mikeDnight

You might find this in your local B&Q as I did. It's very close in colour. A very kind SGL member sent me some Vixen bits & bobs to help bring my recently acquired DX mount back to its original condition - "thanks Pete!"I've already painted a counterweight and today I painted a blue polar scope cover Vixen green ish. Looks good in the flesh but the pic is in artificial light and isn't a true representation.

This could possibly be it?

Setting goals, even challenging ones, makes things exciting. Deep sky was where my initial interests lay when I began in astronomy. Within the first two years of observing I'd seen every Messier object from the UK using nothing more than a pair of 12X60 binoculars, which is a challenge with objects close to the horizon. Comets were also hot on my list of targets back then, and I'd make it my aim to not only find each one that dared to come within range of my 4" F10 achromat, I'd sketch each one as I followed it night after night as it crossed my skies, plotting their course in my trusty old Nortons Star Atlas which i still have. It's nice to look back on sketches of comets and Messier's and relive the night's of around four decades ago. As time went on and as my telescopes increased in quality and capability, I was drawn more towards the planets, but i avoided the Moon. I made it a personal project to see as much as I could of each planet and read copious books, especially the personal observations of visual observers of the past. Again I found sketching what I saw helped me concentrate and enabled me to see deeper. I made a little project of observing Jupiter continuously throughout the night, and attempting to sketch all its features in one continuous elongated sketch as the planet rotated. I've also made a number of cylindrical grid maps of Mars as seen through my telescopes. In 2016 I even made a small globe of the Martian albedo features I'd observed throughout that apperition. In time the Moon did grab my attention. I reasoned that I'd avoided it because its complexity frightened me. As an observer who loves to sketch at the eyepiece, the Moon was difficult for me, as I wanted to draw everything I could see, which is impossible. You either have to make a general limited detail sketch of a region or limit your subject. I chose the latter as my prefered observing method. My main lunar interests are rille systems. They can be wonderfully complex things to study and traverse vast distances. Often it appears as if they are limited to a small area, but that's usually more to do with illumination. When the illumination and liberation are right, rilles can become truly thrilling things to trace. For example, there's a tiny rille that crosses the width of the Alpine Valley about mid way and extends into the mountains at either side. On a steady night in a sharp scope, that rille twists and turns its way through the rough terrain branching off here and there to link with other fine rilles. The system links the rilles that follow the shore of the Imbrium basin with the equally impressive rilles around the southern shore of Mare Frigoris. Crater floors are another focus of my attention. Ignoring the surrounding terrain, I study just the floor of craters which at first glance may seem relatively featureless, but they never are. Take a careful look at Archimedes, paying attention to its apparently bland flat basalt floor, and in particular its subtle albedo differences across that apparently flat surface. What do you see? Be careful - the Moon is addictive!

Both mounts have advantages over the other. An altazimuth mount is perhaps more intuitive, as its a simple up/down right/left motion which we all use every day as our heads are essentially Altaz mounted. Altazimuth's are easy to set up and allow the observer to sweep vast areas of sky in autopilot, i.e. with very little thought, and this can be very a very relaxed way of observing. Things become a little more challenging when high powers need to be used, but this generally means just taking more care when altering the position of each axis. They are usually the cheaper option from a beginner's point of view. Equatorial mounts are less intuitive to use and initially take a little thinking about, but once you've come to terms with the motions, they are equally easy to use. Polar alignment isn't always a critical factor if you're observing at low power, but the advantage of the equatorial is that extreme high powers can be used with very little difficulty once polar aligned. Even at 1000X a target will remain in the field of view if an RA motor is driving the mount. There's something to be said about a tracking mount, as it frees you up for a more relaxed observing experience. You can sketch an object over an extended period, or even go to the loo or make a brew and get warm for half an hour. On your return to the eyepiece the object is still in the field of view. Older equatorial mount designs such as the Vixen Super Polaris and Great Polaris, or their Chinese clones, have a manual override ability, so you can disengage the motors or switch them off all together and still guide and drive the mount. You can even sweep the sky using these manual option equatorials by sweeping in right ascension with a disengaged RA axis. I find guiding the speed of the sweep by holding the counterweight arm makes RA sweeping easy, but I've a short scope which helps. Newtonian reflectors benefit from rotating tube rings as the eyepiece can be kept in a comfortable position, otherwise you can end up in some uncomfortable positions. Refractors are very much at home on an equatorial mount, so scope preference may play a part in deciding which mount works best. I, like many other observers, use both types of mount but my preference is for the German equatorial mount. My two observing buddies both prefer to use Altazimuth mounts with their refractors. Especially where an equatorial mount can be left set up and permanently polar aligned does it really prove its worth, whether on a permanent garden pier or in an observatory setting. If a scope has to be moved around a lot during an observing session, then the altazimuth pays dividends.

On occasion, when I just want to coast along without giving much thought to anything in particular, I pick a constellation that's reasonably high and check out all the major constellation stars. To the naked eye they often appear as single points of light, but through the telescope they can be beautiful binaries which in many cases display contrasting colours. To make things a little more interesting, you can then look up information about the star using atlases etc. So in a sense, it's binary star observing in reverse. It's also easy to find yourself lured away from your primary target and start examining some truly exquisit pairs that you'd otherwise miss if your target was specific. Be warned though! You can lose all track of time very easily as minutes become hours.

Hailstone here, and someone mentioned snow for tomorrow. Still, I'm sure the skies will clear one day and the Moon will be there too to wow us. It's usually a bit grim at this time of year, but I'm pretty confident the best is yet to come. 😊 Read EPIC MOON by William Sheehan & Thomas Dobbins, while sat in front at a nice warm fire, and it will fuel your enthusiasm until our alien neighbour returns. If you don't have that book, then you really need to buy it!

+1 for the 2.5mm LV. I've used one for years and have had some great views through it. A tiny Mars at X296 in my 100mm frac on an AZ4. The LV gave a comfortable view and manual tracking without slow motion controls was not too difficult. Then my 100mm with a 1.6X extender Q attached and the 2.5mm LV gave me X474 for viewing Venus, which was a great party trick that left other astronomers WOWED!

Love it!

A great image as usual Pete. There's a lot of detail in those cloud tops that I find fascinating. Thanks for posting!

Many years ago there was serious debate about the visibility of cloud detail on Venus. Patrick Moore was definitely among the doubters, at least initially, as he saw nothing but a silver/white surface. Richard Baum on the other hand, a very experienced planetary observer and author, saw detail will little trouble. The two were on opposing sides of the debate until Patrick, Richard and a third member of the party who worked at a laboratory somewhere near Chester, organized an experiment to test the visual sensitivity of the three in relation to UV light. It turned out Patrick was not sensitive to UV, Richard was much more sensitive and the third member had sensitivity somewhere between the two extremes. At the end of it Patrick became a believer even though he still couldn't detect detail on Venus cloud tops. Here's a pic of Richard taken at his home in Chester when I and Paulastro visited him in February 2017. He sadly passed away later that year, but was always a great inspiration to me as his planetary sketches are unsurpassed IMHO. A couple of Richard's sketches below show the famous Y pattern often depicted by visual observers, and the sometimes streaky nature of the clouds.

Excellent images Luke. I was observing Venus on Jan 18th while trying out a new eyepiece and again on Feb 4th using my binoviewer and parks gold super plossl's with Ultima barlow. I almost always see some very subtle detail, but sketching it always makes it look more intense than it actually appears in the eyepiece. No filters were used in my observation. I find it interesting and reassuring to see similarities between your images and the view I get through my telescope. Thanks for posting your images!

When I was a teenager I spent an unhealthy amount of time lusting at photographs of the 5" Cooke triplet. Then in 2007 I finally got my hands on it, although it was looking worse for wear. Not long afterwards, I believe it was someone at BC&F who renovated it and brought it back to its original glory. It still stops me in my tracks each time I see photo's of it. I'd certainly give that 8"Newtonian on the Frank mount a comfortable home if the price was right, but bidding is too much trouble.

Are we related?

I was wondering if you'd been on the Shandy Bass again Andrew?

That's a nice observation, and the subtle detail youve depicted in Aristarchus itself is worthy of a sketch all on its own. A pleasure to look at!

Talking to Peter Drew a number of years ago regarding Binoviewers and Barlow lenses, Peter said its nearer 4X amplification. He's been in the telescope manufacturing game a long time, so I'm inclined to trust his judgment on optics. I rarely screw a barlow directly into my binoviewer; instead i tend to use a shorty celestron ultima sv 2X barlow, which increases the distance between the barlow lens and the field lens of the eyepiece and so would increase magnification slightly over the screw in method. I have on many occasions screwed a SW delux barlow into my binoviewer and then fit the bv to yet another barlow with good results.

To really experience the subtle differences, it would be nice to get half a half dozen top end apo's side by side, at a good site and over several nights having top class seeing and transparency. That's wishful thinking I know! Then of course there'd have to be a selection of top class eyepieces, at the very least three experienced planetary observers. After the initial compulsory star test, it's the planet's that will sift the wheat from the chaff with regard to how good the optics are. And as my choice, I'd like Jupiter or Saturn, or both to be high in the sky. With no domestic heat sources near by and a steady atmosphere each scope would be able to give of its best. As for the choice of scopes, they would have to include an SW ED, A Tak or Vixen fluorite, a Vixen ED and the rest I'd leave for others to decide. I'd like to see various focal ratio's in the mix. As a planetary observer, I'd be looking for the scope with the best definition as opposed to the best CA control. It would be good also if the scopes were all the same aperture, give or take 5mm or so. I suspect it won't be glass types or optical design, or even colour correction or focal length that will win the day, but the quality of the objective in terms of figure. You never know, we might all go away with a different refractor than the one we turned up with.

A longer Focal length ED will theoretically be better able to control CA keeping the different wavelengths very tightly controlled. Much depends on glass types though. That will aid in giving a better over all image of extended objects such as the moon and planets, as well as producing very sharp star images. Not sure about lanthanum producing a yellow tint though? Vixen LV's and Pentax XW's have always appeared to give a Icey pure image to my eye, but I wore a dark green suit for a couple of years before others finally convinced me it was blue.

Hi Alan, I'm not sure if they all came with winged eye guards initially. I've bought all mine second hand with the exception of the 35mm Eudiascopic, and some had the original eye guard. The Eudiascopic came with a winged eye guard from new. I also bought a 20mm and 5mm Orion Ultima from Keiron at SCS a few years ago and they too had the rubber eye guards. It wasn't long ago i saw eye guards on sale but can't remember which vendor had them in stock. They are easily attainable if you really need them.

Hi Dave, Do you use a binoviewer? Ive found that binoviewing with the moon and planets greatly reduces the irritation of floaters, and for some reason seems to decrease the effects of atmospheric turbulence. I suppose with floaters, one eye cancels the other out, or at least partially, so floaters are not as readily visible. I agree totally that good quality simple design eyepieces perform on axis every bit as good as the venerable Pentax XW's, and it was because of that, that i sold off all my expensive wide angle eyepieces. In their place I now use paired pseudo Masuyama's. And the magnifications i use can reach ~ 395X in my binoviewer. This of course is dependent on seeing conditions and the object I'm looking at. I think modern barlows are excellent, and even the humble 2X SW Delux that's as cheap as chips if a superb Barlow. I've even double stacked them and still they give razor sharp views. A few years ago, Roger Vine who writes some great scope reviews, came to my little observatory to check out these new FC100 refractors. With them being shorter than the FS series he was curious about how well they dealt with colour correction. It was a superb night with perfect seeing, and the spring Moon was high in the sky at around 1st quarter. Looking through the BV that was in my FC100DC he instantly exhaled a "Wow!" The eyepieces in the BV were cheap 16.8mm super Abbe Orthoscopics costing around £39 each. Comparing the view with Roger's 6mm Ethos, and 5mm TMB Super Mono, the binoviewer image wasn't only more comfortable, but detail was easily more obvious and every bit as sharp, and at a fraction of the price. The Ethos and a 5mm Nagler were not really on the same playing field if you know what I mean. The super mono was stunning, but the paired cheap ortho's were better. I was using a cheap Revelation binoviewer and a SW 2X Delux Barlow. Today my simplified eyepiece collection might be considered somewhat antiquated, but it will give any high end eyepiece a major run for its money on lunar and planetary and thrash all but the very very best. In the attached pic, all my pseudo Masuyama pairs have been uncapped. There's a Celestron Ultima 2X barlow to the right of centre and a line up of Vixen HR eyepieces along the back right. The only wide field eyepiece I currently have is a 17.5 Baader Morpheus at the front right of centre, and of course my trusty but not rusty Revelation Binoviewer.

Probably not very helpful, but a 1.6X extender-Q is an unbelievably pure image amplifier that works great with a barlow to give high or even extreme magnifications. It would turn your FS128 into an F13. Adding a barlow to the mix will give some jaw dropping views of the Moon and double stars. It's one of those things I deeply regret selling. 😢 At 282X with a binoviewer my stomach literally rolled as I drifted over the edge of the Appenine mountains.

You could measure the exit pupil to find the magnification, but the measurement needs to be precise. Exit pupil = D/M therefore M= D×E I think!

The fact you disturbed my nap by phoning me to tell me to get off my .....! Well, I won't hold it against you as it was well worth the effort. Ta muchly!

You're showing your age with the "Tufty Badge" Ben. I haven't heard that mentioned since Noah was a lad.

My shortest focal length eyepiece is a 1.6mm Vixen HR, which on my 100mm Tak gives 463X. Sounds rediculous doesn't it? It's actually very good and surprisingly comfortable to use. Even though its a tiny exit pupil, in use it feels large. Eye relief is good too ! Down side is you'd probably need a tracking mount to use it without stressing. Vixen HR's are also available in 2mm, 2.4mm and 3.4mm focal lengths and I have them all.