johnturley

I think there will be import duty (somewhere in the region of 10%), I had to pay this when I imported an Astro Physics Refractor in the 1980's, and the 20% VAT will be charged on top of everything including the carriage charges. The courier may also add on a customs clearance charge, although I avoided this by picking up the telescope from the bonded warehouse at Heathrow, and filling in the paperwork (I expect its all electronic these days) myself, so not very good news I'm afraid. John

With these eyepieces only being 4 element, I can't see them being very sharp at the edge of the 65 degree field. John

According to the latest online BBC forecast, there might be some improvement by 11 August, just in time for the Perseids.

Some ZWO Cameras, including my ASI 462 MC, come with an all sky lens, don't know whether the OP was talking about using the lenses that come with the cameras. John

Have now booked the Mexico Tour 4 with Astro Trails, paying a 50% deposit, I have also booked return flights from London Heathrow to Mexico City with British Airways via their partner Star Travel. Booking the flights via Star Travel worked our slightly cheaper than booking direct with British Airways, the cost of which has gone up by around £500 pp since the beginning of June. I also thought that booking via Star Travel would work better if Astro Trails for any reason decided to amend dates, or even cancelled the entire trip. I would be interested to hear from anybody who has also booked this trip, or any other trip to view the 2024 Mexico/USA Total Solar Eclipse. John

Mark I think that you will find that the 5mm eyepiece will give too large and dim and image with a digital SLR having an APS-C sized sensor, making it difficult to achieve correct focus, and tracking will also be more difficult. I think that your 9 or 15mm Plossls will yield better results. John

Maybe cheaper overall to buy a cheapish 10-15 mm Plossl, such as from the Astro Essentials range available from FLO, that should fit in a more traditional sized (and cheaper) eyepiece projection tube such as the one listed below. Astro Essentials Super Plossl Eyepiece | First Light Optics Tele-Camera Adaptor for Eyepiece Projection Astrophotography | First Light Optics John

I suspect the problem is due to lack of travel on the focusing mounts, at one time most refractors had focusing mounts with around 5in (125 mm) of travel, some now however have only around 40 - 50mm (which I consider totally inadequate), and require the use of extension tubes with some eyepieces. As a bare minimum I consider that there should be at least 80mm of travel on the focuser. John

I actually prefer to immerse my mirror in a bowl of lukewarm soapy water first, and leave it to soak for about 30 minutes to loosen any grit, and then rinse before swabbing. John

Or use a Nagler or other design of eyepiece with an in-built Barlow. John

Not so sure about using fingers rather than cotton wool swabs. John

Yes I use my 6D with the Esprit, it fully illuminates the 36 x 24 mm full frame format, but would apparently not do so with the reducer, but you should be fine with the ZWO 2600, which I understand has an APS-C (24 x 18mm) sized sensor. However with the 6D, I do need to use a 48mm to Canon adaptor, as I found that there was some vignetting with a 42 mm T thread adaptor.

I thought of getting one for my Esprit, but was put off because apparently when using one, it won't fully illuminate the field of a full frame sensor, the 44mm imaging circle being reduced by 0.77x to 34mm. John

Looks like you've got it mounted on a Skywatcher AZ-EQ5, which should be more than adequate. John

There would be no point in getting a 32mm plossl as well, as they both have around the same actual field of view despite the lower magnification of the 30mm plossl. John

As Mark has stated, using the DSLR natively will result in an image scale far too small on planets, and a 2x Barlow alone won't give sufficient amplification. Having said that a 2.5 mm eyepiece with ~2000mm focal length almost certainly gives too much amplification, and make it difficult to focus. I found that with my 14in Newtonian (~1800mm focal length), and Canon 6D full frame digital SLR, I got a reasonable image size on Jupiter with a 9.7mm plossl. With a cropped APS-C sized senor sensor, a 12-15mm eyepiece will probably be about right. I kept the 15, 12.5, and 9.7 mm eyepieces from my original set of smoothside Meade Series 4000 plossls specifically for eyepiece projection, a lot of modern eyepieces will be too fat to fit in most eyepiece projection tubes. Having said all that, you will get much better results with a dedicated planetary camera such as the ZWO 224MC which is not too expensive at around £200, as these have a much faster frame rate, allow more cropping than most digital SLR's, and the associated software (I use Sharpcap, followed by AutoStakkert and Registax) makes processing easier. For comparison I attach 2 images of Mars taken through my 14in Newtonian showing roughly the same surface features, the first was taken October 2020 using eyepiece projection with a 9.7mm plossl with my Canon 6D, the second using a ZWO ASI 462 Planetary Camera with a 2.5x Powermate taken in December 2022 clearly shows much more detail, despite if I recall correctly, more detail was visible visually in October 2020 when Mars was much closer.

I don't find undercuts a problem with the Baader Clicklock system. John

Looks a bit like one of the 4 .5 in Refractors that Astronomical Equipment (Luton) used to manufacture in the 1970's and 80's. John

Will look out for it when we see the total eclipse from Mexico next April, although I gather that its only likely to be a binocular object. John

I assume that some people do it to prove that the item was in condition it was at the time of opening, useful perhaps if the item has sustained some damage in transit. john

Interesting looking mount, it looks like an Astro Systems (Luton) or a Bedford Astronomical Supplies (Peter Drew) one. John

When you get to my age, its easy to forget what you posted 3 years ago. John

It was quite effective on Jupiter and Saturn through my 14 in Newtonian when they were quite low down, but did not make so much difference through my Esprit 150. Now Jupiter and Saturn are moving higher up it will make less of a difference, I don't think many people bother using them for AP as you can correct any false colour due to atmospheric dispersion in the processing software. John

That's similar to my 14 in Newtonian, I've never had to re-collimate the primary, just the secondary. John

Has anybody booked, or thinking of booking, one of these trips with Astro Trails? We (my wife and I) are currently looking into booking with them to see the April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse from Mexico. Originally we thought of doing the trip they were advertising to view the eclipse from near the Niagara Falls, followed by a trans USA Amtrak Rail Trip across the USA visiting New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, and ending up in and flying back from San Francisco. However Astro Trails informed us that they are no longer offering this trip due to lack of interest, so looking at the Mexico trip instead. We had a very successful trip to see the 2019 Argentina Total Eclipse with another company Astro Eclipse, which was well organised, however as far as we can see this company no longer appears to be operating. Although their website is still live, it is out of date, and there is nothing available to book at present, hence looking at Astro Trails. Astro Trails currently require a 50% deposit to book, with the balance to be paid by December, which is similar to what Astro Eclipse required, we appreciate that its not like booking a holiday with JET2 or TUI, where you just need to pay a £60 pp deposit, with the balance not due until about 10 weeks before the departure date. Unlike Astro Eclipse however, Astro Trails do not include International Flights in their price, or even transfers from and to the International airport, you can either book these yourselves, or via their partner Star Travel. Either way the full cost of the flights is due at the time of booking, which means that I would have to pay out about 2/3rds of the total cost now. I am therefore a little wary about having to pay out so much, especially for the flights, 10 months before the departure date. John