Ricochet

I use the head packaged with the Amazon basics video tripod and a Manfrotto xpro monopod with my binoculars. You still have to crane your neck to look up but it is a lot more comfortable because the monopod takes the weight of the binoculars.

I wouldn't use that method to check collimation of the laser. By holding the laser against the glass face of the mirror the laser beam path length is reduced to about 5 centimetres, which is no where near long enough to check the accuracy of the laser. When I have collimated a laser I have set it up in a v block and used a target over 5 metres away. Additionally, it is actually very difficult to make optically flat mirrors and so household mirrors are not actually flat they're just close enough for general purpose use.

I think it would be quite difficult to ensure that the laser is precisely perpendicular to the mirror surface. Any discrepancy will result in the collimated laser beam missing the hole. I've not seen the thread so perhaps an easy method to solve this is part of the method.

Unfortunately, previous reports about this scope suggest that you are unlikely to ever be able to use such magnifications, with an exit pupil of 1mm (127X magnification) being about the limit. It does sound as if your scope is probably miscollimated, so checking the collimation could improve things. The scope is a Jones-Bird style starter scope and so doesn't quite follow the standard Newtonian procedure. I believe the instruction manual has guidance on collimating the telescope with a collimation cap so I suggest that you follow that advice. I wouldn't bother removing the corrector lens from the focuser for collimation as seen on some youtube videos, as previous feedback has been that it doesn't make any difference to the views at the end of the day. The eyepieces and barlow supplied are also of low quality so you may also see some improvement in the views by upgrading those. The 10 and 23mm Vite Aspherics are good for very little cost, but have plastic lenses and so are more susceptible to damage when cleaning than more expensive glass lensed options.

I believe these are rebadged Baader Hyperions so any comments about the Hyperions will apply to the Ultima Duo. All should work well with your Mak, but not so well with your Dob. Within the range some are reportedly better than others so you would have to wade through reviews to try to work out which ones might be ok. Eyepieces such as the APM UFF, ES 68/82 or Baader Morpheus would be better options than the Hyperion/Ultima Duo if you can afford them. At lower cost the BST Starguider and Celestron X-Cel LX probably have better correction albeit a smaller field if you stick to the options between 5 and 12mm. The longer ones would work well in the Mak but not in the Dob.

Looking at your post history it appears that three years ago you bought the ungodly combination of a 12" newtonian and NEQ6 mount. As the scope/mount is so big you have spent the last three years looking at building some sort of observatory, but that has not happened and so you have built a dolly for it so that you can push it out of your garage onto your driveway, but it wont fit through the door. How much clearance do you need to get the scope under the door? Your dolly looks like 5" castors with a flat platform on top made from 2x4s. Could you change the design of the dolly to lower it just enough to give you the clearance needed to get the scope through? Having said that, the whole thing looks to be very unstable and unwieldy to me. I worry about the top heaviness of the setup causing it to fall from the dolly if one of the wheels were to hit a bump, or the difficulty of manoeuvring something on castors when you've only got the mount to hold onto meaning you lose control of the whole rig. And then when you do finally get your scope outdoors, you will learn about eyepiece rotation with a newt/eq setup. With a 4" scope, it's an inconvenience, but with a 12" scope it's going to be a real pain. After 1115 nights in a row where you haven't been able to get your scope out and do any observing because it is too big, my suggestion is that you cut your losses, sell the OTA to an observer who wants to make their own dob base, sell the mount to an astrophotographer, and buy something smaller that you can just carry out and observe with.

The need to wear glasses restricts your options. Really, you only need to wear glasses for astronomy if they are correcting for astigmatism. If the glasses are not correcting for astigmatism then you can achieve the same correction as your glasses simply by changing the focus of the telescope. If you do need to wear glasses then I think the Starguider suggestion are just a little bit short on eye relief and your glasses will actually be pushed against the eyecups when you use them. I think a guideline of 20mm eye relief might be a better bet for something that is actually usable with glasses. As you haven't actually given your budget, could you push as high as the Baader Morpheus line? I think that buying fewer eyepieces of higher quality is a better investment than many lower quality eyepieces and you can always add further eyepieces in the future after you have saved up some more money. If the cost of the Morpheus is too high, then the Vixen SLV line is a very nice eyepiece with good eye relief, although the downside is that you are restricted to only 50° AFoV (about the same as your supplied eyepieces are likely to have).

Yes, you only need the red and black wires to run a 3 pin fan. I also have a basic speed controller in my setup but if the fan is properly isolated this isn't really needed.

I am surprised that siliconing the mirror in three places does not give you issues due to stresses being placed on the mirror as temperatures change. On my Bresser the mirror clip "posts" are adjustable and there is a fine line between having them set to prevent mirror movement and pinching the optics. If I was designing a mirror cell to hold the mirror via silicone I would have a central siliconed support and allow the mirror to float over the other supports.

The hexafoc thread is M68x0.75. Baader offer this as one of their clicklock options and I think that I've seen the M68x0.75 to M68x1 inverter ring as a separate part. From M68x1 you should be able to find Baader adapters to get to whatever the camera or flattener use (I assume M42). Alternatively, you could just replace one of your Bresser extensions and the clamp with the Baader 2" clicklock which would give you a solid connection as well as the ability to quickly and easily remove or rotate the camera in the focuser.

My plan was to run a very small length of mini trunking inside the tube with 12V ports out of the tube between the rings (power in from the rocker box) and out at the bottom of the tube. However, five years in and the test cable that was just looped around the ring screws is still sat there. The fan I've got on mine is an 80mm Coolink with a fan filter fitted to the incoming side to prevent dirt being blown up into the tube. I did also buy a Noctua for something and that was also a very nice fan that would work well.

This is the solution. My mask does not cover the clips and has resolved the issue for me (visually).

You are understanding correctly. However, I don't think it is as simple as painting the edge as I tried that first and still ended up with a mask. I'm not sure where exactly the bloat comes from, but suspect it might actually be where the coating right at the edge isn't quite as smooth or the vertex at the edge of the coating rather than the uncoated chamfered section.

The 24mm ES68 is too big for binoviewers. 24 Panoptics work because they are significantly smaller.

It could increase the strength of the diffraction spike associated with that vane, but if you consider that the light being reflected is only in the central 8" of the tube, you may find that the twist is far enough over that it doesn't matter. However, as it is twisted it could have potentially been weakened so I would contact your supplier and see what solution they propose.

If it is still available there is a 24mm ES68 going for all of £60 on ABS. Not quite a 24 Panoptic, but most of the difference is in the size and weight of the eyepiece rather than the optical quality.

It depends what you are observing. For double stars you can probably push to 400x, but for planetary the optimum for the scope is more like 200-250x, for star clusters up to 200x (if it fits in the fov), galaxies 100x, filtered nebulae less than that. All of that is assuming the atmosphere allows you to push that high. In the UK once you hit 150x you can start to hit atmospheric limits and they will override anything your scope may or may not be capable of under perfect conditions. I didn't mean it was literally a 1.25" set of lenses inside a large barrel. The glass can still be 2" but the eyepiece can be stopped down internally.

Do you have a picture of this telescope? William Optics are a Taiwanese company and as far as I know they have always used the Taiwanese manufacturer Long Perng to produce their telescopes. There may be slightly different optical designs in different editions of the same scope line but you would have to hunt down comparison reviews to find out if that makes any difference that can be seen. If you were looking to buy a Celestron SCT then you could have the old built in USA vs new built in China scenario. I suspect the two histories have been confused.

Probably not. It looks like a 26mm plossl unnecessarily put into a 2" fitting for marketing purposes. As someone with an 8" dob I would suggest that at some stage you will need one 2" eyepiece for your telescope, but it needs to be one that shows a wider field of view than a 1.25" eyepiece can show, and it needs to be one of decent quality so that it is reasonably well corrected to the edge. If the eyepiece isn't well corrected you might find that the usable field is actually less than in your widest 1.25" eyepiece. For your initial upgrades, I suggest that something shorter than your 25mm is probably the way to go in order to give you a range of options to try on different objects. I would start by picking something in the 12-14mm range and then dividing whatever focal length you choose by 1.4 to find your next focal length.

There are three possibilities I can think of: You haven't got your IPD set correctly and/or your eyes positioned correctly over the two eyepieces. The eyepieces are not being held correctly in the clamps, either they are offset or they are tilted. If you have some eyepieces with smooth sided barrels try those, have both dioptres screwed fully in, make sure that the eyepieces are seated flush with the top of the eyepiece clamps and try tightening only one screw on each clamp. The binoviewers are out of collimation. Of these possibilities 1 is quite likely given that you're new to binoviewers and 2 is a known issue with this model of binoviewer.

Thanks, Mark. I meant to order one ages ago and never got around to it.

Did you buy the standard one or the solar version? Is there any reason to buy both?

I've not seen one before but it looks like a JMI EV 1N. I often think that the sign of a good retailer is not the service they provide when everything goes right, but the service supplied when something goes wrong. In this case it looks like they've really stepped up to the mark.

Is the camera not centred over the Cheshire properly? In the photo everything is offset from the cross hairs. If the cross hairs line up when you look down the Cheshire with your eye then the collimation might be ok.

I've got the Altair Astro branded version on a Manfrotto 190c and I'm surprised it copes with a 102s. How long do vibrations take to settle?