GavStar

I’ll be interested to hear what you think of this filter with the Photonis tube, Alan. It certainly makes a contrast difference with my Harder tube, but I rarely use my Photonis now. And also the impact it has at your dark skies rather than my light polluted ones?

No bare metal - the end tube is painted black like the rest. It was just a lighter colour in the image from the camera flash due to the angle of the picture. And from observing the moon on the first light definitely no reflections etc ??

I think this hits the nail in terms of what I really like about the Baader - as an aeroplane portable scope it’s virtually unbeatable imo (although the tv85 is pretty good as well). The 95mm aperture gives enough for good planetary observing and the f5.9 ratio makes its a) compact for fitting into various different types of aeroplane bags such as my think tank airport accelerator b) great for widefield scanning of the skies. I’m a bit of a wuss and just didn’t like the idea of taking the focuser and dew shield off of my Tak fc100df but I know several SGLers are fine with this. I’m guessing the views between the Tak and the Baader will be quite similar - i will do a side by side sometime... I’m hoping to take the Baader to the Southern Hemisphere next summer.

Yes agreed silly placement of the finderbase holes - too near the centre so the eyepiece will block the finder a fair bit. I’ve just attached the finder base to the wholes on the other side of the tube rings which does the job for my red dot finder. Interestingly the finderbase holes look much more sensibly positioned on highburymark’s lunt focuser.

That’s quite a lot! The Baader steeltrack works very well for my purposes even with a long night vision stack so I think I’ll stick with it.

You’ll note Nicos that in the end I didn’t follow the conclusion from our discussion - when the email came through from Baader it was just too tempting ? Im really looking forward to seeing the new AP Stowaway soon hopefully ?

If you contact Baader direct by email they will let you order one - I know someone else who ordered one about a month ago. He was given a delivery of about a year though. They are certainly not making lots of them - rarer than an Astro physics Stowaway!!!

So I had first light with the Baader last night. Unfortunately the seeing wasn’t great, so I wasn’t able to push the magnification as much as I wanted to. But what I did see looked great. M45 with my ES 92 17mm was very beautiful. It doesn’t show the quality of the views but I did a quick phone shot of the moon anyway. Certainly a very positive session from the scope’s perspective (not so much the mount - had problems with synscan and the sky safari linkup for some reason I haven’t resolved yet)

Unprocessed image of the moon this evening

My current grab and go/travel scope is the televue 85 which is a lovely scope and fine for aeroplane travel. Here’s a recent thread of it going overseas. However, I’d like to get closer to 4 inches of aperture particularly for planetary observing. I’ve liked the look of the Baader Travel Companion for a few years now - it seemed to tick all the boxes: aperture, short length, light, fluorite and also a fast focal ratio for nightvision use. However, from the Baader website it appears unobtainium... Then last year, another UK astronomer, Clem, managed to get one and so I decided to enquirer directly with Baader as to wait times. So I was very surprised to get a swift reply saying that they could supply one in six months. That was in January and it’s actually taken 10 months but today my Baader Travel Companion arrived ? Obviously it’s cloudy this evening but I’m hoping to get First light tomorrow - forecast looks good. I did have one immediate issue with it - an annoying graunchy focuser but after a quick search on StargazersLounge, I found some advice from Moonshane which sorted the problem - the fine focuser knob needed to be moved a tiny amount away from the course focuser to stop them rubbing. Now the Baader steeltrack is buttery smooth. Initial impressions on build quality are excellent (as it should be for the price). It seems perfect on the skywatcher az gti Mount. I’ve put a few photos below including one of the travel companion next to my tv85 - as you can see the Baader is actually slightly shorter but has an extra 10mm of aperture. More updates to follow..

The collimation tools have arrived - I just need a dob now!!!

Very interesting! I like the two sketches of the crescent. It looks like one was with a 14 inch scope and one with a 27 inch scope - is that right? Does it say what skies the sketches were made at? What is the key difference between the atlas and the guide?

Very nice Mark. My newest one has a serial number of 156, only 4 away from you! ?

Works fine with my tv85 which is 19” as shown below...(I did have lots of fun when on the way back the security check at tenerife airport asked me to completely empty the backpack for the scan - it was like a tardis with all the stuff that I had managed to pack in ?)

Stu, I find the Think Tank Airport Accelerator backpack great for travelling with children since it means you can keep your arms free for other purposes ?. Not sure how long the Tak is when the focuser and dewshield are removed though... The new AP Stowaway comes with a pelican 1525 so it must be pretty good though ?

Maybe FLO could look into getting one designed for the az gti like this - I’m sure it would be popular..

Just received from the US this starlight feather touch retrofit fine focuser for my Takahashi Epsilon (not a fan of the Takahashi mef-3 fine focuser add on so hoping the feather touch works well) Now I just need to work out how to fit it!

Whenever I read this thread, I smile. ? The OP (long gone now) was asking about the eyepiece cases not the eyepieces themselves. Whereas the focus generally now (including past posts from me I would add!) is on the contents not the case... ? (accepting that the last few posts are actually in respect of the cases...)

Mine has just improved and is now back to normal speeds ?

It’s also suddenly and massively slowed down for me on my iPhone this morning whereas previously including yesterday it was absolutely fine.

Hi Al Based on your modification, do you think the attached clamp would work (are the holes the right distance apart?) Thanks Gavin