Saganite

The seeing is not that good and the sky is clouding up, so that sounds like a plan Dave .🤣

Shadow of Io and the GRS nicely positioned just off centre at the moment. Seeing is fair.

Thanks for the image, it is beautiful. I just took a look at the Hubble image and it is awesome. cheers

It has indeed Stu. Just spent an hour in the Obsy 'fiddling and faffing' but all is ready for tonight...

Duplicated post.

How long have got Mike ? I have had it for two and half years and not yet run out of superlatives. It is a magnificent Alt Az mount, fitted with motors and controlled from my mobile phone, I can do what Iike with it. Last night I pointed it South, made sure the scope was level, switched on the motors, selected Jupiter as my first alignment target, followed by Betelgeuse as my second, less than 90 seconds. I went back to Jupiter and started observing. Within 15 minutes or so , out came the clouds so I went in sat by the fire and returned over an hour later to find a beautiful dark clear sky, seeing was Pickering 6 at least. Jupiter was still in the FOV, so I carried on observing until about midnight. The GOTO is great, but if I want to just swing the scope around the sky looking at this and that, and occasionally banging my head on the scope and knocking it away, I only have to look at my phone stab my finger onto a target and it is there. I may yet change a scope or two in what remains of my life but I will not need a change of mount. The Rowan boys Dave and Derek should have produced this mount decades ago ! I have in the last 6 months purchased two plates from them . Both just attach to the mount with the dovetail saddles then attached to them and one adjusts in a Y axis so that the total weight of both scopes is so balanced they will rotate 360 degrees and stay in any position with an adjustable weight to compensate for a single eyepiece or a fully laden bino. The other plate on the other side of the mount adjusts so that both scopes point precisely at the same object. I now have observing Nirvana. Quite happy to bore you with more about this when we meet at PAS in March if you would like me to Mike....

If only ! Hmm , second time this week that I have said that...😁

Thanks John, only took 71 years to get here......🤣

This Lyra Optic 102mm f11 was collected a week ago but had first light last night.

That is exactly what I have found , in the main. I too had a love hate relationship with zooms over the past few years and tried quite few of them. The only one that stuck initially was the little Carton 7mm -21mm bought from Dave (F15 ) I really like that one, small and very good. I have had the APM 7.7mm- 15.4 zoom with constant 67 deg for about a year and it is a keeper. The other zoom is the much talked about Svbony 3-8 and this one I have used for 6 months so far and cannot fault it, using my eyes you understand, but levity aside I do think it very good. I now have just two short focal length eyepieces, 3.5mm which I will keep and 5mm which is on its way out....hopefully..

This beauty arrived a short while ago, the only one of the range I have not tried before. I also have the Pentax XW 3.5mm so maybe a comparison is on the cards, though I know which one I am keeping already....

An excellent session and a fitting farewell to Trinity, Dave. I felt sad when I parted with my beloved Andromeda, a scope you also knew so well, but it was the right thing to do as it now is for you. You will love your new scope and enjoy a new chapter , as am I. All that matters is that we keep looking up. Somebody famous said that , not I....

I recently acquired a lovely Lyra Optics 102 f11 and during last evenings observations I had first light with it. Following the E&F star sightings I had intended to close up but It was niggling me that it was not aligned with the APM. My Vixen ED103 had been on the other side of the AZ up until last night, in perfect alignment, and I suppose it was a bit naive to expect the f11 to do the same. It took a further hour of adjusting to achieve this and having done so I had to have 'First light '. I chose of course the Trap and was rewarded with E&F, tiny and pin sharp. A star test on Betelgeuse revealed near identical rings inside and outside of focus. A look at Jupiter was very sharp and neat, much smaller than I had been seeing all evening through the 6" but still very pleasing, with the merest hint of purple around the planets limb. Sigma Orionis revealed 4 stars, , pin sharp, Tegmine a delight and Uranus very small but sharp and pale blue completed the little scopes foray into the night sky , in my hands at least. I don't really know why I felt the desire for this scope having the 6" and the 4" Vixen mounted together for the last year or so. I had explained to Dave ( F15) that it was an itch that needed scratching but it is a bit more than that. Modest in aperture but long in tube, it just looks beautiful and performs very well, and I just wanted it . Almost eighteen months ago I culled the herd from six telescopes to three and felt better but now I am back to five, four of them refractors, and don't feel any worse. There is no hope.

Just to round off before shutting down a lovely clear sharp capture of E & F in the Trapezium.

The shadow of Io has now appeared and it is nice to see both Moon and shadow on the disc of the planet. Whilst waiting I have had a quick tour and checked out several star clusters, M41, M46,M47, M48 and M50. Splits of Mintaka and Rigel were so clear and sharp, so the seeing is good perhaps 6 Pickering.

After an enforced break of an hour thanks to cloud cover the sky is now clear. Io is clearly visible just off centre on the NEB with bino and 18mm BGO pair, 167x. The transparency has also improved. This should hold until midnight at least if the forecast is correct.

Forecast here is for clear sky 10pm to 3 am but it is clearing already and Jupiter is good at 130x and softish at 184x so a pair of 18mm should do it. The atmosphere is fairly steady so hopefully it will improve soon.

Very nice ! Hope you enjoy that .

I am too old now to consider a 16" Dob but I still have a 12" . I also have my APM ED 152 and I much prefer using the big frac for everything, deep sky included, so much so that I will probably dispose of the Dob before too long.

I have always had a foot in both camps, in fact my very first scope was a homemade 6" reflector which gave me my first view of Saturn, and a very very special evening was that, but I too fell for the beauty of a refractor as early as I can remember, in the 1960's, but my parents could not afford one and until the advent of Chinese refractors, neither could I. Nothing beats the sharpness of a refractor, as Mike says, and nothing compares to the beauty of one, particularly a long focus one......of 5" aperture.....in white...

If only...

Well said John,

Just tried both and no luck tonight, not even close, even struggled to split Rigel, so the seeing has deteriorated somewhat.

I wasn't able to get out until 9pm this evening and I have been mostly Moon gazing at 184x using my Denk II bino , pretty cool really; difficult to drag myself away to be honest, but I will, for Orion....in a while

Here you go Stu....