CraigT82

This was a few weeks ago before baby arrival.... capturing Saturn's photons. Lovely quiet spot in my front garden looking down the street which ismt ideal with all the asphalt. Though the grass is far too soggy to set up here now.

Much better! It's a very nice image

Very nice! Tons of detail visible. Could do with the colour balance tweaking slightly perhaps? Looks a bit green to me.

The Rumak should offer sharp images right to the edge of the field of view. Great for lunar imaging with the large chipped modern cameras (ASI183 etc...)

What scope do you have now?

Very interesting! Not really many Rumaks around. Ioptron are really bringing some interesting stuff to market. I'd love to get my hands on one to see how it compares to a Gregorian.

Very nice, looks like a Rumak ....is it? 6" maks hit a real sweet spot of portability and power, nice to see more coming to market.

Yes, very good instructions for a change!

To be honest I think you just need to add some weight to the front of the scope! A velcro ankle weight would cost a few quid, and do the job nicely, plus it's quickly removable and without marking the tube

Out of interest, what is the procedure for collimating a classical cassegrain? 🤔 Are you planning on doing any imaging with the cassegrain? Would be nice to see some lunar images to compare.

Mines too good to use, it's proudly on display in the living room!

I think all the morpheus range now come with the M43 extender to aid eye placement? @FLO may be able to confirm?

That's great! I've been looking for a phone with a longer exposure than the 10secs that my Galaxy S8 offers... good to know the oneplus 5T goes up to 30 secs.

Great eyepieces arent they? Superb value for money. I've never had the 17.5 but I had the shorter FL ones with my 200p f6 newt and they worked wonderfully

Here you go.... it's an m10 x 1.25 bolt which holds the mount head to tripod top my AZ4 also fits the tripod nicely. The flat top of the tripod has a protrusion screwed to it which the head sits on, this protrusion has a large diameter thread around it's circumference and a 'tabbed ring' screws over it but this doesnt seem to serve much purpose that I can tell.

Seems to be the same as these units from Opticstar... http://www.opticstar.com/Run/Astronomy/Astro-Accessories-Telescopes-Ascension.asp?p=0_10_5_1_1_0 To be honest I'd much rather buy from Opticstar than ebay. If I was looking for a widefield EP I'd probably give that one a try... might have fuzzy edges in your f/4.7 dob but it's a cheap way to get that 'spacewalk' effect and would make a decent finder EP. If you plan to acquire a longer F ration scope in the future it might become more useful still.

In my opinion, for visual use and everything else being equal... An apochromatic refractor will outperform any other scope of the same aperture on pretty much any target. An achromatic refractor will outperform pretty much any other scope of the same aperture on DSO targets, not so much on planets or lunar due to chromatic aberration. This is due to the lack of central obstruction ad better light throughput as mentioned by Vlaiv. Of course everything else is rarely equal. Cost, size, ease of mounting etc... all play their part too.

This does work quite well actually. I use google earth and I use the "draw line" feature to draw a line on the map with one end fixed at my observing location, and the other end at the north pole. Just so happens that the gable end of a house nearby falls exactly on the line and so I set the north leg pointing to that gable end.

The magnetic declination will vary depending on your location, and any decent compass should be adjustable to take it into account (usually a tiny screw on the bezel) Edit: in the UK (Greenwich) the declination looks to currently be about 8 minutes west, so not a huge difference

A used William Optics EZ Touch alt-az mount and nice wooden tripod, bought from UKABS. This is the first generation of this mount which was made by AOK in Switzerland (before they shifted production to Taiwan and started ripping off the AOK design apparently). It's really well made and seems lovely to use (playing with it in the garage at least). Will use it to hold a 6" mak cass with a heritage 130p on the other side

That could be interesting to see, I bet you could make and sucessfully sell retrofit focuser upgrades for this scope! I've previously retrofitted a 2" crayford focuser to my H130p which worked really well with lighter 2" eyepieces (though ended up needing the focuser for another project so I returned the H130p to as it was before modding). The thread is on here somewhere if you're interested (search "heritage focuser mod")

I would steer clear of the eyepiece projection, just use a T ring and 1.25" nosepiece and shoot at prime focus. Though I'm not sure how the focuser assembly would handle the weight of a DSLR, might twist or sag

Build yourself an equatorial platform... the stellafane website contains lots of DIY scope info. Once you have simple tracking, you can use the webcam for lunar images and even the S9 for some long exposure (10 secs?) exposures of bright nebs

I have the heritage 130p as my travel scope, it's a great little performer. I dont have it on it's original base though, I ditched that ages ago. I use it on a skywatcher AZ4 mount with aluminium legs. I have cut down the legs so that the whole lot fits in a small roll along case. When in use with the cut down legs I can just about get away with using it standing with a stoop, but it's better with a chair or high stool. As far as accesories go all I take is 3 eyepieces (25mm plossl, 18mm ortho and 6mm ortho), a 2x barlow and a cheshire sight tube (short version). There are several useful modifications that can be made to the scope, which are well documented on the forum. I have added a card light shroud, flocking and a better red dot finder (rigel quickfinder). The focuser is a bit of a weak spot on this scope but it's functional and with a bit of practice and some tpfe tape actually works pretty well. It's performs very well under dark skies with 130mm aperture, folds up small and crucially is dirt cheap so if it got smashed to bits in transit its not a big deal.

All great images but really love the star trails!