Ruud

       Hi Dave,

Thanks for joining the forum!

Hail to the República Rio Grandense,  to its people and to its birds.

Hi Avani, this is a wonderfully detailed image, all the way into the polar regions. There is so much going on around the GRS. To its South, small dark clouds resemble half faded handwriting. It is almost as if a message was written there by that large white spot that joined the GRS. They  form a nice pair together. 

The colours are wonderful and fresh: The bright orange pastels stand out beautifully between the whites and light greys.

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Steven,

With the weight of the focuser, a field flattener and a camera, the centre of mass of the Z61 may end up way at the back. You may require a longer dovetail bar. You can then mount the telescope quite a bit to to the front of the bar's centre and so offset the back-heaviness.

I have a WO ZS 73. It weighs a lot for its size but it is a perfect little scope. It gives a truly sharp, high contrast image with no trace of CA (visually, I don't use it for photography). I expect the Z61 should be every bit as good.

The Z61 would double a small but super spotting scope. I think I want one myself. It is a rich field telescope. Its 360 mm focal length allows for wide fields of view. For detailed observations of planets you'd be better off with a Mak. A five inch Maksutov with around 1900 mm focal length is optimised to deliver high power magnifications of narrow areas of the sky.

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Under £100 I recommend the excellent value 16mm 82° Nirvana. FLO has it for £79 . In the Z61 its true field is almost  3.7° at  23x magnification.

Hello Pedro,

Thanks for joining

The jury liked it too. They're also round.

It is very round. I love it!
          

It's great!

Thanks for the sketch and the log. Good that you had a clear spot passing over. You certainly put it to good use.

Beautiful! A perfect sketch.

What does the front of the telescope look like? Is there a plastic cap with two holes in it? If so, remove the entire cap and try again.

It's a wild guess, but some larger telescopes have a dust cap like this.

I'll assume that the second diagonal you show is the Amici. (I'm not sure)

I think that the adjustable diagonal contains a gear system that turns the mirror over half the angle that you turn the top part. That way the light can always reach the eyepiece. However, the precise alignment of the mirror is important and a fixed mirror would be better. 

An Amici diagonal has an erecting roof prism. Those are much more difficult to make than an ordinary non-erecting prism. And again, ordinary prisms are more difficult to make than mirrors. The most economical way to a high quality view is a simple 90° star diagonal: a single first surface mirror.

The bad news is that average Amici and adjustable angle diagonals are likely to cause some image degradation at least. You can do a test though: Try with the eyepiece directly in the focuser (without using either diagonal). If you can get a focused image that way, and it looks brighter and more contrasty than with whatever diagonal you test it against, then there definitely is some degradation going on.

Could it be that the problem is not the Newtonian and that you might experience the same discomfort with any telescope?

The  eye and inner ear feed us information about out position in the world around us , if we are upright, lying on  our back , in what direction we look, all that sort of stuff. When you look through a telescope your eyes no longer give you information about these things. If at the same time you get all sorts of false information from your vestibular system I imagine that might be the reason of your vertigo.

Maybe hold on to something, place a playing radio to one side, observe with one eye on the eyepiece but keeping the other open as well (If the surroundings are dark enough), anything that feeds your brain with extra information about your position and orientation in space? It's just an idea of course, but it might be worth exploring.

I wish you well and hope you find a solution.

That's wonderful and it came so fast too! Now you have the telescope you deserve. Enjoy the instrument Chis, it's a beauty!

I'd bring binoculars, they're also good for landscape, birds and other wildlife. Nice for day and night.

The Panoptic is expensive, but it is a high quality eyepiece that performs well at even very fast focal ratios. The ES 68° line isn't bad either. In an f/5.9 telescope an ES 68 might be as good as the Panoptic.

Have you looked at used eyepieces yet? There could well be a bargain waiting for you there.

Wonderful!

Longer focal length eyepieces, like you 28mm, usually have enough eye relief to be comfortable.

That some eyepieces need to be two inch has to do with a combination of how wide the apparent view of the eyepiece is and how long the focal length is. These two determine how big a circle of the focal plane needs to be shown. 

Is that circle bigger that 1.25" then the eyepiece barrel needs to be bigger too.

Here's a diagram that shows which eyepieces can be made in 1.25" format, and which cannot:

The reason why retailers mention the barrel size is that not all eyepieces can be used in a 1.25" focuser.

Below the blue line is the domain of eyepieces that can be made in the 1.25" barrel format.

The BST starguider eyepieces recommended are good value indeed. Another amazing budget eyepiece is the 16mm 82° Nirvana (see here).

3 minutes ago, John said:

Just don't imply that other peoples choices are stupid - OK ?

Of course. I'd never do that!

17 minutes ago, John said:

56 minutes ago, Ruud said:

I once was stupid enough to buy a bottle of Baader's liquid....

 

That's pretty rude isn't it ?

Deliberately posting that in a thread where you know that others have made the choice of the Baader product ?

By all means make difference choices and explain your reasoning but have some respect for other fellow members choices here, as per the forum Code of Conduct. Implying that others are "stupid" is not in keeping with that.

Thanks.

@John, I fell for Baader's suggestive advertising and feel stupid for it. Generally I am not stupid and I certainly do not thinks members here are stupid.

I mentioned the liquid before:

and:

and possibly elsewhere too.

So Baader's wonder is an overpriced product that does what it promises. At the same time I feel people should be warned against Baader's suggestive selling point that it contains two anti-fungal ingredients. Any alcohol kills spores.  Baader's wonder is just a mixture of two watered down alcohols: ethanol and propanol. 

I fell for it and wasted some money. I want to help others against doing the same. Like me, they may feel that they are buying a product with special additives that protect against and prevent lens fungus. They aren't.

They are just buying two watered down alcohols for a ridiculous price.

Is it so strange that I felt stupid for doing that?

Actually, isopropanol and isopropyl alcohol are 2-propanol. Wonder liquid has 1-propanol, which is more volatile, but really, it is just another solvent.

I once was stupid enough to buy a bottle of Baader's liquid. I was interested in its secret magic ingredients and looked up the data sheet that Jeremy links to. So I found out it's just ethanol and 1-propanol in water. Every active substance must be in the sheet (hospitals use the sheets for toxicology information, manufactures must make this information available).

So Baarder's miracle is that they sell two simple organic solvents in water for over €100 per litre.

The bottle is nice though. But the other day I bought an after-bite spray for mosquito bites. This came in a bottle that makes just as fine a spray as Baader's bottle. It cost €1 complete with after-bite liquid.

So what I did is pour out the after-bite liquid (into a different bottle). I rinsed the bottle and cleaned the nozzle with water several times, then I did the same once with alcohol and refilled the new bottle with 96% alcohol.

Total cost for the spray bottle and 96% alcohol: €2.25.

It's a nice spray bottle with a cap. It won't leak. In it is a fantastic cleaning solution. I can recommend it: It contains a potent  ingredient that protects against fungus.

Baader's optical wonder is a solution of 1-propanol and alcohol. Nothing special really. Fantastic marketing though.

Isopropy alcohol is 2-propanol.

Propanol and alcohol are the magic ingredients that protect against fungus in Baader's wonder liquid. They kill spores.

       Welkom Goverman!

Oh, Fran, this is wonderful!

I'll also watch it on YouTube proper to leave a like there.

The f/5 with 45º direct image diagonal are  two disadvantages : this type of diagonal degrades the image, and the fast focal ratio is too fast for an 120 mm achromat, causing much chromatic aberration.

My vote is against the Startravel.

The f/8.35 Evostar with its 90° star diagonal is two steps ahead: better focal ratio for chromatic aberration and better images from the diagonal.

An Explore Scientific 34mm 68° would fit the bill, just like a second hand 34mm 68°series 5K Meade SWA, or if you're in Europe a second hand Maxvision 34mm 68°.

I have the Maxvision and I like it. It's every bit the same as the Meade, except for the brand name. Optically, the Maxvision and the Meade are probably not just identical to each other but also to the ES: they're all from the same manufacturer.

The Meade/ES/Maxvision have high image quality and plenty of eye relief. Ergonomics are just fine. They handle f/5 with ease.

TeleVue Panoptic  35mm 68° is more expensive and possibly a tad  better (not much though, there isn't much room for that).

More economic options also exist. I can't say much about them. No experience.

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A lunar eclipse in a 5° true field  is quite fantastic and the Milky Way becomes a sea of densely packed stars. Large open clusters are magic too is a wide view.

That's nice. Good job!