F15Rules

I had a nice end to the old year tonight..I managed to spot Sirius B (the Pup) with my Tak FS128 at c 10.35pm.

I used a Carton 10.5mm eyepiece barlowed with a Tal 2x Barlow to give approximately 200x. I also strongly suspected the Pup with a Nagler T2 12mm Barlow'd to 195x with a Baader Hyperion zoom Barlow 2.25x

The companion was at approximately 2 o'clock (refractor view with diagonal so right way up but E and W reversed.

Seeing was not as good as I'd hoped due to increasing wind from the flat calm during the day, but it wasn't too bad and it was a matter of using very fine focus adjustments and waiting for those short (very short) periods of relative steadiness.

Well chuffed with getting it!👍

Dave

Wow! Some amazing stats, Jeremy!! 

How do you keep a handle on all your activities?😇

Dave

On 26/12/2020 at 11:49, John said:

A nice cracker filler

Blimey, John..what were your crackers made of ?.. Titanium?!!?? 😂😁

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Will come in very handy Dave

😂

Yes Jeremy, I've got to hand it to you, you are very handy with your hands on approach to handling multiple eyepieces..I think they make a handsome trio...so hands off!!😛😂

Dave

Nice Aero 30mm 68 degree wide angle ep.

Will team up nicely with my Nagler T2 12mm and Morpheus 17.5mm to give a trio covering a good range of focal lengths, and with my Baader zoom 2.25x Barlow, a high power option too..

Dave

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

Arrived today 

That, for me, is the sweet spot of the Circle T volcano tops..good eye relief (for an Ortho!) and Barlow's well down to a high power 5 or 6mm ep with better eye relief than a native 5 or 6mm could deliver 👍.

Dave

Great thread John, thanks!

Reading it took me back some 4 years to when I first glimpsed the Pup and wrote about it here..

That Vixen 103s was the only scope I am absolutely sure I saw the Pup in to date..I have suspected it in others but never to the point of being sure or even fairly sure, and that includes in my FS128, Andromeda the 5" F15 of known excellence, and another also excellent ED103s, (both latter scopes now in the care of Steve (Saganite).

I think it all comes down to seeing..we have not had great seeing here for a long time..this evening looks as if it could be clear, although it's bitterly cold - minus 3 or 4 last night and our fishpond has had half an inch of ice across it, with no sign of it melting at all, quite the reverse.

The air does seem pretty steady today, quite misty, with no wind at all. I'll just have to see if I can get out after wishing my wife a Happy New Year and bear the cold long enough to get a proper look.

Wish me luck, and a very Happy New Year to everyone..let's hope 2021 brings better times for us all..🙂

Dave

Sounds lovely John👍.

I'm sure I've used this star as a starhop towards M35 before, but don't recall ever looking directly at it..if it's clear tonight I think I will give it a go..and the Moon should be a bit further out of the way too - not that it seems to have hampered your observations!😊.

Thanks for sharing, and Happy New Year to you and your family.

Dave

8 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Makes me wonder about scopes like this

BRESSER Messier AR-102L/1350 Hexafoc Optical Tube assembly | Bresser

At that sort of focal length, CA should be negligible, and views should be excellent.

Just make sure it's well mounted due to the length of the tube..😊👍

Dave

Present to self..

New 2020 5th edition, spiral bound, and greatly expanded since the much earlier edition I had a few years back.

Ordered from FLO on Tuesday pm c 4pm.. dispatched Wednesday a.m. and delivered Thursday (Christmas Eve) c 11a.m. - well done FLO!👍

Lovely book with loads of good fireside reading, great lists of observing targets etc ☺️.

Dave

7 hours ago, Telescope40 said:

Santa 🎅 of course brought this. Read positive words on this forum. 
Nice to have zoom EP in my arsenal again. First light not an option for now. Ho hum. 
John 

Nice, John. Do you know what the fov range is?

Merry Christmas 🌲⛄!!

Dave

54 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

My Circle T Orthos. I have a 12.5mm on the way - it's in the post somewhere.

Yep, I recognise that 25mm!!😊

52 minutes ago, John said:

No more here I'm afraid Dave

I've owned loads of them in the past though and enjoyed most of them. If we can post pics of eyepieces that we used to own then I might be able to help, eg:

Some of the bottom row of this one are pre-2000 I think:

I've owned sets of the old smooth sided TV plossls, TV Widefields and a number of Celestron Ultima's / Orion Ultrascopics. Older erfles and orthos too plus a couple of the Series 1 Speers-WALER's but I just don't have any photos of those, unfortunately.

 

 

Lovely to see the volcano top.orthos too John...I always preferred the Volcano Top's ergonomically to the Baader Genuine Ortho flat tops, but felt the BGOs just had the edge on content and scatter control? Great eyepieces though, and still sell very readily today 👍

Dave

Hi John,

All welcome!👍👍

Someone mentioned Speers Waler eyepieces..some are definitely pre-2000 I think..I owned a 5-8mm variable "zoom" Speers -Waler earlier this year, you may remember it?

It had a massive 80+ degree field, unusually for a zoom type eyepiece, but the whole eyepiece was, er, massive! It was/is a really nice eyepiece optically, but just too big for me to practically want to use it much..(see below), so I let it go. Very unusual and interesting eyepiece though..

Dave

Wow!

Some great old EPs coming out of the closet😊👍.

Thanks for sharing and keep 'em coming!

Dave

A quiet few hours here, so I thought it would be interesting to see if there's an appetite to share with others some pics of your vintage (shall we say pre-2000) eyepieces?

I'm sure many of us have older eyepieces that we have kept, or even sought out, despite the plethora of wonderful more modern eyepieces available to us nowadays?

To get us started, here is my little gathering of older EPs..

A selection of 6 Carton Japan eyepieces, 3 in 0.965" barrels and 3 in 1.25" format. All have smooth barrels, which I much prefer. I know the 0.965" ones date from the mid 1980s, and I strongly suspect the 1.25" trio also date from the late '80s to early 90s.

From left to right at the back..

10.5mm Gen 65 degrees - a wonderful compact eyepiece which supplanted my lovely Pentax XL 10.5mm only because of its compactness. Identical views to the Pentax, but less eye relief, c 11-12mm Vs 20mm in the Pentax.

7-21mm Gen zoom. Exact fov not shown, but I'd say c40 degrees at 21mm up to c 60 Deg at 7mm. It also barlows well with my Hyperion zoom 2.25x barlow.

I've never seen another one of these. I think originally designed for spotting scopes, but an excellent little performer on the night sky..similar views to a Baader zoom.

28mm 55 degree field. A lovely, sharp low power eyepiece with excellent contrast.

Front row, left to right..

9mm, 12.5mm and 20mm HM eyepieces in 0.965" barrels.

This trio came to me recently with my Carton 60mm refractor..although 0.965" eyepieces are often looked down upon, there is no real reason why such a design can't deliver great views..some major brands like Pentax, Takahashi and Zeiss made 0.965" EPs that command high prices even today.

These HM (Huygens Mittenzwny) designed units deliver nice, sharp and contrasty views..they just have a smaller field of view, at an estimated 40 degrees or so, with smaller eyelenses and shorter eye relief. The build on them is excellent, with heavy chromed brass barrels.

Finally, I recently acquired an older Nagler Type 2 12mm which I believe dates to the late 1990s..well used, but still a fantastic eyepiece with 82 Deg fov. I got a lovely view of the recent conjunction with this. Shown next to a Morpheus 17.5mm for scale - but it's a good deal heavier than the Morpheus!

Thanks for reading, and I'm really looking forward to seeing a variety of interesting older EPs being shown to us all..😊.

Dave

That doesn't look right to me, looks artificially created..

Dave

Sorry John, I see that now..My bad, I was reading your comments too literally! 

Merry Christmas 👍😊

Dave

On 20/12/2020 at 14:24, westmarch said:

I recommend a fast telescope as the only way to see the conjunction properly.  It needs to be up, cool and focussed in less than two minutes between sunset and cloud gaps.

John

Not actually true🙂.

I got great views of the conjunction in the past week with both 8x32 binoculars and a 6Omm F11.8 scope😉.

Dave

We had a partial break in the clouds at c 4.25pm..I had been checking in the back garden and suddenly there were the pair..

I ran into the house to fetch my wife, who had expressed interest in "what all the fuss is about" in the media etc. She came out and I showed her the view through my 8x32 binoculars while I whipped out my grab n go 60mm refractor. Fast as I was, the clouds rolled in again and she barely saw anything through the scope, although did catch a short view through the bins.

I had seen the pair about 5 nights back, and what struck me was just how quickly Saturn had appeared to move relative to Jupiter in that few days..this evening Saturn was almost level with Jupiter, to the right (west) of Jupiter as they were chasing down the recently set sun.

Before she went back inside, I showed my wife the 1st quarter moon, which was temporarily clear of the clouds: at 50x in the 60mm Carton F12, the view was razor sharp with superb crater detail. She was quite taken with the view and lingered on it for several minutes..we will make an enthusiast of her yet!

But seriously, a lovely, all too rare wonder of nature, which we have been lucky enough to see "live", and one we will never forget😊👍.

Dave

Hello Ron, 

Very best wishes to you and your family, and good to see you back on the forum👍. It's good to talk about how we are feeling, whether out aloud or on forums like this at this traumatic time for our country/Continent/world🤗..

Dave

Nice sketch, Mark👏👏

10 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

BTW, Did I miss Four Candles among the gardening equipment.? 🙂

Did you mean Fork Handles???

(They are out of sight behind the camera..)😇..

Thanks Jeremy👍.

I too was puzzled by the Comet Seeker moniker: as you say, you'd expect a true Comet Seeker scope to be a short FL widefield instrument, perhaps of F5 or F6..

The most likely explanation is that this name was more of a marketing device than anything else: the scope dates from the mid 1980s according to the previous owner (who direct imported the scope from Japan), and this of course was when Halley's Comet was a memorable and famous sight in the night skies of Spring 1986. So that I think fits?

If the name was for marketing purposes, I suspect that it may have backfired: anyone knowing much about refractors and wanting a suitable instrument with which to observe the Comet would surely have looked for a short focal length scope rather than this relatively long one..

Regarding the handles, you missed the two on the garden chairs (from which they hang on the wall)..

Dave

Last night was unexpectedly very clear early on, but sadly I had stuff to do so couldn't get out til quite late, at about 10.50pm..of course, by then cloud had begun to drift in, but I did get 30 minutes or so of dark, clear and steady skies - the best seeing for some weeks, actually.

I was keen to do some testing on the little Carton 60mm Comet Seeker, having only had minimal star time with it so far.

I used an excellent Tal diagonal with equally good Carton zoom 7-21mm, and briefly my "mini hand grenade" Nagler T2 12mm☺️.

The Carton mm is just such an easy scope to whip out, get set up and running in less than 2 minutes. I set up the scope in Altaz mode, as in the photo below..( the black metal ring around the tube just behind the dewshield provides useful additional weight when using heavier eyepieces such as the Nagler T2).

I turned first to M42, which had been such a washout the other night..this time much more detail showed, and I could see 3 stars of the Trapezium, individually resolved, with much more suggestion of the Batwings visible. A good start.

Next to Rigel, to hopefully resolve it's mag 7.8 companion at a distance of 9". The companion was well seen at c 12.30 o'clock position to the primary, and sitting just on or on the outside edge of the first diffraction ring. A lovely split at about 90x (using the Carton 7-21mm zoom). Rigel was a lovely tight, white stellar point, and the improved steadiness and transparency of the atmosphere last night was the major change factor versus the views a few nights ago.

Then onwards to the Belt trio..l went first to Alnitak, the lower left most easterly star of the belt trio. This is a triple system, with Alnitak B a close 2.3" separation - similar to Delta Cygni distance wise, and some might say even more tricky to resolve. Well, last night the pair was clearly and cleanly separated at 100x, and Alnitak C at some 58" seconds distance was very easily visible (the C component is thought to possibly be an optical alignment, not physically linked to A and B).

I then turned to Mintaka, the "highest" (most westerly) of the Belt stars, and it's 7th magnitude companion at c 54" distance was a very easy split.

In all cases the primary stars were clean, sharp stellar points with no visible CA (at a focal ratio of F 11.8 I wouldn't expect much, but it really did seem as low on CA as an F15 system). The stellar views through this scope remind me very much of the views through a lovely Pentax J60 F12 scope I owned around 10 years ago.

By now the clouds were gathering at pace from the west..I did finish off the short session by looking at the Mizar system in Ursa Major, one of my favourites, and where the sky was still dark and clear. Consisting of 4 stars (not necessarily all physically connected), Mizar A and B are both bright (although A noticeably brighter than B), and well separated at 14.5", and Alcor, the famous naked eye 4th magnitude companion, was very bright in the Carton, and the 4th star, the oddly named Sidus Ludovicanum, at magnitude 8, was also very clearly and crisply visible with direct vision, about half way between Mizar A and Alcor.

Using my Nagler T2 12mm 82 degree "porthole", the whole vista was like 4 pinpoint bullseyes of varying brightness against a dark black background.. beautiful..

A short session to be sure, but enough to confirm that this little scope is a keeper, and as good optically as it looks aesthetically!

Thanks for reading😊

Dave