Highburymark

Thanks Dave! Very similar to the Antares orthos too. Adding to the general green and blackness of my eyepiece collection.

Beautifully packaged in individual canisters and completely mint - thanks to Sylvain from France - a set of Kasai orthos.

A message that so far has made no impression whatsoever on my wife John, unfortunately. But I’m working on it.

Good to hear these scopes perform well on the Sun. There’s a strong argument for preferring a 4” refractor over a 5” for white light solar under UK skies - copes with average seeing more effectively, so decent views can be enjoyed more often throughout the day rather than just in the morning or early evening as with the larger scope.

All I dream about are darker skies. Sounds trite, but they are more valuable than any telescope.

Nice report. Glad to hear the PVS-14 is delivering. A C11 under dark skies must be incredible. Gain control is great to have - I find I rarely turn it above half way to avoid scintillation.

Scurvy knave! It may not appeal to the aesthete in you Peter, but I’ve just been out for a quick look and it’s a hoot! Scanning the Milky Way at 11x was lovely. M31 bright and nicely framed. I’m off out again.

No, but I’ve got the eyepatch

Here’s the 60ED from TS in Germany. Around 1.5kg for just the OTA feels solid but easy to hold steady. Length is absolutely fine, though haven’t sparked it up yet to find out where I’ll reach focus. Nice thing is that bulk of the weight is under the focuser, not at the front.

Very nice Stu. I really like the More Blue gear too, particularly for the lighter Taks. Postman has just delivered this: a lovely little Tecnosky 60ED for hand held night vision, which I’ll mostly use straight through without a diagonal. TeleVue 67mm plossl will give magnification of 5x at equivalent of around F/2.8!!. But here also with T2 amici for photo tripod.

Glad you’re back and firing on all cylinders Nigella. Beautiful images. And very best with health matters.

A good start! Although they are capable of spectacular views, Quarks are as individual and variable as fingerprints. So what others have experienced may not apply to your Quark, particularly regarding bandwidth, image consistency across the fov, build quality etc. 25mm is a powerful eyepiece to use with a 900mm refractor, and in the U.K. I would normally expect it to be too much for our seeing. Try experimenting with different powers (I found a 40mm plossl was my most used EP when I had a Quark), and see how the tuning affects resolvable detail of prominences and surface features. As there is already a 4x barlow inside, it’s a good idea to start with lower powers. And best advice of all, find something dark to cover your head and block out all light when at the eyepiece. It dramatically improves the view.

With such excellent focusers (ie, no longer the component where the manufacturer has obviously saved money), these handsome scopes beg the question, exactly how expensive is FPL53 glass these days? Cheap enough for Skywatcher to use it in a glorified finder. It’s great news for astronomers, but not so great for brands hoping to justify a sizeable price hike for fluorite.

Three: 120mm triplet 85mm ED And just bought a little 60ED! If I had the space, I’d have several more. Just to illustrate the flexibility of small refractors, I use my TV85 a hundred times a year, for solar Ha, solar white light, Moon and planets, deep sky with night vision, daytime spotting, travel home and abroad, single eps and binoviewing, all on a camera tripod with simple alt az mounts.

Great pics Gavin. Even I got the Horsehead tonight! Along with the Flame, Rosette and a very nice California with its extra elevation. Epsilon 130d, TV67mm plossl, Chroma 3nm Ha was the hardwear. Swapped over to the Baader 685nm and enjoyed M31, M33 (just) and clusters in Auriga, Cassiopeia etc.

I wonder if you could get such a part made up for you - Precise Parts in the States would do it if you knew the threads and dimensions, but a one off likely to be pricey. Nice system though!

Little Tecnosky 60ED F/6 ordered for around £300. Dug out Manfrotto ball head mount for camera tripod for when more stability needed, and have a Baader T2 amici prism which will no doubt be useful. With TV plossl 67mm, I’ll have a 5x NV monocular. I also have a Baader zoom, which can be used with the PVS-14 with an adapter from RAF Camera, so looking forward to trying that. Am hoping this will be a great way to improve the flexibility of afocal night vision with the PVS-14. Will report back on how things go.

These are incredible shots from London Gavin. Can’t imagine they could get much better with current technology. For newcomers to night vision, with extreme filtration for light polluted environments (from Chroma 3nm Ha filters), only the very best NV systems can pick up such detail and clarity, particularly with only a small refractor. Still lots to enjoy with less sophisticated systems, but for example, with my (very decent) FOM2150 Photonis 4G tube, the pictured objects are still ‘faint fuzzies’ observed from my Bortle 8-9 skies.

What’s great about your set up is, first, you’ve got a decent Quark. Hallelujah. But with 4” of aperture and binoviewers you’ll be able to enjoy fine detail even when the Sun is relatively inert. Even during solar minimum, there’s always something going on. So detail in small proms, filaments and active regions will be easier to resolve when the seeing allows. The one thing Quarks and similar filters don’t pick up as well as double stacked air spaced etalons are the spicules around the edge due to leakage from the photosphere, but who cares when you’ve got the rest of the Sun to look at.

Well you’ve bought wisely - never used a Denkmeier myself but they have an excellent reputation and are among the most flexible of binoviewers. It may take some time to get accustomed to them and find your preferred set up but you should get an idea pretty quickly of how much two-eyed viewing brings to solar. You see more, get more of a 3D impression, and the comfort factor is dramatically improved. It just becomes very natural, and allows you to concentrate on the Sun, not the equipment.

Hi Leo, and welcome to the forum. I’m afraid I can’t answer your questions - there are only a few night vision users on this site, mostly using Gen 2 and 3 technology available in Europe. and that’s not a device I’ve heard of before. Others may have more of an informed view, but your best bet would be to post the question on Cloudy Nights, the main forum for night vision astronomy. Best of luck.

Lovely and sharp! Who’s your glazier Mike? You clearly get better quality glass in Lancs than in London.

Like Alan, the T6 Nagler I liked the most was the 11mm, discontinued a while ago. Though I never tried the 13mm, which also had a good reputation.

Very nice. Despite rising prices elsewhere, can’t complain about the value of these new scopes. Focuser looks the business too.

Very nice Vin! Can’t answer your F/ratio questions but your SF50 is clearly a lovely filter. Images 2 and 3 show the best contrast, but the last one looks slightly soft.