niallk

My most recent 'wow' moment earlier this year was my best ever view of M51 from a local spot - not even a real dark site, several light domes around. Conditions were just really good in terms of transparency, and I swung up to M51 near zenith to be treated to knotty sparkly spiral arms obvious with direct vision, along with the bridge. I've observed it many times before: sometimes hard to see anything but dim cores, to wondering if averted imagination was at play to pick out the arms in averted vision. But this time, literally muttered wow out loud - just delighted When conditions are right- dark, transparent, no wind, good seeing, cooled & collimated scope, and my own eyes not tired(!) then a lot of things give all sorts of wow moments in my 15" - both DSOs and planets. My LS50DS has also provided several jaw dropping moments - especially memorable was catching a bright sharply defined loop prominence- like in this pic (borrowed from the web): Double stacked surface detail when there are decent sunspots visible is always enthralling, imho - watching things evolve in real time.

Oh wow! I've wanted to see it since I was a kid. Was in Tempe for a week with work, but couldn't get out to it...

I used to only observe from my garden... pointless now due to a neighbour obsessed with perimeter lighting and a horribly bright new LED street lamp. Very, very annoying!! So i drive 10 mins to a darkish spot

Great report & congrats on the purchases! I must look up that TV filter vs say an O-III or UHC ...I'm not familiar with it. The 6E is a favourite of mine in my 15" too - great EP Edit: Interesting filter! - I see the response plots on the TV website now http://www.televue.com/engine/TV3b_page.asp?id=24&Tab=_spec

Ya, just go for a real nice dob

Yeah... Ha is darn expensive. I purchased my LS50 on offer from FLO: it was a customer return (the pressure tuner needed greasing - a common issue, easily resolved). FLO stood over it with full warranty, tested it and confirmed it was performing fine. I bought it 2 yrs ago with a nice discount, and I just love it! FLO were a pleasure to deal with, quickly helping me to be confident about the purchase through our email exchanges. Just want this solar minimum to pass I did look through a double stacked LS60 (through a TV binovue no less!) and it was truly jaw dropping - it was before i picked up my LS50, and the sun had some nice activity on it

I've a LS50 double stack. The internal etalon is pressure tuned, and i find it a doddle to tune, and do very fine adjustments. I have a tilt tuned front mounted etalon for double stacking. Imho the pressure tuned etalon is a really good design, and is what i really do fine tuning with to pull out different features when double stacked. Double stacking makes an enormous difference - I'd suggest building in this significant cost as part of your decisions it is superb for disc features, and i use it for proms too. A double stack running at 60mm is quite expensive indeed. But wonderful of course! A side comment: the LS50 is not binoviewer friendly, and I strongly recommend the Moonlight dual speed focusser upgrade. More cost...

I've caught it on a rare very good night in my 15" at 330x - I was surprised at how readily I could see it, but this was also a night where I saw 4 and maybe 5 moons around Uranus (spent a lot of time to tease them out), and sharply defined discs for both planets. On another night i can recall with my 10" that I didn't pick up Triton, and Neptune and Uranus were fuzzy coloured 'stars' at ~220x in that scope: conditions need to be good. I was quite lucky with the 15" - it was such a thrill to see the discs of the planets so sharply defined... no surface features visible to me though!

Io shadow transit courtesy of Juno Always enjoy observing these through the EP - pretty cool to see it up close!

Big congrats!! Looks the biz Clear skies!

Very cool! Thanks for posting. As it happens I was only listening to the S@N special on Rosetta on m y commute today

When I first got a scope I remember reading on SGL someone say 'you learn to see'. I didn't understand at the time - thinking surely you look into the EP and just see what another person sees! Now i understand that technique and experience makes an enormous difference. When I first saw M42, i saw none of the detail and colour that I see now in that same scope... and that's not even a faint DSO Still learning...

Magnificent!

Nice Charl! - just been out having a peep meself - pretty cool line of proms on the limb, showing up strongly in my LS50DS (between the clouds )

Does your secondary holder allow for adjustment of the secondary offset? Just interested - I've an Astrosystems one, and it doesn't! For my f-ratio (4.5), the compromise involved, and the fact that it runs at a low 17.3% CO are small beer for visual according to Dave Kriege. I've seen several threads on CN discussing it in depth. For better or for worse, I don't worry about it