kerrylewis

‘ A Takahashi in a cage puts all heaven in a rage” Apologies to William Blake

That's true. I was mainly thinking of the refractors which I mostly use with short focal length eyepieces. I rarely use them with the Dob, which I tend to use for the more widefield views. But I should give them a go

These Vixen HR eyepieces seem to be getting some very favourable comments here on SGL. I am tempted by the forthcoming 3.4mm; I think any shorter focal length versions would not be usable often enough in my scopes which tend to be of the long focal length variety, and usually, as has been said, it’s not how much mag the scope can take but how much the seeing can take.

Back up to my eyrie this morning for the planetary trio. Seeing not great - I think we have the jetstream back according to the tv weather. Some detail in Jupiter, struggled for a sharp view of Saturn and, although Mars is getting larger, still no detail. I tried the ADC which gave some improvements but I was still limited by the seeing. I find the ADC awkward to position properly using a diagonal and with an indistinct horizon. I think the answer my be to align it with the horizon in daylight first. Next time......

Fair enough. However I’m gonna have to stop reading your reviews because they just make me want more eyepieces which I don’t need. Do I.........?

However Shaun - isn't the comparison a bit unfair? The Nagler is a zoom eyepiece which has its own advantages. You wouldn’t necessarily expect it to outperform a good quality single focal length eyepiece, although you wouldn’t want to pay the price of flexibility with a noticeable loss of quality either. It’s like a camera zoom lens - great for the flexibility it gives but if you wanted top notch performance at a given focal length you’d get a prime lens. Apologies if I’m stating the obvious 😀 Good to see that you’re having some good nights anyway

I was experimenting with my new camera yesterday evening and attached it to the Tak. It is an Olympus OM-D - mirrorless and you can focus with a magnified live image on the rear screen and fire the shutter via wifi from a phone. Both advantages for astro photos. This was taken using automatic settings and no adjustment of exposure etc. Later images using automatic were over exposed as the sky darkened and my next experiment will be to adjust the settings in these conditions . However quite pleased with this first attempt

I was setting the scope up yesterday in daylight (just after 1800) and using the moon to align. To my amazement I saw what looked like a satellite crossing the disc. It was the right sort of speed and I'm sure it wasn't a plane - there was no evidence of a plane shape and I thought I saw a satellite sort of shape with solar panels. It was over in seconds and I didn't note the exact time. I was pretty sure it must have been the ISS but on checking it was not around. On checking Sky Safari a likely candidate seems to be a Globalstar satellite but not sure how big this would look( the moon was about 80% of the FOV). The time is about right (1810) and the speed looks right; it doesn't quite cross the disc but is a close graze. That could be a location error perhaps or just inaccuracies in the data? Whatever it was it was an exciting and unexpected thing to see and I've never seen anything similar.

Hello Stu. According to the FLO website, yes it should be immediately before the eyepiece ie on the eyepiece side of a diagonal if one is used. Not tried with binoviewers - yet!

Thank you Colin. It was knowing that you got it working that made me persevere. Otherwise I might have assumed that it was just not possible

Success! After a good deal of trial and error it works! I tried various combinations of actions and what seems to be the key is disconnecting the mount from the phone and then reconnecting with Sky Safari open on the iPad. But I will have to try a few more times to be sure - then need to test it outdoors with a clear sky

Hello BGazing. Yes I reread the instructions and got the ADC working correctly. I tried the Tak in 'straight through' mode - ie without a diagonal, so that I could line up the DAC with teh horizon. But this does result in some awkward viewing positions - especially on my restricted roof area, so I'll perhaps go back to the diagonal. I found that about one third of of the max travel of the levers was best but I really need to test it more thoroughly with small movements, as you suggest Kerry

Thanks for your help Colin - packing in now! Tomorrow is another day

BTW the mount is in Alt/az mode

Thanks for help but I'm still getting no connection with SS. The error message says 'SS6 can make a wireless connection to the scope but the scope is not responding' When you set up the Synscan app did you stick with Access Point Mode and not Station Mode. About time to give up for today methinks