AdeKing

I'm sure that he'll love it, very nice scope. We'll be looking forward to hearing about Aston's journey with his new telescope after Christmas. I'm really impressed with the book, I bought it for my Niece for Christmas, but have to confess to having read it myself 😊.

I did exactly the same yesterday with my Astrozap 100mm solar filter and was amazed to be able to clearly see the larger of the spots through the solar filter using just the Mk 1 eyeball. Put the scope out later, but only got about 10 mins viewing before the clouds rolled in and spoiled the fun.

I've been disappointed not to see these with my own eyes due to cloud and work commitments. However, I am enjoying watching them on Helioviewer and then enjoy doing sketches from the laptop view. It's not the same as seeing them myself but enjoyable nonetheless.

I found that my local library had electronic versions of Astronomy and The Sky at Night available via the RBDigital app, so thats where I get my fix of those from. Worth checking if you're a member of your local library. I like Astronomy Now and get a paper copy but tend to only flick through it so am tempted to drop that one. ATT is very good value and I enjoy reading that one, though as previously mentioned it does contain quite a lot of adverts, but I find that I can ignore those without too much nuisance.

Mine landed on the doormat today as well 👍👍

OMG you're right. I have a digital subscription active that I think cost me about $25. The digital only price is now almost $70. That has certainly lost me as a subscriber I'm afraid as I certainly don't read cover to cover. ☹️

Apologies @faulksy I'm not sure I understand. The secondary isn't centre-spotted, the black spot in the photo is the reflection of the sighting hole in the centre of the Cheshire. Won't rotating the secondary at this stage make the secondary reflection elliptical rather than circular? Sorry if I'm missing something.

I'll double check tomorrow. I know that racking out did give more "breathing space" around the circular secondary reflection as the gap widened, but I didn't pay attention to whether or not the drawtube was rocking and changing the relative proportions of the spaces if that makes sense. I did dig out my Baader laser collimator to try your suggestion but wouldn't you know it, the batteries were dead, so need to remember to pick up some new ones.

I agree wholeheartedly with you. I'm not after absolutely perfect collimation as I have no interest in imaging, I'm strictly a visual only guy 😉. My issue is that it seems wrong that the circular reflection from the secondary is not central through the Cheshire or Collimation Cap and this just seems wrong to me, so I'm trying to work out where the problem lies. And knowing that this is the situation is bugging me. I did look at an autocollimator several years ago, but decided that I'd drive myself crazy with it, so I stepped away from that thought. So a bit of a development today, though I can't call it progress. Firstly, I loosened the four bolts attaching the focuser to the OTA to check for excessive play to see whether an error could have crept in there when I fitted the upgraded focuser. However, this showed almost no lateral play in the position of the focuser base plate when the bolts were loose, so I duly tightened everything up. As per @Mark at Beaufort suggestion, I placed white card down the OTA to block the reflection of the primary mirror and make things clearer. Then, as per @Pixies suggestion above, I loosened all secondary adjusters off until they were level with the bottom of the secondary holder attached to the vanes, then tightened the central screw until the movable part of the secondary assembly was hard against the fixed part of the assembly between the vanes (hopefully this makes sense), so at that point everything should have been parallel. Next I carefully turned the central screw until the reflection in the secondary was roughly centred in the view of the Cheshire and rotated the secondary until the reflection presented as a circle, then slowly and carefully tightened the three secondary adjusters by equal amounts until I could feel the slightest of pressure as they touched the top of the secondary mirror holder. I then made a minor tweak to one of the three adjusters to tilt the mirror assembly down towards the primary very slightly to get an even space all around the circular reflection through the Cheshire, but essentially all good so far. At this point the image as seen through the Cheshire is shown below and this looks good to me, the reflection is circular in shape with an almost even gap between the edge of the reflection and the inside of the Cheshire sight tube and I thought this looked "Textbook". Once the card baffle was removed from the OTA to reveal the primary reflection, I see the following. At this stage, I move onto Stage 2 and use the three secondary adjuster screws to tilt the secondary mirror until I get a view of the whole primary mirror. This is where my problems begin....... Once the secondary adjusters have been tweaked to show the whole of the primary mirror reflection then the circular secondary reflection is shifted "Up" in the image and I am back to where I was yesterday with the circular reflection shown by the secondary no longer being central in the Cheshire sight tube as shown in the image below (Apologies for the reflection of trees in the primary mirror). At this stage I have stopped as I seem to be back at square one where I could continue to adjust the primary, but the reflection shown in the secondary is still not centred in the circular view through the Cheshire and logic suggests that it should be. This is where I seem to be going wrong and can't work out what I'm doing wrong, or whether there is something wrong elsewhere. I did try, but it is far too close to the secondary assembly to reach focus. Hopefully this sheds a bit more light on the issue.

I agree with John, I didn't mount anything significant on the top mounting position apart from a finderscope then I found that the top mounting point was useful and convenient place to mount a Telrad so used it for that instead. I second the recommendation to upgrade the clamps. The supplied clamps really are quite poor and I wouldn't trust them to handle the weight of a 200P. Something like this ADM clamp will be much safer than the stock option. Out of interest, which Manfrotto tripod is it that you're using that looks really quite nice.

Thanks, this is what I'm struggling to work out, I'm trying to work out which adjustment allows me to move "Up" and "Down" in this image. This makes me wonder whether the focuser is centred properly in the focuser hole in the OTA. This is where I'm struggling to find the correct adjustment sequence. To help with orientation, in the image in my first post the fixed part of the secondary holder is to the Left of the image, so loosening the central screw on the secondary holder moves the secondary from left to right, so I can see from your first image that I need to adjust the central screw to move the secondary slightly to the left, but its the up and down adjustment that I'm struggling with. I can improve matters slightly by adjusting two of the three screws on the secondary holder to tilt the secondary mirror "downwards" in my image above, BUT I then need to adjust these a second time to centre the reflection of the primary mirror in the next step of the process. Astrobaby also states that after adjusting the secondary screws that you should check that the two faces of the secondary assembly stay parallel. Doing the adjustment above causes one of the faces to tilt relative to the other if that makes sense, so it seems wrong. Thanks for your comment Mark, this is what I can't work out. I had no problems whatsoever with collimating the 6" f/5 Newt you had from me, it was beautifully easy to collimate. The 8" should be the same, but its proved to be an absolute pig to work with and I've had nothing but problems with it which makes me think that there is something amiss somewhere, but I'm struggling to work out what and where. I have measured the length of the 4 secondary vanes and the centre of the adjustment screw is an equal distance from the inside edge of the OTA along all of the secondary assembly vanes. I'm pretty sure that this is how the offset is taken into account in my Skywatcher 8" f/6 Dob, so I've been just centring the secondary holder until its centred in the OTA. As Mark said above, I didn't struggle with collimating a faster 6" f/5 that I sold to him, its just this particular OTA that is proving to be an issue which is why its been so frustrating. The primary adjustment is also different from the 6" f/5 that I used to have, the 8" does not have springs under the primary mirror, only some rubber washers, so there is very little room for adjustment on the primary mirror and when the primary is aligned with the secondary as per my image at the top of the post, there is virtually no adjustment left in one of the three primary adjustment screws, but plenty of adjustment left in the other two screws. This also suggests that something is amiss somewhere, though this may be unrelated to the issue I'm struggling with at the moment.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've had an 8" Dob (Skywatcher 8" f/6) for several years and stopped using it for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons was that I've always had trouble nailing collimation. Now that I've done a StarSense Explorer mod on it, I'm keen to sort collimation and put it back in to regular use. So, I've been following the Astrobaby collimation guide and have got the collimation as close as I can, but I'm having trouble getting the circular reflection of the secondary mirror central when viewed through a Rigel collimation cap. I have previously used a Catseye 2" Telecat and also a 1.25" Cheshire for collimation, but in my latest round of collimation I've found a Rigel Aline collimation cap easier to use. I'd previously replaced the clamp on the end of the focuser drawtube with one of the Astro Essentials 2" compression adaptors and have realised that it didn't hold the original Skywatcher extension tube needed to reach focus with 2" eyepieces square to the drawtube, so I've now swapped the original spacer with a Revelation one of the same length that has parallel sides that fit into the drawtube rather than a dovetail-type fitting at the focuser end. This means that the extension is now held square to the end of the drawtube. I'm using a Howie Glatter Parallizer to hold 1.25" eyepieces in the drawtube, and this is in place when using the collimatrion cap. This has helped a bit, but here is an overexposed image showing the view through the collimation cap to illustrate what I'm talking about. To my eyes, the reflections show a good collimation, BUT the reflections are not central in the field of view through the Colli-Cap, they are too close to the top of the image. I did replace the stock single speed focuser with one of the Skywatcher dual speed units some time ago, could I have introduced an error to the alignment when fitting the dual-speed focuser which might account for the reflections being shifted towards the top of the image? This focuser also seems to have some grub screws on the focuser that I assume can be used to adjust the tilt of the focuser. To clarify, I have used the adjusters on the end of the secondary Vanes to laterally shift the location of the mirror, but run out of adjustment before it is centred. I have since re-adjusted the secondary by double-checking the distance from the inside edges of the OTA to the centre of the secondary mount adjustment screw (as per Astrobaby's guide) and this confirms that it is centrally mounted within the OTA. If anyone can give me suggestions on what the problem might be and how I might fix it, that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Ade

The new small spots may have been visible with 15x70 binoculars if they were securely mounted. I picked them up in my little ZS70 with my Zoom at 21.5mm (approx 18.5x), but I knew where to look and it took a little effort. The above is fairly close to 15x70, I don't know whether the binocs are stopped down. Ade

There are a number of events which spring to mind, like the first view of Jupiter and Saturn through a telescope, but for me I think the biggest wow moment was seeing my first shadow transit on Jupiter. The realisation that I was watching the shadow cast by another planet's moon pass across the planets face really floored me and was a massive WOW moment. Another event was on a similar theme and was the Mercury transit of the sun last November. The first views of Sunspots in both H-alpha and White Light were also key moments. Ade

Mine is an older one as I was an early adopter of this mount, but mine is also un-threaded for approx the first 20mm, see image below.

Just placed an order 👍

I use both and do find the Telrad slightly easier to get the sight line correct to see the rings. However, as most of my OTAs are Fracs and don't have as much space available along the OTA as a Newt does, I use the Rigel on my Fracs as it's smaller and neater. Both are however very effective and are easier to star hop with than a simple RDF.

I believe that @johninderby had one for a while. Hopefully John will be able to give an opinion, though from a visual rather than imaging standpoint I think. Ade

How are you finding this mod after 6 months @Stu? I seem to remember reading on another thread that the bearing had worked rather too well and that you needed some additional friction. How did the mod evolve? I've just started using my Skywatcher 8" Dob again after its sat unused in the Summerhouse for a couple of years. Its been mounted on an OOUK Dob Base and I've found exactly the same as you, the AZ motion is a right pain to use at high magnification with far too much stiction causing me to either not move enough or to overshoot, either way very frustrating. I'm keen to try this mod, but am interested to know how you solved the lack of friction problem. Ade

My oldest kit is probably my Towa 339 80mm f/15 refractor that I think dates from the 1970s so a similar vintage to myself.

A recent acquisition for me, a Vixen Porta ii via SGL Classifieds. I think this is the Porta ii as the head is detachable from the tripod legs, but the logo on the Alt Axis just says "Porta." This came complete with wooden legs from an Astro-Engineering AZTech tripod based on the label as well as the tabletop adaptor. Here it is on WL Solar duty with my WO ZS70. I've tried all manner of Giro-type Alt Az mounts but have never really got on with them that well. This little Porta has showed me that I'm happiest with Slow-mo controls and the very brief solar session I had today was an absolute pleasure. This mount ticks more of my grab-and-go boxes so I'm very happy with it.

I was hoping to get a cheeky look at lunch today but have been far too busy. I saw that it had grown when I checked helioviewer this morning, but am slightly gutted I couldn't get a look myself. Well, there is always tomorrow. Glad others managed to get a look though.

I tend to mostly use a WL setup when decent sized sunspots are visible but use Ha when nothing is visible in WL as there is always something to see in Ha. A Herschel Wedge and continuum filter are well worth the investment @Davey-T.........not that I enjoy spending other people's hard earned cash.

I've just put the 102 f/11 away. Like you John, I found the views just "so so" especially when compared to last night and I'm not convinced it was down to having 20mm less aperture tonight. Moved across for some lunar action and got a nice view of the bright line of Rupes Cauchy as it disappeared into the shadow, which was a nice highlight, then called it quits when the eyepieces started dewing up.

Thanks Dave, it was the post from yesterday and Alan's post earlier that made me get the kit out. Was going to view in Ha as well but by the time I'd finished due to one thing and another the sun was behind the trees. Checking my notebook, it looks like a month since I've last observed the sun. Love viewing in WL when there is activity, but looking forward to viewing in Ha tomorrow if I get set up early.