Paz

I've one of these and the line across small bright objects is normal. I use this diagonal the majority of the time as I prefer the correct image orientation. If I want the best view I switch to a mirror diagonal or a Tak prism diagonal but then I have the confusion of a flipped image. The WO diagonal is a good one, the line is not a quality issue. On the moon and on fainter stars I don't notice it, it is only noticeable on planets and brighter stars.

I've got both of these and I agree the tak looks/feels a bit flimsy, but the views are good.

Welcome to SGL, that is certainly a fine first post!

Looks very impressive!

Well done, that looks great. I bought a second hand eq platform and saved a lot in doing so but yours has cost half what I got mine for.

Here's mine...

I've only been doing this for a few years and the weather has always been mostly poor in that time so I don't have any better experiences to compare it to. 6 weeks with no opportunities does happen now and again. Two weeks with no opportunities happens often. I keep everything ready to go on an opportunistic basis because it's easy to miss a chance if you were not expecting it. I probably have too much stuff and need to thin things out a bit but this is a long term interest for me and I do feel I'm getting my monies worth over the long term.

I agree it varies a lot. I usually don't go over 100x with the ST120 in practice but it can go a lot higher. I remember winning views in my ST80 at 160x on one occasion. The maksutov is usually used up to 190x at night and up to 127x for solar white light, but can go higher. The vx14 can do 230x pretty much any time and 307x most of the time. I've got the facility to go to 525x but that is very rarely used. The brighter and more contrasty the target and the higher it is in the sky make a big difference to what is possible. I also do the same as others have referred to where you deliberately up the magnification past the ideal aesthetic viewing magnification level as some details can be more easily unpicked or star separations more accurately measured. I've never heard of a word to describe this but I think of it as technical observing if that makes any sense.

I've rehoused my light set up from a small toolbox into the same kind of padded case as my heavy set up. Everything now has its own place so I can change things without needing any lights and everything is incubated and protected out into the field. Apologies for the little space left in the corner, that will be filled with a Barlow of some sort in due course for use with my microguide eyepiece for measuring things where a focal length shorter than 12.5 mm is useful. I haven't yet settled on what to go for. Here's the heavy set up for comparison. This has not changed for some time and I wouldn't be surprised if it never changes.

I've always written notes when I come in from a session. What scope and mount, what ep's used, nelm and location. Then what objects and any comments on them. Sometimes I draw something but not nice sketches, rather schematics. Sometimes I will forget targets or thoughts before I write them down even if it's only an hour later. This is annoying but I don't like making notes in the field. I've recently acquired a microguide eyepiece and am looking forward to doing some amateur measurements and recording them, hopefully I'll be able to show proper motion in some high speed local stars and and orbital motion in some close doubles by comparing notes over time.

Thanks for posting this review. I'm a visual find-things-manually observer and have kept on using a sky watcher raci diagonal in preference to a mirror diagonal and a tak prism diagonal simply because I get tied up in knots with flipped images both in terms of finding things and in terms of working out what I was looking at after a session, particularly when it comes to lunar features. I'm going to give my own diagonals another direct comparison in the field to see if I experience much difference in quality (I've compared directly in the past but not under helpful conditions) Unless the quality is noticeably worse in the raci then I'm up for a better quality raci diagonal like this APM, which I am sure is much better quality and bigger aperture than my 1.25" sky watcher.

Here's my ST120 doing a bit of daytime lunar observing. It may well feature previously in this thread but has had a few upgrades.

Thanks very much, with skills like these maybe I should get into astro photography! ?

I was looking at the moon this morning and took this photo with my phone. It's through a st120/10mm slv/solar continuum filt. I like to think it's got an arty Andy Warhol effect to it.. or you could say it looks like a giant bogey.

I had a nice set of SLVs plus a 32mm plossl and I could handle having a different eyepiece at the low end, but now I've got an 8mm bst to fill a gap in the slv range and the disruption to the continuity of my slv set is starting to make me twitch!

Here's my books, the only one not on the shelves is Antonin Becvars Atlas Coeli which is too big!

Here's a recent outing of my maksutov...

I've got a 31mm nagler specifically for the long eye relief and it is good. The rest of my set for the vx14 is a 22mm nagler (also 19mm eye relief) and then Delos (20mm eye relief) at shorter focal lengths.

Here's one... I use them with glasses ok.

I've just got back from Wales - here was my travel kit. On this occasion I was able to smuggle the ST120 into the boot of the car. See if you can spot it in the first photo. It's not as small or exotic as the other travel set ups here but it did a good job and I got one good observing session. I use a big towel to wrap things up in the travel bag to stop things knocking around. here it is...

That's a very nice photo - I bet Takahashi would pay money to use that one for their advertising!

Here's my Mak in action with a makeshift solar finder...

Here's mine to add to the pantheon. The big case is mostly for use with the vx14, the little toolbox of SLVs is for use with the small scopes. Everything hinges on long eye relief and prefering not to use Barlows / powermates. Probably my favourite is the 22mm Nagler.

The sun taken with an LG5 phone through a MC-127 Maksutov with a Baader solar continuum filter. It's struggling a bit with the contrast in brightness... and with focusing... and ghosting/scatter... and it doesn't look round for some reason... but apart from that I'm happy with it.

me quality of image every day, and this is especially true on planetary and lunar observing, where you are trying to pick out as much fine detail as possible . The diagonal to many seems to be a bit of a infill and IMO there is no point putting effort and money into a great scope and eyepiece and then put a so so diagonal into link . As the quality of image is only as good as the weakest link in the optical chain. This is why I picked up a televues diagonal when one came up used to try and get a optical chain that was IMO equal in quality to each part in the link. Give me optical quality every time IMO. In time I may come around to this view - getting a quality refractor at some point and getting more experience under my belt to appreciate the extra quality could swing it.