Piero

Unfortunately in the current place where I live, I don't have a garden or fields reachable by walk. The Manfrotto tripod that I have bought and used so far is really good and holds the TV60 very well, but is too long and heavy for being carried by bike. In the past I was thinking to add a more portable tripod mainly for air plane so that I could take the TV60 to the Alps in Italy, but also to other places. Being forced to go to fields by bike, I decided to invest in this additional tripod now. I found the Manfrotto compact advanced aluminium tripod a good solution for my needs. Specs are: Load Capacity: 6.6 lb, Max Height: 65", Min Height: 17.5", Folded Length: 17.3". It comes with padded bag and plate. Although I have not tried in the field yet, it seems quite sturdy even when the legs are fully extended. It is light but quite solid. The mount is made of hard plastic with metal supports. It has a 3-way pan/tilt head. Although only one is required in astronomy, these lock the TV60 on the mount very effectively, even when this points near the zenith. The plate attaches to the mount head without living 'gaps' which sometimes you can have in some bad tripods. I am looking forward to using it! There are a few places in the countryside nearby which I believe have low light pollution. This summer I am taking it to the old town of my grandparents in the Alps and I believe it will couple the TV60 well! 1) Manfrotto compact advanced aluminum video tripod + TV60: 2) Manfrotto MVH500AH video head + 755XBK tripod + TV60: p.s. no complains about the MVH500AH+755XBK. It is excellent and I am keeping it anyway for the next year when hopefully I find a house with garden!

I can see the 'Toggle Edit Options' and that was exactly what I asked for. Thanks very much, again Grant!

Thanks a lot! I will follow your suggestions.

I think this forum is superb, and the website structure is very functional. The only think I could suggest is to add a quick way (e.g. a button, or a checkbox+button) to remove threads an user follows as shown in "The content I follow" in the user menu. If an user decides to stop following a thread, he/she has to: 1- click on his/her user label 2- click on 'Content I follow' 3- click on 'Change' next to the forum of interest 4- select 'Stop following' 5- click on 'update selected' This is quite a long way to me for a recurrent task. True, you can unfollow using the link when you receive a post by email, but I found that I do not have a real control of the posts I want to follow in this way. Possibly, adding 1. one button 'Unfollow' next to each followed post in the section 'Content I follow', so that the user would simply click the button for all the posts he/she decides not to follow any longer; OR 2. adding a check box next to each followed post and buttons: Select All, Deselect All, Delete at the top. Do you think this would be useful? If not, is there already a way to do this in a quick way, instead of pressing 'Follow' manually for each post I am interested in? Many thanks for reading Piero

Thanks! I have been building it after a lot of reading, mostly here in SGL. Although choosing eyepieces based on exit pupil seems to be a controversial argument some time, I found that it helped me a lot. Exit pupil, field of view and magnification are the three ingredients of my selection. pan24 -> 4.0mm, 4.3deg, 15x nag13 -> 2.2mm, 2.8deg, 27x nag7 -> 1.2mm, 1.5deg, 51x nag3.5-> 0.6mm, 0.7deg, 103x Knowing that I like F5-F6 telescopes means that the exit pupil is very similar, simplifying the selection. For a dob F6: the exit pupil is the same. ============================= nag13 -> 2.2mm, 0.9deg, 92x nag7 -> 1.2mm, 0.5deg, 171x => a nag 9 covers the hole nicely (1.5mm, 0.6deg, 133x) For a dob F5: the exit pupil increases a bit, but in a nice way (assuming dob10") ============================================= pan24 -> 4.8mm, 1.25deg, 52x nag13 -> 2.6mm, 0.8deg, 96x nag7 -> 1.4mm, 0.4deg, 179x => again a nag 9 covers the hole nicely (1.8mm, 0.6deg, 139x) In summary, as other users reported already, from a medium power (exit pupil 2.0mm) you scale up or down: Basically, exit pupils: 4.0mm -> low power *** 2.8mm -> medium/low power ** 2.0mm -> medium power *** 1.4mm -> medium/high power *** 1.0mm -> high power *** 0.6mm -> very high power * where: ***: very useful ** : useful if the telescope is sufficiently large (e.g. >=200mm) * : useful if small telescope If the eyepieces have same field of view, they work nicely together too. For the scale of exit pupils shown above, from 2.0mm you multiply or divide by 1.4 and you get the other values. To me 1.4 makes a nice perceptible distance.

WoW..! Reading this thread is like having an eyepiece overdose! Nice collections, everybody! I hope to maintain mine simple and usable, though, without any.. ehm 'monster eyepiece'! Anyway, here is my set of eyepieces (all well known boys): Pan 24, Plossl 20, Nagler 7, Vixen 5, Nagler 3.5. The ones I regularly use with my TV60 are: Pan 24, Nag 7, Nag 3.5 . I want to add a Nag13 as medium power. With this, the TV60 is complete. Plossl 20.. well, I am fond of it. It has stayed with me for half of my life, and will continue so, even if not much used. Vixen 5 for now stays too. In the future, after buying a dobson F6 or F5, I will likely add a Nag 9 to the set. If I get a dobson F6, I might add a TV Plossl 32 for extended nebulae and to barlow (getting a 16mm). If I get a dobson F5, I think I am fine. p.s. no case for me, but just a photo bag. I like eyepieces standing up at the scope.

Superb post Rob! This and the one about planetary nebulae are the best posts in this forum to me. They should be on a special section "above the sky"!

Congratulations to both of you! wonderful image!

Just came across this .. ehm thread? article? on planetary nebulae! What can I say.. it is a fantastic work!! A big congratulation to Rob for collecting all this information together! It is very nice to have a place like SGL to share and read all this information! This astro-community is great!

Sorry to hear this sad story and for commenting a bit late. I don't know whether my comment may help you, but, unless planets are important for you, have you ever considered a pair of 15x70 binoculars? They are very light and can be easily mounted on a relative cheap light tripod. Using them is extremely easy and you can take them around basically everywhere. What can you see with them? The beauty of a wide field sky! There are plenty of large-medium DSOs that can be seen with them. Sometimes I just enjoy looking at the sky without a specific target in mind and admiring star colours and the milky way. Sometimes you may see a little cloud in the eyepieces and then, through a starmaps, you can recognise you saw a globular cluster or a medium size galaxy. Will you see details on such DSOs? Nope, but you won't see details even with your Newton 114mm. Is this relevant? well.. I think the real pleasure is to think, while watching, that you are actually seeing a tiny bit of light coming from thousands (or even millions) light years and how many things there are out there that we don't even imagine! Of course Aperture is important for DSO, possibly for many people it is the only parameter, but I think that is an endless story to justify that you need to go bigger and bigger for seeing something of interest. What's the point of having a big telescope if you cannot move it around easily or if you know little about the sky or if you have to wait for 2h for cooling the scope before using it or if you spend ages trying to find an object as your FOV is very small. Clearly, if you are happy with these aspects and this is what you want, that's great and you should buy one. But I suspect that most of us actually buy them without even considering these aspects and then they end up reselling and loosing a lot of money.. How little they would spend and how much observation they would do if they had something smaller! And they could just focus on what they are seeing through those eyepieces, instead of looking at those eyepieces+telescope! This of course is my opinion, and you might receive completely opposite comments. Anyway, quick and well tested options by many people are: - revelation 15x70 (~£50, acceptable quality. 1.4kg). - helios apollo 15x70 (~£250, good quality. 2.5kg) Tripod: - Horizon 8115 2-way heavy duty tripod (~£80, good quality. 4kg) Between the two binoculars, I suggest you the helios as they are great, robust and they last ages. If price is a concern, you can consider the other one. In any case, you can will walk with max 6.5kg and you won't be tired. If you prefer a telescope instead, the Evostar 90 refractor as previously suggested, is a good choice to me. Piero