CraigT82

Nice work! Nothing more satisfying than when a bit of DIY turns out well.

Looks like a very nicely put together bit of kit.  Don't suppose there's any plans for a 1.25" version?

Lovely stuff, there's a lot going on in that region and I'm not sure I've ever imaged it before.

I think I'd be tempted to bring down the highlights a little - maybe revisit the curves/levels - I always try to make sure no crater rims are blown out but that's just my preference, others don't mind it.  Lovely detail though sharpening looks to be spot on to me

10 minutes ago, pipnina said:

On the plus side early impressions of the optics are promising!

Good news! Fingers crossed for you 🤞

Starfield 102ED F/7 (FPL-53 doublet), on an AZ4 with EQ6 tripod.

Baader T2 Zeiss prism a with Stellalyra 30mm UFF in it.

All set and waiting for tonight's forecast cleariness.

Edit: Reader, it was not clear. 

I have only just come across this thread, what awful news to hear. John was a pillar of the SGL community.

I still remember being astounded by his modification of a SkyTee mount, adding GoTo/tracking abilities, a few years ago., and his more recent determination to guide newcomers to owning Bresser dobs rather than the ubiquitous Sky-Watcher!

At least his expertise and advice will live on in the forums helping others for years to come.

RIP John

1 hour ago, Littleguy80 said:

It’s a good suggestion based on my comments about having a single 4” scope suitable for airport travel. Based on some research since, I’ve not seen any other 4” scopes mentioned as having that capability

Here you go, airline portable 4” apo:

😂😂😂

But seriously though, worth considering the second hand market for one of the 102mm f7 fracs too… plenty of these scopes out there in various guises. Got mine used with oklop bag for £350 but I was really lucky to drop onto the ad as it was put up. You never know what will turn up in the classifieds.

Observed last night with 100mm refractor, I think high wispy cloud and full moon conspired to make it a rather unexciting observation… just a grey smudge. But nice to have seen it. 

45 minutes ago, LDW1 said:

The Starfield is a pretty nice scope, don't overlook it !

Definitely not!

Doing a bit more daylight playing with mine, taking phone pics and hunting for any visible CA. 

This shot is at 310x magnification (3mm ep and 1.3x barlow - in Baader Zeiss T2 prism). Can’t see any chromatic aberration at all on the in focus part (some on the out of focus parts), and sharp as a tack… fab little scope! 
 

Yes you will need a fair bit of extension as fracs are mostly designed to be used with a diagonal, so when shooting straight through you’ll need a good length extension tube. Have a look at this pic from Mike Nash @WestCoastCannuck and see how much extension he needs on his APM140.

To get a rough idea how far back the sensor needs to be you could measure 419mm back from the last lens of the objective (though you’ll have to guess where the last objective is in the tube - unless you want to insert a felt tipped dowel rod with 419mm marked on it into the scope and down to the lens, do so at your own risk!)
 

Another vote for the 4” Apo here. I’m a recent convert having taken ownership of a used Starfield 102 I've been delighted with the views of Mars I had last week. Plenty of surface detail visible on the tiny 11” disc (I was using 180-240x magnification).
 

Granted a big newt will show more detail when the seeing is good enough to allow it but I think most of the time the frac will show you a much more pleasing image which is a real joy to observe.  
 

I was out today playing around with new eyepieces and diagonal that I haven’t had a chance to use at night yet. Snapped this iPhone shot through the StellaLyra 3mm LER eyepiece at 238x mag. Lovely sharp details and there wasn’t even a hint of CA visible on any of the branches I looked at. 

That’s a real beauty Mike, what a superb tool that big frac is… is there really that little CA on the limb or do you process it out? 
 

The colour for me is spot on, this looks so much more ‘lifelike’ to me than mono images. 

1 hour ago, SuburbanMak said:

Fair enough - my reasoning was that it was either try another eyepiece or upgrade the 'scope!  I haven't tried the UFF in my f5 10" Dob yet but am hopeful of similarly improved views there - which would then make his eyepiece amazingly good value, honest (actually at £179 its cheaper than a lot of the other APM UFF rebrands, well done @FLO & I've seen a few reviews where it stacks up very well against the TV Panoptic 27mm - these were all the things I told myself before buying  

I have a StellaLyra 30mm UFF  waiting for me when I get home (currently on a cruise 🚢 ). Really looking forward are to trying it out in both 102ed frac and the 12” f/5 newt. I’m sorely tempted to add an ST80 to the fold after reading through this thread for the first time, as I could probably piggyback it onto the 102ed to ride on the AZEQ6, or just on a photo pod on its own. Heck at over 5 degrees I could probably just hold it up to my eye like a giant monocular! 

Looking good, I wouldn’t worry about trying to dampen the pier from your footsteps, just don’t go near it once you’ve started the imaging run, or pause the run if you do need to go near it. Some longer cables to get the laptop a bit further from the mount will be good. 

As long as there is no serious resistance when screwing it on I’d probably just run a regular pencil over the threads, get some graphite on there to lubricate.

3 hours ago, markse68 said:

It got its first use last night and it made a huge difference to usability- scope stays where i point it anywhere now with the brakes barely applying any friction so at high powers I can nudge the scope with ease to keep the target centred and with no annoying wobble or back-traction from having the brake applied too much. And i only kicked it once

Mark

Sounds like a dream! Nice work 

That looks really good, though this method is a rough collimation, accurate collimation needs an in-focus star image to check the brightness distribution of the diffraction ring: Should be evenly bright all the way around. Ideally not on an artificial star either as there could be mirror/focuser movement when you then angle the scope upwards from horizontal. 

Nice idea with the sliding weight and bracket, and you’ve got the perfect wallpaper for checking eyepiece distortion! 

11 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

The downside to an electronic focuser is that it is a permanent addition to your scope and so prevents you form focusing manually should you wish to use it for a visual session with minimal electronics.

The skywatcher auto focuser is a great bit of kit for the price and I use them for visual observing on my big scope (moonlite focuser) it totally eliminates any focussing wobble at all you just stand/sit there looking through the EP with the handset (9v batt) in your hand controlling the focus. You can fit it with a thumb screw instead of a grub screw so that you can quickly decouple the motor shaft from the focuser shaft and have proper manual control if you wish.

Whilst not technically computer controllable you can replace the supplied handset cable with a much longer one for more ‘remote’ control, or even get the 4tronix wireless remote controller for it.

I’ve e had the lakeside kit and it was great, worked faultlessly although the brackets for both focusers I used it on weren’t straightforward to fit to the focusers (Moonlite CR2 and Baader Diamond Steeltrack).

Motorised focusing (not necessarily computer controlled) is totally worth the money for an imaging rig in my opinion, and makes a shaky mount with big or long scopes much more of a pleasure to use for visual. 

Baader T2 Zeiss BBHS prism + 2” T2 clicklock, and StellaLyra 3mm LER (55deg) EP. Not pictured is Baader Sky surfer RDF that arrived today too. All for the Starfield 102.

Just waiting on the StellaLyra 30mm UFF to round off this latest period of self-indulgent and slightly reckless spending 😬😂

1 minute ago, gamermole said:

where does the classifieds show up once we are allowed to use them?

Here….

2 hours ago, Franklin said:

Do all your LVW's come to focus ok with this setup? Clicklock, plus 2" mirror, plus second clicklock is quite a long light-path. I have these components, the same as yours, but have not used them all together yet, I thought it would be a little too long. Will have to have play around with them and see.

With this scope there is a good 80mm ish of focus drawtube showing when used with the 1.25” diagonal (see my pic in first post) so there a lot of inwards travel capacity. Can’t speak for other fracs though. 

The Tak prism does not play well at all with the Nirvana 4mm, when fully inserted and fully tightened it wobbles around as the Tak collar is not gripping anything due to the tapered nosepiece on the EP. Going to return it and get a Baader T2 Zeiss prism - which will cost more than I paid for the scope in actual fact but I think it deserves it. 
 

4 hours ago, apaulo said:

i have had a starfield 102 for a while now, i find it a nice scope to use, but for £900 it could have a much better clamp. the starfield takes a lot of tightening to grip. i have had my e/ps slipping round on several occasions, in fact  a Pentax XW i have fell out, so i was not impressed, luckily there was minimal damage done to the e/p. i have seen others rightly suggesting to upgrade the offending clamp, but after spending £900 on a telescope should we really have to do that. i think not.

Yes the clamp on mine was hard to turn and often I unscrewed the entire adaptor from the drawtube when I tried to undo the clamp. 
 

I took it off the scope and sat turning it back and forth repeatedly for a few minutes which loosened it up to the point where it’s actually usable and works fine  now - there is grease in there and turning it back and forth repeated must have helped distribute it around and thin it out a bit. 

8 hours ago, Stu said:

Great stuff @CraigT82. It is oft said that every astronomer needs a 4” apo, and you are immediately seeing why! Your setup is similar in concept to mine ie high quality 4” apo on a simple and very quick to set up alt az mount and it is my most used scope. Stick a Herschel wedge in it and you’ll get some spectacular Solar views too 👍

Will be adding one to the basket in the spring. Looking forward to a bit of white light without having to faff about with a solar film on the front! The grab and go aspect is really suiting me at the minute. 

7 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

You have a beautiful looking scope there Craig.  I think  You should take another look at M42,  but with a 20mm wide field eyepiece and from a dark site. You might just view your "little pea shooter" as you call it, in a completely new light.  About 15 years ago i was observing with a friend from a dark site out of town. He was using a Vixen 102 F6.5 ED and I a NP101. My friend was looking at the orion nebula using a low power eyepiece of around 35mm or 40mm fl.  I looked through his scope then suggested he try my 20mm Nagler. He said "No thanks,  I like the low power views",  but I encouraged him to try the 20mm. I wish I hadn't,  because by the end of the night he'd somehow talked me into selling the 20mm Nagler to him, and cheap as he didn't have much money.  Truthfully,  the view of M42 in his 102ED with the 20mm Nag blew his socks off. The nebula was spectacular, and filled the field like a pearlescent green gaseous clam shell set against a much darker sky background. Not only the bright nebulosity stood out better, but the dark black nebula exploded in tiers one behind another, giving depth to the view and a very 3D impression.  The wow's and colourful expletives must have gone on for 20 or 30 minutes.  If you can't find a dark site, then try observing from under a blackout blanket for a while. Transparent nights will be best of course. You'll be amazed!

That’s a good point Mike, like all scopes it really deserves a dark sky.  Might have to think about a good mid length eyepeiece soon. 
 

I had another quick session last night whilst the slim crescent moon was still low in the western sky. I enjoyed watching a couple of isolated sunlit peaks off the sharp point of the cusp fade into darkness (rubbish phone pic below-the sight through the EP was much better!)

Had a another good look at mars too and in addition to the dark albedo markings I observed yesterday in the northern and southern hemispheres, I could see a much lighter patch of terrain just coming into view in the southern hemisphere on the limb, which doesn’t really tally with anything on the maps that I can see so could have been a dust storm? Will have a trawl through others Mars images that I can find from last night to confirm or not. 

EDIT found a tweet from Martin Lewis (@SkyInspector) luckily the first placed I looked as I know Martin is a prolific imager and wouldn’t miss a clear night! It shows the light patch well. It’s on the terminator - not limb - and it’s at the lower left in this video screen grab. Certainly looks like the yellowish sandy colour for a dust storm.