Nicola Fletcher

You should definitely take the opportunity. There was so much to do in the area, it was difficult to narrow down to the things we chose to see. Arizona is a beautiful state!

Whoa! A 3” Explore Scientific 30mm?! No wonder I was impressed. It was absolutely incredible. The video is so cool - I love how he keeps laughing with excitement. Thank you for posting that. The open deck observatory was fantastic. So many great scopes and really nice and helpful staff at each one. It was such a treat to have them set up by someone else and I just had to walk between them observing whatever was on offer.

Thanks Magnus! It was absolutely brilliant 😊 I had my 22mm Nagler in my backpack just in case there was an opportunity to use it, but to be honest the eyepieces were of such obviously good quality I didn’t ask if I could use it. The Dyer had a big 30mm 2” EP in it (I don’t know what it was but I don’t think it was a Televue) but it was absolutely fantastic. All of the scopes had very good 2” EPs in them.

I’m just back from a long work trip to the USA, which ended with a tagged-on holiday to the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona and Utah, and a visit to Flagstaff. Flagstaff is the only international dark sky city, and home to the Lowell Observatory. First up was a flight to Flagstaff via Phoenix last Thursday, where I landed at the tail end of a snowstorm. It was a challenge getting into town but I made it with the help of a very nice taxi driver who kindly showed me the way to walk to the observatory from my hotel. People were very busy clearing roads and footpaths, so I climbed Mars Hill to the observatory that afternoon, which was definitely a good healthy walk and gave commanding views of the neighbouring mountains and the surrounding city. The Lowell Observatory is at about 7,200 feet above sea level, and I was very much looking forward to seeing the collection of telescopes including the 24” Clark refractor. It was at new moon and the forecast was for clear skies. Alas, upon reaching the observatory, the staff informed me that the telescopes and the museum were not open for visitors that night, due to the weather and the snowfall which had not yet been cleared from the paths. However, the exhibit within the visitor centre and the gift shop were open, so I whiled away a few hours spending money and looking at the exhibits, including a large meteorite from the nearby Meteor Crater and photos of the research instruments located outside the city, before making my way back down to my hotel. The following evening also had a clear forecast so I went back to the observatory that evening. I wanted to see the telescopes while it was still bright out and also stay to hopefully view through some of them as evening came in. Happily, although the Clark refractor was not open for viewing due to some wind, the 24” Dyer Telescope, a Planewave CDK24a f/6.5 Corrected Dall-Kirkham astrograph, was open for general viewing. This scope was only installed in 2020 and is normally only used for private viewing sessions, so I was very happy to have some early evening views of Jupiter through it. On the way back down from the Dyer telescope, there was a beautiful sunset and I stopped to look at the view and the mausoleum of Percival Lowell. The thing I had most been looking forward to was the Giovale Open Deck Observatory, which is a large platform containing a range of telescopes, within a building on runners that slides backwards off the telescope platform, and converts into a warm room lit with red lights, for breaks from the intense cold. The platform contains a smorgasbord of delightful scopes: 14” and 17” Planewave CDKs connected to cameras with live viewing of targets, a 32” f/3 Starstructure dob, an 8” Moonraker Victorian refractor, a TEC Apo 140FL widefield refractor and a 16” Meade LX200 ACF. All had beautiful Feathertouch focusers and a range of 2” EPs. While I was there, the dob was tracking Saturn (by far the best views I have ever seen of Saturn!), the smaller Planewave was also imaging Jupiter and the TEC was on the double cluster in Perseus. I stayed for quite a while, warming up in the warm room as it was freezing out! By the time I left the open deck observatory, it was dark and Orion was riding high in the sky. I was impressed with the grit that had been spread on the pathways which was also glow in the dark! I then went back up to the the Dyer telescope to see Jupiter once again (by now it was about 9pm and the views were much better) and also to see the Clark refractor which is in a large dome close to the Dyer telescope. At this stage, I was frozen to the bone, so headed back down to the visitor centre via the Rotunda Museum, which had a fantastic exhibit featuring Clyde Tombaugh and the discovery of Pluto, Percival Lowell and Robert Burnham. Some of the highlights were a first edition, loose leaf edition of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook and lots of letters, telegrams and suggestions for the naming of Pluto. I took tons of photos but will spare you from an avalanche of pictures! Very tired but very happy, I went back to Flagstaff and sampled one of the many locally brewed beers in the atmospheric pubs there, and then walked back to the hotel through the lovely, minimally but safely lit city that has maintained Bortle 4 skies through its International Dark Sky City status. The next day, my mum joined me for a road trip around Navajo Nation and through Hopi reservation. We rented a car and our first stop was Meteor Crater, about 45 minutes drive east of Flagstaff. It was a really amazing place with a visitor centre and several views from above the crater. It was difficult to capture its magnificence in a photo, but there was an Apollo astronaut model in the crater which I couldn’t even see from above. It was used to train the Apollo astronauts before their missions to the Moon. We then drove up to Second Mesa in the Hopi reservation. The Hopi villages are located high on three mesas in the area, surrounded by vast expanses of flat land. It was hair-raising driving up steep roads onto the plateau of the mesa to our lodging for the night. While there, the locals advised us to drive to First Mesa in the morning for the annual Buffalo Dances. Unfortunately the sky was completely clouded over that night, but the terrifying drive up onto First Mesa to the village of Walpi, and the whole village celebrating the Buffalo Dances, was a morning to remember and something I doubt many people get to see. On we went to Monument Valley which I was really looking forward to, as we had rooms booked at The View hotel, the only hotel within the Monument Valley National Park. Our room had a balcony with truly incredible views over Monument Valley and Bortle 2 skies (and the hotel were very aware of the attraction of stargazing from the hotel so had very dim lights that I think were turned off after 10pm). I had brought my Takahashi FC76-DCU and had two incredible nights of stargazing under crystal clear skies. The balcony was south facing so I concentrated on southern Messier objects the first evening, observing M35, M42/43, NGC1980, M41, M46/47, M48, M50, M93, M78 and M79. Many of these were naked eye objects, and looked fantastic through the little Tak. It truly is the 3”that thinks it’s a 4”, especially under those skies! M42 in particular was incredible, with so much structure and detail and perhaps a hint of green colour. I used a Tak prism diagonal and 24mm Panoptic for the whole evening. The next morning, having left the curtains open so I could see when it got bright out, I awoke to a beautiful sunrise and got the little Tak out for a morning view of Venus, this time with the 9mm Nagler. The following evening, I revisited many of the same targets, with a couple more including the Beehive and M67, and I tried without success to see Barnard’s Loop and the Flame nebula. After this we continued on to the Grand Canyon via Horseshoe Bend and Navajo National Monument. Grand Canyon is another Bortle 2 dark sky park, and our cabin right beside the canyon rim had some beautiful sunset and sunrise views, but unfortunately another mostly cloudy night. At 5am, there were some wonderful naked eye views, reminding me of how low we were situated, at 36 degrees North. Arcturus was high overhead with Spica, Hydra and Centaurus visible to the south. We stood on the crater rim in the bitter cold, waiting for the sun to rise and light up the canyon as we watched. We headed back to Flagstaff that day, for one more visit to the Lowell Observatory and our flight home the next day. I had a fantastic trip and saw some of the best and darkest skies I’ve ever seen. I’d highly recommend a visit to any of these places if you ever get the opportunity!

Thank you for sharing such an enjoyable evening - I love the photo too!

I know you’ve had some great advice already and I completely agree with it. I thought I’d chip in as I was in exactly the same position as you a few years ago with a Mak 127 that I had been happy with as a solo scope for many years. I first bought a 102mm Altair Starwave (the 102 ED-R which I believe is the same scope as FLO’s Starfield and other vendors’ equivalents) and was amazed at the quality of it. It did replace the Mak which I sold. I then caught refractor fever and saved up for a Takahashi FC76-DCU which has revolutionised my enjoyment of astronomy. I still cannot believe the quality of that scope for its aperture, and being able to put it in a backpack (it splits in two) and take it all over the world with me is the icing on the cake. I was recently given a gift of a Takahashi FC100DZ (how lucky am I!) and I refuse to sell my Starwave as I love all of my refractors. So beware, you are opening a can of worms by getting a refractor and I doubt you will stop at one! I know you’ve had lots of great advice but I do think that 3 vs 4” refractors are quite different in terms of weight and portability, obviously depending on what you go for. I think, because you want to be able to travel with it, perhaps something in the 70mm range would be a good idea. My Altair refractor is so good, I think I’d be very tempted by @Stu‘s suggestion of the https://www.altairastro.com/altair-72-edf-refractor-dual-speed-rp-focuser-optical-test-report-451-p.asp. It looks nice and portable and the build quality of these scopes is excellent. The William Optics scopes are beautiful too. Good luck!

I’ve found that over the years I’ve moved further away from GoTo and other aids and now I really enjoy star hopping and finding things manually. I have wasted clear nights getting frustrated with a mount that won’t align or other gadgets that don’t behave. With 3 and 4” refractors, I now just use a red dot finder (one with a series of concentric circles) and a low power EP to find things. I’m attempting to do the same with my new 12” dob but I’m not sure yet how successful that will be! I might end up with a Nexus DSC or similar, but to be honest I’d prefer to keep things as simple as possible. I like to use the instructions in TLAO, Cosmic Challenge by Philip Harrington (a really fantastic book) and websites such as http://themcdonalds.net/notes-on-finding-dsos/. Otherwise I use a star atlas (Sky and Telescope Pocket Star Atlas or Interstellarum) or SkySafari, but I plan the session indoors beforehand and sometimes draw out my own map of where the object is which I take outside. I tend to plan sessions around particular constellations or areas of the sky which I think makes things easier. I observe in good Bortle 4 skies (just one area of light pollution to the North) so it’s easy to star hop from the RDF but I can imagine a proper finder might help in light polluted areas. Personally I find them very hard to use without a RDF to get me close to the general area.

Thank you - that’s reassuring and I will definitely keep at it! I was a little disappointed that my 4” Tak has given more pleasing views than the dob on the one night I got them out together. Even at the time, I thought it was because the seeing wasn’t good enough for the dob. It is so great to see your video though and I am looking forward to some good nights with the dob - I’ve wanted one for years. I really appreciate you posting the video - and thank you also to the OP for the great thread!

This is amazing. I have a new 12” dob and haven’t seen anything like this level of detail through it. I’ve only had it out three times and I’m pretty sure it’s cooled (2 hours outdoors before use) and collimated. Maybe it was just that the seeing wasn’t great. I will have to keep trying!

I completely agree. Let’s see how long I get away with that 😂

Oh, my apologies, yes I see you did ask about the secondary. I’ve no problem whatsoever with it. Collimating the secondary is so easy with the tool they supply, and I really don’t think there’s much of a risk of hitting the mirror if you’re careful. I had absolutely no issue collimating it in the dark with just a torch when attaching the tool to the collimation screws. I think this is one of the big advantages of this scope design and it definitely works for me!

No problem - delighted to talk about it as my whole family are sick of hearing me talk incessantly about it 😬 I have no experience with other reflectors and I understand that this dob uses a non-standard design. I have found collimating the primary to be dead easy by adjusting the three knobs behind the primary, but I did use a laser collimator. I don’t know if I would run into issues if I used another method as was recently highlighted in another post on this forum. But I was extremely impressed with the views given the less than ideal conditions so far. I observe using premium refractors so that’s a caveat in terms of my ability to critique the design of the scope - but I am used to excellent optics and I would say that I am very impressed with this dob so far.

Your 22mm Nagler was awesome with it! Thank you again 😊

The entire thing assembled is reported to be 32.1kg, but I wonder if that’s including the counterweights (I haven’t weighed it myself). The mirror box is 18.9kg and that’s by far the heaviest component. The rocker box, truss poles and upper truss assembly are very light. I can lift the individual components by myself and assemble it in situ, but with two people it’s very easy to just lift it by the handles on the rocker box when fully assembled. I was the same - I didn’t want to buy a solid tube dob because of the weight and storage issues, but this packs down into two very portable boxes that are easily moved and fit into the boot of a Hyundai i20 with room to spare. I can see myself taking this on holidays and to star parties with no hesitation. It’s surprisingly quick to assemble once you do it a couple of times. I think it’ll need to be collimated every time it’s set up - I labelled the trusses to put them back in the same place each time, but still needed to re-collimate. However, this is dead easy and took me less than 5 minutes in the dark.

I certainly will. The weather has been really awful hasn’t it. The forecast for Friday looked great and the sky was fantastic when I was driving home at dusk - then it was like a carpet of cloud was rolled out over the sky. Oh well, it’ll make the next clear night even more special when it comes!

Thank you 😊 Yes it looked huge in the first photo alright! It’s actually a great size and not too tall or too heavy. I’m glad it worked out as it’s a big change from 3 and 4 inch refractors but I think it’ll complement them well.

Christmas came early this year, and my better half had ordered a 12” Explore Scientific Ultralight dob well ahead of Christmas. When it was delivered last week, he said I should set it up (which I was very happy to do)! Of course I’ve been plagued with cloudy skies and work commitments since I got it, but I did set it up and had a quick check of it earlier in the week. It’s my first reflector so I had a go at collimating it too, which is really easy as it can be collimated from the eyepiece with the supplied collimation tool and the adjustment screws beside the primary mirror. After setting it up in the house, the scope certainly looks the part and the action is very smooth in both axes. I can’t find any of the issues that were highlighted in some earlier reviews. On putting it in the garden for the first time, it was obviously out of collimation as the stars were all comet shaped but I had another go with a laser collimator and got it right. Last night, despite lots of clouds, @Jasonb and I set up the dob and his Skywatcher 200pds at my family farm in the mountains and got some good views of Jupiter despite not great seeing. The north and south equatorial belts were lovely with great detail, as was the north temperate belt. At about 11.30pm, we had our first view of the season of M42 using an Astronomik UHC filter and 22mm Nagler, and it was just spectacular with beautiful nebulosity and structure. The moon was high and although partially obscured by cloud, was for me the highlight of the evening through the Explore Scientific using a Baader 8-24mm MKIV zoom at 8mm, with exclamations of amazement from all present at the detail and wow factor of the moon through a 12” dob. Ed Ting said that everyone should see the moon through a large aperture telescope and it certainly didn’t disappoint! (Blurry photo below showing the cloud with tiny gaps, and two very excited amateur astronomers peeping through the sucker holes). Overall, I’m absolutely delighted with this ultralight-ish scope that’s very portable and very easy to use. The optics seem great and the construction is super. The only thing I’ve done so far is replace the red dot finder and shoe with a Baader universal finder shoe and a Celestron star pointer pro RDF. I’ve a shroud ordered from Shrouds by Heather and I hope to put a Nexus DSC pro on it as well. Looking forward to a proper clear sky in the hopefully not too distant future too.

Welcome to SGL and thank you for posting these fabulous photos of the incredible place you live! Im from Ireland and primarily a visual observer. Like you, my ‘resources are depleted’ but I have some lovely telescopes to view the night sky from the mountain farm where I live. I’ve tried to get into wide field astrophotography after a trip to Finland earlier in the year where I was lucky enough to see a fantastic display of Northern Lights. But I don’t think photography will ever beat my love of just observing the objects in the night sky.

Definitely- the art shop will hurt your wallet a lot less than Astro gear. Sketching is such a great way to really see the detail in objects.

I use white, yellow and orange pastel pencils (for coloured stars). I then use soft pastel sticks which I make a powder from on sandpaper and then apply with a paintbrush. Lastly, I use a white gelly roll pen to draw very bright stars. Sharpen the pastel pencils with a blade - they just break if you try to use a pencil sharpener! I was intimidated by the moon but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It’s definitely good practice too!

When I first tried the Mellish technique, I practiced drawing the moon from photographs. I found that it was a really good way of getting used to using pastels and working on black paper. I then tried some DSOs just by pausing the Mellish video and copying the DSO sketches (I used the one by Alexander Massey on YouTube. I then found it much easier to use the technique when I actually started sketching at the telescope. I think it’s a lovely way of sketching; I hope you enjoy it!

These are fantastic sketches! They look very realistic - I’m sure they will be a great reminder of the night you observed them. I haven’t done a huge amount of sketching but I really enjoy using pastels on black paper for DSOs which avoids the need to invert. I’m just getting into sketching on white paper now and I definitely find it more challenging. I’m determined to keep going though, especially for planets. Thanks for posting your sketches- they’re a great inspiration 😊

It’s interesting to see how different 4” scopes can be and the different mounting requirements. Something to consider for definite when choosing one! I agree there are a lot of reasons the Starwave/Starfield etc is so popular. I really like mine and would hate to part with it. The 4” Taks are also excellent and all are fairly lightweight which is an important consideration. But if I had that Genesis or the Vixen, I don’t think I’d part with them either! Beautiful scopes 👍🏻

That’s absolutely extraordinary- thank you for posting it! Does that nebulosity extend much further beyond the Pleiades - I just can’t believe the extent of it!

The honest answer is because I was given the Tak as a gift and I am too sentimental to sell the Starwave 😊 But it’s also because I rate the Starwave so highly. I like its big focuser and I can put a RDF and another finder on it at the same time. It’s very sturdy and the sliding dew shield is great (something I don’t think is shared on the Tak - I hate the sliding dew shield on the DZ and I wish they’d just put a fixed one on like their other smaller refractors). I like going to public outreach events and sometimes it’s nice to have two setups going if there are not a lot of scopes available. I do prefer the views through the Tak but I don’t think there is a huge difference between them. Not sure if that’s enough of a justification but I’ll cling to it anyway!