Peter Drew

Knowing roughly where you are might help, there could be an experienced SGL member nearby who could help you.

As long as there is light at the end of the telescope this problem will arise. I have been very good at buying equipment and very bad at selling any. Consequently I'm running out of money as well as space.

Although I didn't have quite the altitude or aperture that Geoff enjoyed, during my visit to Tenerife a week ago I had the best views of Jupiter and Saturn with my C8 that I'm likely to get this year unless I visit again later.

The magnification per inch of aperture for given seeing conditions reduces as the aperture increases. On a night when 300x is the seeing limit that represents 100x per inch for a 3" and only 10x per inch for a 30". ?

I go back to the mid 50's. I had ordered a 50mm variable power Naval gunsight from Headquarter and General Supplies. It was made of brass and weighed a "ton", the case it came in was even heavier. It only zoomed from 5x to 9x so I sent it back. Before doing so I had a squint at Jupiter and could make out the moons. The rest is history! ?

The hard truth is that this type of telescope design, as marketed, is usually disappointing, particularly for high magnification. Hence the bargain secondhand prices. I have battled with the collimation with these on behalf of owners and they are a pain to collimate. Removing the "correcting" lens in order to use traditional collimation tools and procedures does not guarantee that this will hold once the lens is replaced. I've had the best level of improvement using a real or artificial star image to collimate to. A 3x Barlow is going to overstretch this instrument regardless. Terrestrial photography at 4,200mm focal length (3x Barlow) will always be challenging. ?

Just black out a single hole with a marker pen or a bit of black tape. ?

Hello Sophie. Another welcome to SGL. Unfortunately, the features of this binocular are the ones that tend to attract beginners but are exactly those that the more experienced user would advise to avoid. If at all possible, I would recommend returning them and replace them with a standard 10x50 binocular. There are plenty of good ones available at a similar price, get back to this forum if you need further advice. ?

Playing "spot the Sun" today, very foggy.

I've taken a slightly different approach with my home built 17" Dob backplate. I have 6 radial holes for ventilation but each hole has a rotating cover to blank the hole off once the mirror has cooled. The reason for this is to prevent air from the usually warmer ground rising through the tube causing the other irritating effect, tube currents. ?

Excellent news! I thought it looked like something interesting was coming in to view. ?

Getting some good views from here now that the haze has cleared somewhat. ?

Just like the Queen. ?

I knew David Early well when we were both members of Luton AS. I visited his house on many occasions and saw a full range of his excellent artwork. ?

I hope there's room for another ROR thread ?. This will be the 8th telescope housing I'll have built for the Astronomy Centre over the years and will eventually contain our proposed remotely operated telescope. The main difference with this build compared to the others underway on this topic is that the ROR is constructed entirely of aluminium. The local weather conditions make wooden versions too high maintenance for the time we have available. I did the groundwork over a year ago and member Phil, a builder by trade, built the blockwork walls which saved me a lot of effort. The ROR component will be a pair of biparting doors riding on rails fitted to the top of the approximately 2.5 metre square walls. 2.5 metres was chosen to take advantage of standard raw material sizes for the roof. I have just finished the framework for the first door and started cladding it today. The images, if they post, show the progress from groundwork to finished wall height and the UPVC cladding to protect the blockwork and provide a match to the other on site buildings. The final image shows the first door framework.