bst's until you find out where your niche is going to be for the time being. You might end up with a kind of buyers remorse otherwise.

See below the simulator for the 12.5mm morpheus. Frames M51 very nicely and gives you 10x magnification per inch. I think it's a very good starting point as Don says. Since chatting with one of the members on here ref; viewing galaxies I have done further research on viewing them and it seems 10X magnification per inch of aperture or there abouts gets mentioned a lot.

nothing wrong with the mount, mine works perfectly with excellent accuracy and gets a lot of use. Think your presumption of it being rubbish are premature. One of the biggest problems with accuracy is time settings. What time does your phone say, check that. Twice I have come to the help of members who had daylight saving for UK not set. Next two stars that are not too close together, Spica and Deneb or Vega would work well. Having the mount properly level does help but it isn't critical.

Glad you enjoying the scope Baz. TBH I thought the 3.5 & 5 would have done better than you say, however you may find this was down to the not so good skies and the fact you would be really pushing the magnification at x300 & x430 under poor conditions I know I signposted the morpheus to you although as I said back then it was based on reviews I had read and price and not personal experience. I do agree that getting a eyepiece in the middle ground will serve you well first and either 14 or 12.5 are the ones I would consider. I look forward to reading a review if/when you do eventually get one. Steve

thanks for that @Don Pensack, that explanation makes sense although I am probably not going to splash out the cost of a another filter to test it out.

I have no doubt that cones do work to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't see your red head torch 😆 Seriously though, it's either TV got lazy and/or thought it more cost effective to ignore HA in their bandpass filters or the effect, or not as the case may be of HA in these filters isn't worth having. That is what I would like to experiment to find out.

I really would like to compare the astronomik uhc which allows HA transmission and something like the TV bandmates which cuts it entirely. An increase in contrast from the astronomik would point to the HA band being picked up, the level of difference would be indicative of the sensitivity. BTW I understand what you say above and I am not disputing this, just curious as to how much the shift away from cones to rods is. I guess this would likely vary from person to person also depending on the eyes.

My share options are up in July 😂😂

Just thought I would add my best ever view of the Orion Nebula was through my 17mm Nikon HW with a basic O-III filter. It was at a fairly dark site although I remember that night there was quite a bit of moon to deal with. However the seeing and steadiness of the skies were close to the best I had ever experienced. The eyepiece and scope combo gave 1.45 degree's of the sky and the nebula literally filled nearly the entire fov with filaments and structure simply jumping out at you but I have not since managed to emulate even at darker sites. An imaging friend I had with me took a look at the nebula also and he told me he was quite amazed at the detail it was yielding, almost as good as imaging. Praise indeed from a member of the imaging fraternity.

that's 3 @Don Pensack 🤣 .................................... I'll get me coat.

I didn't pay the price they currently go for thankfully. However to buy the 3 ethos that the two nikons cover would cost you over £1700. I have had these for 4 years now, I think I will still own them in another 10. In that case to me it's money well spent.