Paz

This is interesting to read back, my habits have changed quite a bit, I do a lot more daytime solar and early evening lunar observing than night time sessions and I observe mostly with binoviewers rather than cyclops. So currently the top 3 are pairs of 20mm SLVs, 30mm NPLs and 40mm NPLs in binoviewers with quite a lot of amplification, usually in the range 2.6x to 4.3x

I find magnification on the sun of around 80x to be reliably available, and about 120x is the most I usually use at home where the local conditions for solar observing are not great due the the heat coming off houses and roads. Usually if I observe solar away from home I can do better than at home. At night observing the moon at home, 120x is reliably available and going over 200x is possible fairly often. Undercuts are annoying, but these days I only use T2 connections for solar, never 1.25" nosepieces. I use a lacerta wedge that allows T2 at both sides.

My garden has a high south facing wall that radiates the heat of the sun straight back and with high sides on all sides the wind doesn't blow through. It got to nearly 43 degrees in the shade on the patio today.

The thing around the tripod legs is a photographer's shroud that I got to try as a solar observing hood but it was no good for that - not blocking enough light or heat. It got replaced by the telegizmos shroud that I now use. But the photographer's shroud is good enough for its new purpose.

I spent a couple of hours observing the sun this morning in white light, this is I think the longest I've ever done in one stint. A while back I got a solar observing shield/blanket which has been great but today I added a "skirt" to the tripod legs to stop glare from the ground and to stop my legs getting cooked. It was nice and cool/dim under there hence I ended up observing for so long and even did some sketching which is not something I do often. There's a lot of white light activity with two lines of spot activity across the face, one above and one below the equator.

I had a look on sky safari and it says Iapetus is magnitude 11.5 at the moment it goes into transit. Aperture permitting that would be ok if it was a star on its own but I wonder how easy it will be to see near to the brightness of Saturn. In transit I wonder if it would look like a bright dot or a dark dot or just be invisible in the glare. It may be one worth trying for - I assume the temperature will mean observing in shorts and t shirt at 1am will be ok?

I would generally go up to a 6mm SLV so 100x with the 120mm, and usually less magnification than that.

When I got a 102mm f7 apo I compared it to to a 120mm f5 achromat and I found that on white light solar they were broadly in the same league as each other when using a green solar continuum filter, I guess the aperture of the 120 compensating a bit for it's disadvantages in other areas and the green filter taking CA out of the equation.

The cambridge photographic moon atlas has a nice 25 page introduction to the moon covering geology, features, and a bit about observation and photography etc. The rest of the book is epic photos with commentary mostly to do with what things are called and how they look rather than the science of what they are, but the intro is good. Also the Kaguya Lunar Atlas is good and a different take on an atlas, with great photos and commentary.

3055 was interesting I have a look this morning and in white light all the little freckles of activity between the two ends stood out and in Ha the same area was swirls and curves between the two ends like the magnetic lines around a bar magnet

I use a telrad on big scopes and prefer a Rigel on small scopes. I wish though the Rigel came with a contraption to allow mounting on a universal shoe mount, it would be so much easier to use flexibly. (Scopes n stuff in the US do one but it's not worth the postage to order one on its own).

I have one of these I use with small scopes as a portable mount with a light tripod. My main struggle is vibes from the tripod I use which is super light, I've had no issues with the AZ T6. I have a counterweight bar but in practice I never use it as it adds weight, size, and hassle and I'd rather travel lighter.

Sorry to hear this, hope you are back into it when you are ready. I've had a few spells of inactivity over the years due variously to work, health, and clouds but always come back to this particular hobby.

I was observing the moon in daylight today. Much more civilised than observing in the cold and dark! This is towards the end of the session with 10mm SLVs and a 1.7x gpc making for 272x magnification. There was a bit of wobble to the seeing as well as the daylight scatter but still enjoyable views.

I have ended up with quite a few scopes because they are all good in their ways and I struggle to find the time to sell things. I had in mind to keep 4 scopes... 72mm refractor for travel and for whole disk solar binoviewing. 102mm refractor as my most used do-anything grab and go scope. A 8" sct for lunar and doubles. A 14" Newtonian for when I want the best views and I have the energy to carry it outside. I think that covers all the bases well. ...but my St80 is ridiculously light and is more aperture than my 72mm refractor so it sometimes is a better bet. My st120 is better than my 102mm refractor on dim dsos and on large targets, and my 127mm Maksutov is better on the moon than the 102mm refractor. So everything still gets used over time despite me having the intention to sell a few scopes for quite a while and never succeeding.

I think this is true, your average astronomer is more honest and consientious than your average person in the street. I find private astronomy sellers are often a match for the professional outlets when it comes to standards, such as speed of despatch, and often go reassuringly overboard when it comes to packaging an item! I've not bought from CN but I have bought some astro bits from the states via eBay 😮and found people to be fine.

I don't know if the price difference has anything to do with quality. I have a 1.25" Lacerta wedge and I'm very happy with it and don't think I'm missing out on anything. The Lacerta wedge is a shallower angle than the lunt which means it polarises more strongly and the eyepiece angle is more horizontal than a 90 degree lunt wedge but I prefer the Lacerta's approach on both these points. The lacerta wedge is built like a tank and should be able to cope with anything you might reasonably want to hang off it.

The simplest and cheapest way to go is a foil filter like this... Astrozap Baader Solar Filter | First Light Optics You can also get glass ones but either way this kind of filter goes over the front of the telescope so everything behind it is safe. What you need to avoid, as you have noted, is any "eyepiece filters" that attach at the eyepiece end of the scope. The problem with them is they attempt to do their job right where the heat would be concentrated so are likely to fail. At higher cost you could get a Herschel wedge that provides a slightly better quality image and allows you to vary the brightness if you put a polarising filter on the eyepiece. Lunt White Light Herschel/Solar Wedge | First Light Optics Blocking filters are I think more to do with hydrogen alpha observing which is very expensive in comparison (it's over £1k for a hydrogen alpha filter).

Getting away with having 7 or more scopes in the house is a good deal!

I stick with longer wavelength eyepieces for binoviewing and Barlow them. I have the following pairs for binoviewing... 40mm and 30mm Vixen NPLs - used mostly for solar to bring down the magnification. 20mm SLVs sometimes for solar mostly for lunar. 17.3 Delos - used for all sorts of targets but in particular dso binoviewing. 15mm and 12.5mm plossls - I got these just to try shorter focal lengths. They do their thing ok but I don't really use them due to short eye relief. If I can find a second 12mm Delos I'll add a pair of those to my binoviewing lineup and maybe a pair of SLVs at 15mm or 12mm would also be used but 12mm would be the shortest I would probably go with binoviewers.

I don't understand any of the maths but the suggestion that you can establish the mass of a thing by working out the dimension of one of its components and leaving many other variables unknown seems dodgy.I Does this discovery mean that I could now work out the mass of a block of cheese just by knowing the dimensions of a cheese particle? Having said that there is a long history of ideas initially considered crazy that eventually turned out to be right. 😲

I went around the houses on eyepiece choice and in the end I narrowed things down to be based on needing long eye relief and wanting the best quality out there so I could retire from the eyepiece rat race and just enjoy observing. I got a Delos and realised that was it for me and now I've got all of them except the 14mm (it's the one focal length I didn't strictly need). I've had Delos for years now and I never find myself thinking about whether I should be trying any other eyepieces. I also have a pair of 17.3 Delos for binoviewing and that is epic.

That's a great review and very useful. The selling point for dielectrics is durability and reflectivity but surface smoothness and low scatter are important also, and even more so for things like doubles. I've read plenty of reviews of diagonals and often they conclude there's little difference between them but I recently did some back to back tests on some diagonals and the same as yourself I also saw noticeable differences.

Great report to read. I've often wondered about the vip Barlow. I don't have a decent Barlow but sometimes use 2" 2x powermate and a 1.25" 2.5x powermate. The versatility of the vip is a big plus and if it is on a par for the views it is tempting. Could I ask what is the actual lense component in amongst all the T2 bits, does it just connect in like a glass path corrector would for a baader binoviewer?

I have all my scopes/eyepieces and finders set in sky safari so I can replicate any view easily in the field, I can rotate/flip any view to match the orientation I have at the time and adjust it to show exactly the magnitude of stars I can see. I will use a 6x30 finder most of the time for the extra fov but if I'm going to be in darker areas I'll use a 9x50. I will use the scope itself as a finder when necessary. If I am going for targets where the finder gets me straight onto them I'll use a raci finder as it's easier, but if I know I'm going to be doing some of the finding work at the scope then I'll use a mirror diagonal so that the orientation in the finder is the same as at the scope to reduce the confusion. Sometimes I hop following the most obvious stars, but when it's sparse it can be useful to line up with the nearest visible star that is at the same bearing or altitude as the target and then slide straight across or up/down even though it may be a leap across the dark. This works well too with an equatorial mount but there I line up based on celestial up/down and left/right. However I find alt/az generally easier for finding things manually. Most of the time I move carefully with slow motion controls but if there's a big leap to be made sometimes swinging the scope back and forth by hand until I get lucky gets a quicker result than than crawling to a target.