Peter Drew

Solar observation could be your best bet. Warmer, potentially visible every day and you don't need a large telescope. Or lose sleep! 😀

Lucky for me, I was born on a Friday June 13th! 😀

I agree that it looks like a Duran 50 disc or similar low expansion material. David Hinds used such discs and always ground the back surface. He also wrote the focal length and a serial number on it. These mirrors were supplied to many outlets so the additional inscriptions could be third party. If it is a David Hinds mirror you have done well! 😀

I don't think rigidity can be dismissed quite so lightly. Lack of rigidity leads to lack of collimation, the achievement and maintenance of which is essential for best planetary imaging results. 🙂

Lunar and planetary images from Mewlons seem rare despite their reputation, possibly due to their own relative rareness. Most of the best lunar and planetary images seem to come from large SCT's, most leading users for these targets would say that a 210mm was a little on the small side. 🙂

I once read a quote that went along the lines of "The greater the island of knowledge, the greater the foreshore of the unknown". Summed things up quite well for me. 😀

An 11mm TV Plossl worked with my PST. Overall I preferred to use a 8mm-24mm zoom eyepiece. 😀

A nice period Gregorian reflector? 😀

You'll have a great advantage, already owning your personal Mars "rover". 😀

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. 😀

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". ?

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. ?

Just like the Queen. ?

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.

I don't think you would notice much difference for EAA use. ?

What telescope are you going to use and is the pier to be a permanent one?, from your appraisal of Rugby it appears you might want to move in the future. ?

You're not the only one intrigued by the Solar Scout. Despite many claimed to have been sold, no reviews or performance details seem to have been reported. I think "Retailer 2" was probably nearer the mark, a combination of an inexpensive 60mm telescope combined with possibly a minimum standard Quark plus the fact that the Quark element could not be interchanged to other telescopes accounted for the low price. I have to say that the advertising for this product was vague to say the least. Still waiting with interest for some real world use report. ?

Further "research" has revealed that the 37" James Gregory telescope at St Andrews University is in fact a Schmidt-Cassegrain. The 37" is necessary to give full illumination from the 36" aperture corrector. As such, it's the largest SCT yet made and the largest aperture in use in the UK. ?

I was using a 15" Grubb refractor at Stonyhurst College(terrestrially) last week as a preliminary to doing some refurbishment work on it. ?

It could well be. The infrared lights on top of the turbines creates an Aurora Borealis effect photographically. ?

I believe that St Andrews University has a 36" catadioptric telescope that has a 38" primary and often claimed as the largest as a result. ?

Many years ago I built the tube assembly to house a 106cm mirror for the Astronomy Centre. We eventually managed to purchase a pre-generated mirror blank but the project to grind, polish and figure the mirror is currently on hold whilst we find a way to mitigate the effects of turbulence from wind farm turbines that now ringfence our location. ☹️

Doing its bit to save the planet? ?

The post title begs the question "useful for what?". A 60mm refractor is ideal for solar sunspots and suitable double star observation but would be less useful for comet seeking. The urban myth that 3" refractors and 6" reflectors are somewhat equal has nowadays been debunked now that good quality examples of each are readily available. What is useful for me, these days, is a larger aperture to come close to seeing what younger keen sighted observers can see with smaller ones so my minimum useful aperture is gradually increasing. The bottom line, probably, is that the higher the quality the smaller the aperture that can be considered useful. ?