Ruud

Hello Simon. Welcome.

Why don't you just turn the whole scope in its mounting rings?

It's a wonderful image, Reggie. Neptune's blue is the most beautiful of all.

Looks wonderful!

Awesome!

Well done! It's lovely. Just a little angry. I know. I'm sorry. I did it again.

I have a similar Chinese tripod branderd COMAN. They are made by INNOREL. Mine is nearly identical to the RT85C here: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32836039382.html (scroll down a bit for info in English). I bought it in a brick and mortar camera store for €280. I wanted to see it before buying because I had doubts about the quality. Normally tall, quality carbon fibre tripods are much more expensive and the ball head on this one alone already costs €134 - see here. It's incredibly rigid and vibrations dampen in less than a second. The legs are 33 mm thick and made of 8 layers of carbon fibre resin, the metal parts are machined aluminium-magnesium alloy, and the ball in the head is 44 mm in diameter. It is rated for 25 kg. With the central column extended the tripod reaches 187 cm high. One of the legs unscrews for use as a monopod. As monopod is 196 cm tall with the central column attached to the leg. INNOREL sells their tripods under the brand names Coman, Xiletu, Innorel, Jieyang, QZSD, Cayer, Sirui and no doubt many more. They come in various sizes and are all clones of each other with minor variations. Just wait till one goes on sale. Mine was an outlet model. When it first came out it was €100 more expensive. It seems there are always discounted Innorel tripods available. I think this is because of the short product cycle and the many brands name under which they are sold. For my WO 73mm refactor I use the tripod with a video head (one with a poke to point it with). This is my super birding scope set up. With my binoculars I use it as a monopod together with a light weight binocular head. It reaches high enough for me to look straight up while standing. I find the included ball head too heavy (522 g), though it is a good one. It may prove handy for my camera. So +1 from me for a tall Chinese carbon tripod/monopod from China. But do look around: you may find a discounted older version or come across the same tripod for less under a different name.

Congratulations Dave, they look wonderful and being this compact they must be very convenient to take along. Small binoculars are a great thing to have!

Oh wow, I checked: it is at a distance of over 2 AU. That's remarkable. Excellent image!

It's a pity about the uncharted territory, but most of the disk is there and it's awesome!

Unusual. It's like the bow of a black Viking ship emerging from the fog. Never saw it like that. A wonderful image.

For dragging the scope around the lighter weight is better (helps your back), to keep the angular momentum down the heavier weight closer to the axis of rotation is better (helps stability).

a great result!

I suppose this small case replaces end caps and everything. They look like nice terrestrial binoculars. Congratulations!

Hi J,

Achim it's beautiful. Great job!

Oh, this is terrible. I am so sorry this happened.

A beautiful Uranus with sub-arcsecond detail. Amazing!

Hey Avani, great that you're posting again. Wow, this is an amazing image from a telescope that went though a collision. It looks 100% OK, here as well as on astrobin. Most excellent! Were you in the car when the accident happened? I hope you didn't get hurt yourself. At least one thing is clear: not just the C9.25 but you too continue to produce fine images.

It's beautiful!

There's already an improvement. On the Unistellar website the claim that the eVscope is " a 100 times better than a classical telescope" has disappeared. That's good. The statement is simply not true. The citizen science argument is still there. I cannot imagine how eVscope owners around the world will help scientists in any useful manner. I suppose time will tell. For the rest I think the eVscope would be a wonderful Rent-a-Scope. I'd pay €100 for a week with the thing if I' knew I'd have a week of clear, Moonless nights. Come to think of it, I'd sell my sister for a week of clear nights.

I have a good view of the eclipse. It's awfully boring for an eclipse. One side is a little darker. Just a little. (Used 8x42 binoculars)

Hello Steve, welcome!

The purpose of the field stop in Stellarium is for the program to calculate a more precise true field of view. If you don't know the field stop, just leave the box empty. The program will then assume zero angular magnification distortion (amd) and will calculate the field of view based on that. Often angular magnification distortion differs from zero. It very commonly has a value of around 5%. I made a spreadsheet that calculates true fields from either known field stops or from apparent field of view and magnification. The formulas used are here: Scope Calculator Formulas.pdf And the spreadsheet is here: ScopeCalculator-2019-06-16.xlsx The "known field stops" in the spreadsheet are from the websites of the manufactures of the eyepieces. --- how does this help you with your question? If you cannot find the field stop diameter of an eyepiece you can use trial and error. Enter field stops until the spreadsheet calculates an amd of about 5%. Then you have most likely entered the correct field stop for the eyepiece involved. "Better" eyepieces like Ethos, Delos and Morpheus have amd values close to zero, and the manufacturers of such eyepieces are generally proud to publish their field stop diameters.

That is a perfect sketch, Mike! And what a wonderful, poetic name for a valley.