Mak the Night

Yes.

Two very nice choices of EP.

In my case, 40mm and 32mm Plossls are useful for the different magnifications they give.

Grab'n'Go AstroMaster Kit box revision 5, 342,422:

OK thanks Don. I figured they were similar to the X-Cel series in many ways. I haven't noticed the eyecup oil on mine. The draw tube appears to have an integral Barlow inside it.

I think you're right there John. I had a PDF somewhere that showed the specifications of all the BCO's. From what I can recall the 32mm is more or less a standard Plossl design with an eye relief of 22.4mm and the AFOV is 45°. I don't get any vignetting in a 102mm Mak.

I don't use any Barlow when I use the 32mm BCO's or 25mm AH ortho's on my 102mm Mak and they give me 40.6x and 52x respectively. I don't see any vignetting on either. Probably a Maksutov thing.

That should work. I use the T-adaptor above if I use a diagonal with a compression ring.

I only use the bino on scopes that utilise a diagonal. I've never had any problems achieving focus. I've yet to use it with my Newtonian though. If I had any problems with focusing I might try placing the bino into this Celestron T-adaptor. You can get these almost anywhere. I am reluctant to put eyepieces with either undercuts or (even worse) flared draw tubes into the WO dioptres though. Why WO supply eyepieces with flared draw tubes for a bino with dioptres that have compression rings is beyond me. The same goes with the WO bino nosepiece itself. I wouldn't recommend placing it in a diagonal or adaptor with a compression ring for any length of time as it often deforms the ring itself, making insertion of other eyepieces difficult.

I have used a pair of 32mm BCO's in my WO bino's and not noticed any vignetting. That goes for the 25mm orthoscopic pair too.

I've heard this about the speed of light. Although I was always taught that the speed of light was a constant 299,792 km/s. I'm not a physicist either so it makes no sense to me lol!

You have to email FLO and order it specially.

I have some WO bino's. I don't use the 20mm SWAN's that came with them anymore though. I also have the 2x Barlow element, FLO can order it if you want it. The WO bino has compression rings in its dioptres so I tend to use eyepieces without safety undercuts for ease of extraction. The two TeleVue 15mm Plossls are fine as they have lower lip flared undercuts. Oddly the WO SWAN's have tapered draw tubes which can mangle compression rings. I swapped the draw tubes on these Celestron (GSO) Plossls for chromed brass smooth types. I don't tend to put the bino into a diagonal with a compression ring as a rule as it also has a flared nose, as a consequence the nosepiece can get marked by the set screw. They are great bino's though.

Has anyone had any experience of the Sky-Watcher UWA Planetary Eyepieces? If so do you know how they compare to eyepieces like the Celestron X-Cel, Meade 5000 HD 60 and TS Optics HR Planetary series and similar? They seem identical to the Barsta (BST) UWA series. I'm guessing they're the same eyepieces rebadged.

Grab'n'Go AstroMaster Kit box revision 5, 342,421:

It's a relatively inexpensive William Optics bino. Although, this case and the eyepiece pairs I added later are not included with the binoviewing unit. WO do give you a couple of 20mm SWAN's and a Barlow though. They aren't like looking through binoculars and you have to get used to merging the images. Each eyepiece holder has its own dioptre. They can give very three dimensional views and seem more natural to use than a mono EP.

Yes, it was a bargain for £59. I was quite impressed with it. It looks like a great candidate for a potential bino pair.

I watched Jupiter, Mars and Saturn Thursday night with my Newtonian. I took just one eyepiece out (9mm Celestron X-Cel) and two Barlows. That's pretty minimalist. I used both Barlows (2x, 2.5x).

Mint is basically an Ubuntu fork with a different interface. Unity is relatively new on Ubuntu and the 'sidebar' dock has a show/hide facility, plus Mac-style docks can be added from the repo. The side dock can apparently be moved to the bottom of the screen in 16.04 LTS. This was always intended as a feature, although it took Canonical a while to swat most of the bugs I believe. Mint looks a lot nicer than the bog-standard Ubuntu OS though, which is in serious need of improving aesthetically in my opinion lol. The predominant reason I don't run Mint is their lackadaisical approach to security. Linux is far more secure than Windoze in many ways and most people don't even run an AV (anti-virus program) on it. I'm still paranoid about security after running Windows for so many years though, Linux is a breath of fresh air in that respect. Around a year ago Amazon still had a few laptops with Win 7/Mint and Win 7/Ubuntu dual boots. I was very tempted to get one, but went with a laptop running Ubuntu only. I still have a Win 7 desktop though. As you say, it isn't as easy going totally Windoze-free as people think. I'm so going iMac for my next destop lol.

I don't know what the bug with the planetary skins on Celestia is, I know it hasn't been fixed in several years. Saturn renders fine. This giant ping pong ball is supposed to be Jupiter though. Most other planetary skins render though.

The repo list of astro software in the Ubuntu Software Centre: Not so sure about the Maitreya7 'astrology' software, I'm guessing some airhead Virgo included that lol.

It's quite customisable. I actually prefer Stellarium on Ubuntu as it runs better than on Windows I think. But KStars is quite good. I've been experimenting with it for a year or so. I ran Stellarium on Windows for over five years, so I'm a bit more comfortable with it.

These are some screenshots of KStars on Ubuntu (Trusty Tahr) if anyone's interested what it looks like.

svchost.exe has been causing problems for people around the globe recently with CPU spiking for hours while Win 7 & 8 machines take hours every day searching for updates. If I had my tin foil hat on I'd swear it was deliberate MS policy. Linux will only benefit from Mickey's latest shenanigans.