bomberbaz

Thanks for the replies people, I will think about it for now.

Maybe go 2nd hand rather than buy new. I have no intention of upping my aperture, I am very happy with the 80mm and buying another on top in the current situation is not something I am prepared to do. 

My best effort yet on the moon done early on in twilight through hazy cloud. Only a stack of 10 images and really pleased with the outcome.

didn't get the scope out at all tonight, just did a ethereal looking moon photoshoot and came up with this. TBH it's my best effort yet. 

37 minutes ago, Louis D said:

It appears to be the same price or less as the 2" Lunt when cross shipping back to the US from the UK (no VAT, duties, or sales tax but large shipping cost).  The 2" Lunt is $299+tax and the 1.25" Lunt is $229+tax (and backordered) in the US while they are £339.00 and £149.90, respectively, in the UK.  The Altair is only £238.33 shipped to the US, which works out to $294 at today's exchange rate.  If it didn't weigh 5.5 pounds, I might be tempted to get one.

Yes you are right, I was looking at the Lunt 1.25 version at £150

I have been looking at the Altair version and it makes many claims which can be found here at the webpage link. https://www.altairastro.com/altair-imaging-ready-2-solar-herschel-wedge-445-p.asp

Has anybody got one and how have they actually found it for visual. FYI I have a 80MM F7.5 Frac that I am considering using it with if it's as good as they reckon. 

I realise it states imaging ready btw, just thinking of visual too.

The in built polarising filter sounds very innovative and the sun finder at it's rear also sounds a good idea. 

But I have used a front mounted white light filter before and although it was fun to use, I never got much granulation which is something this wedge claims to excel at. Also this is also a 100 quid more expensive than the lunt alternative.

The other thing I am not sure about is the effectiveness of a continuum filter, perhaps someone could also shed some light (pardon the pun) on this for me.  Is it more a imaging aid rather than visual. Done a little reading but sometimes you find yourself going around in circles.

TIA

Steve

Yeah I spotted this with my little Lunt HA when I went out about 10.30 UK time, there was also at the five oclock position (in my scope) a tiny prom coming off. When I say tiny it would have probably swallowed the earth.

That's a bit of alsorts 🤦‍♂️

Right so early on started with the mak + binoviewers on the moon, nothing to drastic with magnificqation, actually prefered it lower with just 25mm plossl in. Love the view of the terminator with binoviews, and as mentioned in another post the seeing is really good so the edge was clear and sharp. Didn't bother identifying craters, mountains etc, just enjoyed taking in the view for a while. 

For anyone who have never used bino's, once you try them it's a whole new experience.

Anyway next onto Venus from here, no messing about, straight up to x200, took it easy and got a lovely sharp crescent. It was a little shakey as I think the 127 mak is approaching the GTI wifi mounts limit, but back to the views. Again super crisp and sharp. 

Found myself hitting some of the brighter doubles after that for a while, first time ever I have seen Almaak, not quite as good as Albireo double but a real beauty non the less.  Had another half dozen before it got dark enough to put the frac on the mount and give the mak a rest. 

The problem I had now was the creeping cold. I still had my daytime gear on, this being shorts, t shirt and a thin sports top. So all I managed from here was a brief view of a few open clusters before I dropped onto M44 the beehive cluster as my last DSO. 

This is only the second time I have used this frac but the view of the beehive on a well washed out sky was still quite superb. I made a resolve to try to get this out to darker skies more often to make more use of it's wide field capabilities. 

All in a nice little session, next time I will wrap up much better and stay out longer. 

good result there, makes it all worthwhile when you get results like that. 

This is my list of eyepieces, magnification, exit pupils and tfov. The 14mm and 10mm are basically the 17mm & 12.5mm (Both Nikon's) with an additional lens screwed into the base. They came supplied with them. Akin to mini barlows. 

The sizes 8.5mm and down are when I make use of a televue powermate with any of the four above them.  The top 26mm eyepiece is a Nagler. So basicallly I use 3 eyepieces.

FWIW my most used is the 17mm Nikon. Pretty much on the same lines as John's 21mm ethos in power.

14 hours ago, John said:

Perish the thought baz !

I found with hyper wide eyepieces I needed less focal lengths so I found 31mm, 21mm, 13mm, 8mm and 6mm replaced a somewhat larger range of eyepieces with slightly narrower field of view.

All was going well until I decided that often I wanted smaller eyepieces when using refractors, so I put together a 1.25 inch fitting set. 

Then I decided that I needed an outreach / travel set so added a zoom, a barlow and a wide field for those purposes.

So all my good intentions are undone now

"Confessions of an Ocularholic"  

 

I can definately go along with this John. I had settled one set of EP's, all the widefields listed in my sig. I love my Nikons, they are so easy to get along with plus the views are breathtaking and the Nagler is a great addition to these two. The powermate works superb with these. I no longer even look at new eyepieces. (well ok just occasionally) 😄

However, after buying a mak and frac for use in the garden mainly, I then needed another set. Kept that both simple and cheap though with 3x BST's and a barlow. I find this is perfectly acceptable for intended use.

Out of interest what is your frac set of glass made up of?  (sorry for going off topic OP)

I think Don Pensack has a great idea to fill your gap with a wider field of view eyepiece but the only problem is doing so brings it's own problems.

I am assuming the 20mm is a SLV or similar with a FOV at 50. On your OTA thats times 50 times and 1 degree fov. or x100 and 0.5 fov barlowed

Using a Explore scientific 14mm/82 degree fov you get x71 with 1.15 degrees fov. or x143 and 0.57 barlowed.

That fixes your something in-between but then your start thinking do I need the 20 or 10 when the 14 & 7 do the same but a little better. (greater magnification and wider field of view)

A great thing about wider field eyepieces is the ability to get the space walk feel but if you buy one you then start looking at your other eyepieces and thinking I like the wider views, do I need the others narrow fov ep's, as good as they are. 

There is always a case to have differing focal lengths and fields of view but the more different types you have, the more complicated it gets. I think you just end up convincing yourself you need a specific eyepiece for viewing this or that object until you have a very lot of eyepieces, some of which never see the dark of night.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Certainly happened to me. 

I always use a slightly de-focused star and cross-hair ep when setting up with the same mount. Find accuracy to be superb. Always get the target object into the view of a 25mm eyepiece. 

Get same result using a high powered ep and have it de-focused.

I have used a UHC-S filter made by Baader on Jupiter a few times. I found it increases contrast on the cloud banding and helps it stand out, especially on the GRS. That said, I still preferred the view without the filter for some reason, the natural look I guess.

Have you looked at the bresser yet?

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bresser-telescopes/bresser-messier-ar-102s-600-refractor-ota.html

I have a copy version of this OTA and it's a belter for wide field views. You will get CA on brighter DSO's but I didn't buy it for that reason hence why I love it.

Oh and its well under budget and not too bulky

11 minutes ago, smoggy said:

Hi all

I currently have a small telescope on the az Eq5 and the supplied counterweights (5kg) are too heavy to balance with the scope. Does anyone know of smaller counterweights that would fit into the shaft?

Thanks in advance

Don't wish to state the obvious but you have tried fully sliding the 5KG weight fully up the shaft I take it. 

5 hours ago, Norfolk Noob said:

What is the advantage of bypassing the handset?

Also means if you have a camera attached to scope with a long enough cable you can sit indoors and do some viewing 😀

Yeah thats a pretty busy haul. I love the fact you can get almost lost amongst the fuzzies, even push to loses you as things are crammed so close together, I reckon I had 15-20 galaxies in the space of 20 minutes last night to in and around the markarian chain but I had gotten so cold I gave up counting or making notes. 

I note you only had a faint trace of M101 John, I was the same with M100, checked three times with pushto coordinates and although it seemed a little off where it should have been, it was the only DSO that it could have been. Face on galaxy suffering badly with the seeing!  Shall have to revisit that next time.

So decided to travel a good hour to a really dark site, first time at the ribblehead viaduct. Got there at around civil darkness. Gave me time to align the push to and run a few alignment and collimation checks on named stars and clusters whilst waiting for astronomical darkness, so far so good.

Skies were not settled yet but early doors. However I already had a feeling things were going to be tough, low temperatures but on the exposed moors the temp was 3 degrees lower than on the way in and out of the venue and wind chill. Brrrrrrrrrr.

I will cut to the chase, early on skies being unsettled viewing was tough, I had tried a few tough DSO with the california and rosette, no joy on either so didn't even bother with the flame or horsey. Orion was beautiful as always but it's a given really, bright as it is. Guess I was pushing it on the difficult DSO with the skies still settling. Even the owl wasn't as bright in the OIII filter.

Around nine oclock the wind had dropped a little and the skies looked to be settling, so I decided to leave my nebula viewing and switch to galaxy. Swung round to the markarian chain and there did seem to be a lot more to it than last time I viewed it from a site that definitely wasn't as dark. After checking on stellarium the galaxies appeared to be ranging from 11.8 to 12.25, certainly seeing deeper than before and not that difficult to pick out. 

However it was at this point the wind suddenly picked up again coming in from a north easterly direction, wind chill killed it here. Had a few more looks at other messiers in the markarian area and then binned it. The eyepiece felt like it was going to freeze to my face, really was bitter cold. 

I don't mind cold, but not wind chill, awful. 

In summary, its a place that has great promise with fantastic 360 low horizons but I need to be mindful of the weather with it being so exposed.

One thing is if you intend using for terrestrial viewing a dedicated EQ mount is not a good idea, there are EQ/AZ combo mounts, skywatcher do one at £1500 but its goto and so not sure really how suitable that would be. It would be good for if/when you decide to do astrophotography though.  Bad point, apparently very heavy.

Maybe a decent AZ would suit you better initially as this will cover your initial bases, non goto though. 

https://www.f1telescopes.co.uk/shop/tripods-and-mounts/skywatcher-tripod-mounts-wedges/skywatcher-alt-azimuth-budget-mounts/skywatcher-az4-heavy-duty-alt-azimuth-mount-and-stainless-steel-tripod/

On 08/12/2019 at 16:22, Gonko said:

I use glasses for astigmatism. 

I can't get contacts as I have an issue with anything coming close to my eye. I've tried to use them, but to no avail. 

At the moment my 6 and 4mm is like looking through a straw hole and I tend not to even bother with them....which means I tend not to go after planets....which is a shame. 

I'm looking for decent eyepieces that will allow good eye relief with those focal ep lengths. The afov of the svbony range seems like an added bonus. I'm just unclear as to how they are. Are they budget crap or actually decent. 

For example,, the 20mm ep that came with my celestron astromaster was total garbage. Poor fov for the focal length and a little dark when chasing dso. 

My 25mm orion siris by comparison is much better. As I say, this came with my scope used and is quite good. 

I wear glasses for astigmatism, and mine is quite a strong prescription.

However it's not all bad news.

I find that once the exit pupil falls below 3mm the astigmatism falls away. So I need glasses with two of my lower power eyepieces in my sig below. Although I actually use an astigmatism corrector (Televue Dioptrix is the name) so I don't actually need my specs at all really.

There are numerous calculators out there which will work out your exit pupil. Anyway I did a quick check for you and anything above 18 will potentially leave you needing glasses as this eyepiece gives a 3mm exit pupil. You may get away with slightly higher but that's my limit with my prescription. 

As I understand the bresser comes with a single 25mm eyepiece which I believe is reasonable quality.  Now for another £25 you can get a basic Barlow (maybe a better one 2nd hand) which will double that and if budget allows, get a 17mm plossl for another £20 and all bases will be covered for a good while. x48, x71, x97 & x143 gives as excellent range for a first scope and eyepiece.

I would say maybe leave the finder scope until the OP's husband has a play with the red dot finder and see if he gets on with it.

Just had a nosey at the bresser, lovely bit of kit that for a starter scope.

If you husband is techy, he can download skymaps to his smartphone to aid with finding objects in the sky, stellarium is a favourite. Can be found in playstore for android or the iPhone/pad app store. Oh and it's free.

On 08/03/2020 at 08:09, Space Hopper said:

A binoviewer and some nice eyepiece pairs to take your observing to the next level.

 

I echo this sentiment, I love viewing the moon with my binoviewers, really does make a huge difference and I find it so comfortable to use.

Some pictures below of my widefield imaging set up. The scope is a Svbany 60mm guide type and with a 20mm Ep in I get x12 with a nice 4 degree, perfect for helping framing the double cluster which is my first intended target once the clouds eventually break.

The camera is a Sony HX400V and there is a dedicated programme on board for taking pictures of the night sky so initially I will use that. On checking the settings for the programme its only set at ISO 800 and the exposure is also set relatively low, so I am not sure how it will fair with less bright DSO's. However the night sky programme also has an over-ride so once I get a little practice I shall have a play around to see how capable the camera really is. 

Camera goes up to x50 analogue zoom and I think its 2 degree FOV at that, not sure if that's correct.  However initially I intend taking wider field pictures anyway so will see how this all gets on. 

The GTI wifi mount has been flashed to operate as a EQ mount with the wedge.

I got my son to machine the extension plate to the L bracket to allow for the fitting of the spotting scope. The clearance between scope and camera is around 1 mm each side so measurements were a little tight. It's a little bit heath robinson maybe but after looking at other options this one seemed best for intended use. You can buy a RDF finder with a camera mount which I did consider as its a lot cheaper but I have always preferred to be able to get a close up visual so I went for this instead.

I think the information you have given there has cracked it actually Michael.  I got my head around thinking EQ and if successful, will either post up instructions or maybe a short video later if it works. 

The acid test will be on my first attempts at imaging when the skies clear, oh wait (sigh) 🙄