mikeDnight

I admire your determination to rough it out with XW's. Ethos & Nagler Zooms John. 😆 XW's are some of my favourite eyepieces, and the 3.5mm & 5mm are stunning. I've not yet used an Ethos in the shorter focal lengths, although I did have a 13mm and loved it. And the Nag zooms are lovely too. I can't imagine anyone having any of these eyepieces losing too much sleep because they don't have HR's.

I think the HR's really come into their own when observing double stars. With a tracking mount you can use really silly powers, as even the 1.6mm Barlows really well when the seeing is steady. To me the HR's don't feel like they have a restricted field, in fact I was surprised at how comfortable they all were. Id really like a Tak turret to go along with them.

Space is real, so it's something. Nothing is the opposite of something and so is equal to absolute non-existence. No space, no universe, no matter, no energy, and no flaming Britain's Got Talent. "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could"! Julie Andrews, The Sound Of Music. (1960 something).

What a wonderful report, and very inspiring. I imagine a few here on SGL will follow your lead and give these targets a shot. And your sketches are superb, and again inspiring to everyone else. Truly top class observing! 🏆🏆🏆

The ALTAIR ULTRAFLAT 30 caught my eye while at the Practical Astronomy Show in March. Cosmetically it is a beautiful eyepiece with a dull green anodized sheen body with rubber grip, and a stainless steel 2" fit barrel with safety curfs. The eye lens is large, and easy on the eye making for comfortable viewing. The white writing on the green body does not state the apparent field of view, which presumably is 70°. The eyepiece comes with top and bottom soft rubber caps, and has a soft rubber foldable eyeguard. This has a tendency to come off quite easily which is annoying. First light: This was the night after my adventure to Kettering. The night was clear, and using a new 2" Altair dielectric mirror diagonal in my 100mm apo my first target was The Crab nebula M1, as this would make a good indicator as to transparency. I was very impressed with the clarity of this eyepiece, as immediately and without any real dark adaption, M1 appeared easily. Sweeping through star fields was a pleasure with pin sharp stars across 80% of the field, and star colours were seen easily despite the low power of the eyepiece. The Pleiades was beautiful and despite being past its best, the Merope nebula was easily seen. M42 the Orion nebula was spectacular, not only because of its beautiful swaiths of bright nebulosity, but because of the dark nebula that so obviously made up a great portion of the nebula, but which is so often overlooked. Daylight views do show a lack of field curvature, but UltraFlat?? The real let-down with this eyepiece comes when looking down the barrel from the field lens side. I didn't look at the field lens when buying it, but if I had, I certainly wouldn't have bought the eyepiece. A bright, bare, shiny retaining ring inside the eyepiece stares starkly back at you. No eyepiece should ever have bare metallic parts internally. Everything should be totally mat black internally. Despite this poor finish the Altair Ultraflat 30 remains among my eyepieces as it has proved itself to be very capable. The shiny interior doesn't appear to have any negative impact on the performance, but never the less it should not be there. Im left in two minds as to whether I should dismantle the eyepice and blacken the bright silver ring just for my own piece of mind???

Another helpful seed planted!

Since 2008 I've been an avid binoviewer user. The binoviewer I bought back then was a Revelation generic model found under various brand names. Mine cost only £99 and so has proved to be my most used, single biggest game changer accessory in my 43 years as a visual observer. I couldn't imagine a better view of the Moon and planets, but Stu planted the seed for a Maxbright ll binoviewer, and the motley crew in the pic below watered that seed while I was at the Practical Astronomy Show in March. Dave (F15Rules), Me , Keith, Alan (Alan White), John (Telescope40) & Steve (Saganite). [The Old Astigmatic Society] Overpowered, I succumbed to their influence and bought a Maxbright. The very first view through the viewer settled my mind as to its value and quality. Bright, clean, pure, sharp, are just some descriptive terms but I'm sure I can think of more, with the Revelation appearing dim by comparison and with a noticeably dimmer view in the right side of the viewer. The Maxbright displayed even brightness! Mechanically too the Maxbright is obviously superior to the generic revelation model, with excellent click-lock's on both eyepiece holders, and lovely sliding focus switches allowing precise focus for each eye. It wasn't cheap, but it is worth every penny. Using my 25mm pseudo Masuyama's, the brighter deep sky was very impressive, and that made me want to use the 35mm pair I have which are wonderful eyepieces. The Revelation has now been donated to Kieth! Focus issues! This isn't a problem with the Maxbright, but rather with my refractor, or more accurately, with Takahashi. Tak are notorious for having limited inward focus. I think they make their scopes this way so you've got to buy their eyepieces? Anyhow, I have a beautiful pair of 35mm 5 element pseudo Masuyama's, but they require more inward focus than most other eyepieces of their focal length, and they wouldn't reach focus with the standard Tak 2" back. What to do??? Auntie FLO came to my rescue. It was suggested I try the Baader adapters in the images below, as they connect directly to my FC100DZ focuser. The advantage over the stock Takahashi visual back is an extra 16mm of inward focus. Though you'll still need to use the Tak drawtube adapter which is a shame. In this configuration the extra 16mm of inward focus was enough for me to achieve native focus with my 35mm eyepieces, but there were obstacles to overcome! Using my Baader Zeiss BBHS prism diagonal with the 2" Baader Clock-lock interfered with the new adapter and full insertion wasn't possible as the bulky click lock hit the adapter and locking screws leaving two or three millimetres of the 2" barrel protruding. I changed the 2" click-lock for the Baader helical focuser, which allowed for full insertion but the light path was still too long. My only other option was to remove the helical microfocuser and attaching the Maxbright directly to the diagonal prism. Bingo! The 35mm's snapped into focus with oodles of room to spare. What a relief! This of course means that whenever I want to use my 35mm eyepieces I must connect the Maxbright directly to the prism, but honestly it's a small inconvenience compared to the views this scope, binoviewer, BBHS prism and eyepiece combination offer. It may mean however, that the 2" click-lock that is essentially brand new, being only a couple of weeks old, will need a new home. I only have one 2" eyepiece and can use my 2" diagonal for that!

Although hard cases are brilliant for long-distance protection, there's something to be said for a softer option, as it not only protects the telescope but also the furniture. Especially if you're like me and carry multiple items at once, there's far less chance of getting into trouble with the boss! I reinforced my padded soft case with some Aldi exercise matting. When paying for the exercise mat I noticed the disbelieving stare of the girl serving me, as she obviously thought to herself "Who are you trying to kid"!

To understand what nothing looks like, here's a pic of my bank balance. ☺

I do! Several, plus larger scopes in fact!! Anyone living close to the Lancashire/Yorkshire border could avail themselves of the 16" Meade SCT's, 17.5" Dob, and many other impressive telescopes on Saturday night's. Only keep your hands off the 4" Vixen Fluorite and the 8.5" achromat!

Here's a pic taken by simply hand holding my phone camera to the eyepiece of my 100mm refractor. No false colour, just the natural colour of the Moon, similar to the colour of a malteser with the chocolate sucked off. It's definitely not black and white!

Finding something of interest is the key. I love rilles and can spend much of the night tracing them across the lunar terrain. Crater floors are often overshadowed by their spectacular terracing, and so studying crater floors has become a pleasant pass-time also. I love to draw what I'm observing no matter what it is as I believe it helps me to notice less obvious detail. I've even held my phone camera against the eyepiece to snap the occasional pic through my 100mm refractor, but I've no imaging equipment, not even a phone holder, so find it a bit of a struggle. Give me a pencil and a sketch pad and I'm as happy as can be.

I'm only jealous of Dave's FS128, and only mildly mocking because I was stupid enough to let mine go. Even as I was doing the deal for the 152, I knew it was a dumb move. Gormless is a term I haven't heard or used in years - I think it means 'dim'. May be I should change from mikeDnight to GormlessSquared? Anyhow, I got my first view through an FS128 since 2007 last Friday night, after David, Dweller25, invited me to come over and play. We only managed Venus, which was beautiful and clean with subtle cloud top detail, and Mars. Unfortunately as the sky darkened the seeing began to deteriorate and we lost the initial detail on Mars. Between observing Venus and Mars, we managed to take a look at Betelgeuse and the double star Castor. I have to say looking at stars through David's FS128 was truly magical! It was a very enjoyable evening!!

Interestingly, although the greatest eastern elongation is on June 4th, Venus very often misleads the visual observer by appearing to be very slightly gibbous, or very slightly crescent. I wonder how many observers will see this effect, and how many actually detect a precise first quarter phase? Also, whether this phase anomaly is seen in images? Inferior conjunction is on August 13th, but as Venus approaches IC, it is fascinating to watch as the crescent phase becomes very large and very thin. Providing the observer can situate the telescope soit can't inadvertently sweep across the Sun, it's possible to catch the phase as it moves towards an annulus. It's also noteworthy to mention that the entire globe can be seen, a little like the old moon in the new moons arms, as it is set against a blue sky. Following Venus in this way is greatly entertaining. Only beware the Sun! The sketches below were made years apart. The first with a 120 Equinox ED showing the globe hanging almost in 3D, and the second using a 100mm refractor and showing a 4% phase, which is my personal best to date. The british weather was my biggest hindrance, and probably prevented further observations. Equinox 120ED FC100DC

My FS128 only had the writing on the Dew Shield. I think Dave's example must be faulty. I mean who would want to blatantly advertise their scope is a Takahashi by having the name both on the Dew Shield and the tube?

Truly beautiful! Your observatory is a work of art!!

I didnt know the bottom baffle could be removed. And now I'm jealous of your beautiful vintage filter set.

Thanks for the compliment. Feel free to steal away. It's a privilege to be theived from in this way!

I've had a look through some past sketchbooks but it appears I've never drawn Iota Cass. I have come across some other sketches of colourd doubles though, which might hint at what could be the issue. In the sketches below you'll notice that the core of the Airy disc is almost white despite the star being strongly coloured. Only around the periphery of the disc was the colour more noticeable. With Iota Cass being yellow, its entirely possible that its brilliance overpowers its colour. By slightly defocusing the image, the colour hew blends across the image and may become more obvious. Hope this makes sense!

It may help if you defocus slightly. It sounds silly but sometimes it can aid in detecting the colour of stars.

I painted a Vixen counterweight a couple of years ago using Sage green, possibly smoothright, but definitely a metal paint from B&Q. I still have the can but I've put it somewhere safe but can't remember where. It was the closest match I could find at the time and I'm still happy with it. You can tell the difference, but as the green motor cover is a different green anyway, I don't mind my counterweight having a slightly different green.

Youre probably every bit as good as everyone else Gerry. Given your temperatures there may have been ice crystals in the air that washed out the view possibly? But seeing conditions can change in an instant, so it can be hit and miss at times. Last night wasn't as good as the previous night because of turbulence. Racking the scope out of focus slightly showed a river of fast moving air, so definition was lost on Mars. The initial view was quite good, but rapidly deteriorated. Venus earlier in the evening was beautiful against a blue sky, but deteriorated later due to the jetstream. See Gerry, you're to blame! To be honest, it's only on exceptional nights that I use very high powers. Generally I loiter around 200X or less so as to maintain the definition and contrast on a planet. It's better studying a small sharp disc than a larger blurry one. And I really prefer observing the planet's using a binoviewer as I find it more relaxing, which helps with picking out subtle detail over the length of the observation. Have you tied any colour filters while observing Mars?

I hope you have success tonight Roy. I had chance to observe Mars with Dweller25 this evening, using his Tak FS128. At first the detail was seen quite easily, but the night rwasn't as good as the previous night with the FC100DZ and soon deteriorated until detail was virtually lost.

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