Louis D

Try contacting Martin Pond on CN (need to be logged in to link).  He's been retasking lenses for DIY eyepieces for years, documenting his efforts there, and could probably give you some good ideas.

2 hours ago, Spile said:

I paid £43 for a used 42mm Revelation which is a GSO rebrand with a AFOV 65°. Focal ratio of my telescope is 5.9 

 

How well does it perform at f/5.9?  Have you had a chance to compare it to more premium ~40mm 2" eyepieces?

58 minutes ago, wibblefish said:

No hardness in the soil atm sometimes things sink 🙈

Try putting a discarded lid of some sort under each tripod foot.  I've found lids from orange juice bottles flipped over work great.  I just don't know if they sell OJ over there in similar bottles.  You can even put a bit of Sorbothane in the center (under the tripod foot) to absorb vibrations to make your own vibration suppression pads.  The bright orange ones are easier to find in the dark.

6 minutes ago, AlexK said:

GLP (green laser pointer)

Seconded.  I've switched over to green laser sights with Telrad/Quikfinder backup if the laser fails (battery and switch issues plague them).  Just don't be stupid about using them around aircraft.

41 minutes ago, wibblefish said:

Interesting, I do most observing on the grass so I didnt think of pads. Will look into it thanks!

The effect will be more muted, depending on the hardness of your soil.  I observe from a small concrete pad.

8 hours ago, wibblefish said:

Steel tripod, my current tripod while super light tends to experience a lot of shake at high magnification (so 12mm + barlow primarily) but seems steady otherwise but I imagine replacing it with something more sturdy would help to a degree

Get some anti-vibration pads.  I made my own from Sorbothane from ebay.  Especially with a rigid metal tripod and mount, they knocked vibrations down from 3 seconds to 1/2 second for me.  A wooden tripod is another good alternative.

2 hours ago, jetstream said:

I use a pair of 25mm TV plossl's which give stunning performance in my binoviewers. In mono one of these is a preferred eyepiece for viewing the Horse Head.

Do they have 20mm of usable eye relief as needed by the OP?  The TV specs page show them to have 17mm of design eye relief, and the eye lens appears to be recessed a bit, so I would expect no more than 12mm of usable eye relief.

I know I can't easily see the entire field of my 26mm Sirius Plossls while wearing eyeglasses.  I've measured mine to have 11mm of usable eye relief.  I do have a pair of them for binoviewer usage, but rarely use them because they're so darned uncomfortable with eyeglasses.  I much prefer the 23mm Aspherics with the eyecups removed.

8 hours ago, Bongo said:

A drummer friend of mine would grumpily tell you it's a drummer's throne. 😉

Yeah, I have similar problems – I have a pretty hefty picnic table at the end of the garden which is the perfect to put my scope on, and doesn't wobble much at all. Unfortunately, you can only see a small part of the sky from there (and I don't relish lugging the picnic table around the garden), so if I want to view anything else then ithe 'scope goes on the floor and I hunch over it. I'm on the hunt for a smaller table, but at the moment, I have two large breeze blocks and a piece of carpet on top for sitting on.

 

 

Have you tried a water butt stand to put the Dob base on to raise it up a bit?

1 hour ago, Space Hopper said:

The 24 Panoptics rule.

They are super eyepieces.

Not if you have to wear eyeglasses at that exit pupil as I do.  Without eyeglasses, they look totally aberrated to me.

The 24mm APM UFFs are too big for me to fit my nose between them, or else I'd probably recommend them to eyeglass wearers.

Remember, the OP specifically said:

5 hours ago, Paz said:

genuine eye relief of 20mm

I really like my 23mm Vite 62 Aspherics in my binoviewers.  Once you pull off the eyecups, you've got nearly 20mm of usable eye relief.  They're not perfect at f/6, but they're really good at f/12 and above with barlows or slow scopes.  They're super light, small, and comfortable.  There's nothing premium in this size and weight range aside from some Zeiss aspheric surgical microscope eyepieces.

At about £10 apiece on ebay, they're certainly worth a try.

Here's comparison images at f/6 of some of my roughly 24mm eyepieces:

17 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

I believe that Parks Optical still sell the Gold series eyepieces.

To quote @Don Pensack on CN:

In 2012, the owner of Scope City, Parks, and Lumicon closed ScopeCity and sold Lumicon and shut down Parks.

The Parks inventory was scrapped (a shame) and the new owner of Lumicon sold to the current owner in 2016.

It is likely Parks and Scope City are gone forever, like Optical Craftsman, etc.

The Parks and Scope City websites are still seen because the obsolete architecture they run on is held in one server that also runs other old sites.

They can't shut down the Scope City or Parks Optical sites without shutting down the still-operating sites on the same server.

The ironic reason is that no one knows the programming or structure of the sites any more to go in and shut down individual sites.

Eventually, the older sites still running will update to new website structures and the server will be shut down.

Do you mean wide true field of view or wide apparent field of view?  In the 1.25" size, a 32mm Plossl will be only moderately wider than  the 25mm.

I recommend that you investigate adapting microscope eyepieces from Zeiss meant for surgical microscopes.  Denis of binoviewer fame on CN could help guide you.

13 hours ago, Mick J said:

Mouse over the blue dot, left of thread title - 'Go to first unread post'  a click and you are there @Louis D

(edit,  left click opens directly, right click in a new window - I am using win10)

That works!  Thanks.

22 minutes ago, Tiny Clanger said:

noted there are two identical models on FLO at identical prices , currently £69

Just be aware that if they are the same as the WO and other brandings, there's a 22mm or so lip inside that will vignette widest field eyepieces.

I've got the same type, and can verify the unnecessary baffle.  Since I only use it with binoviewers of 22mm clear aperture, it doesn't matter much to me.

Perhaps @FLO can verify if the StellaMira version does not have it.

I'm guessing English is not your native tongue.  Can you put "parallax" into context so we can figure out the proper English word for it?

If we're talking wants in general, and you've got new software, would it be possible to have the user jumped to the first new post since they last read a particular thread?  Cloudy Nights has always done this, and it makes it so much quicker to get caught up on threads.  This is especially an issue if a thread has grown additional pages, and you choose a page that is past the last one you read.  If you click back to the last read page to find your spot, there's no line showing new posts anymore because you chose incorrectly, so you're stuck reading lots of posts to try and figure out what was the last post read.

Well, at f/6, this is what I got with my ~24mm eyepieces:

If you want to maximize your true field of view without using a 32mm Plossl and have decent correction and eye relief at 24mm, the APM UFF and its kin would be your best bet at 1.25".

This image shows the coverage of a couple of 32mm Plossls in the same setup:

Which is just about identical in true field of view and similar correction to the 24mm APM UFF for a lot less money.  It's your money. 😁

8 hours ago, Bigwings said:

I have dropped my Skymax 150 complete with focuser and Starsense camera. 

Hard landing on the 2" dielectric  corner

I stand corrected from another thread on SCT vs Mak corrector toughness.  I had said I could not find a single image of a damaged Mak corrector, and now we have proof they can be damaged.  Key word is damaged rather than completely shattered as would have probably happened to a C6 corrector plate in this situation.

Definitely give masking off the area with a curved piece of blackened card stock a try.  What's the worst?

21 hours ago, Second Time Around said:

The reason I ask is that some telescopes take a long time to cool down or warm up to the temperature of the outside air.

I'll bet that they live in a tropical area of PR without A/C based on my travels there.  If they do have A/C, then warm up time will be a bit of an issue.  A 127 Mak only takes about 30 minutes to equilibrate to a 10 degree F change (going from 75 inside to 85 outside, which might be their situation).  My 90mm triplet APO actually takes longer to equilibrate.

15 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

The site will die as a dark site fairly soon because a large number of houses have been approved to build only a few miles away (over 20,000 homes).  Fortunately, that will take several years, but the site, which has averaged 21.45 at night for the last 15 years will be growing lighter with each passing month.  Several of us are actively looking for other sites (all, unfortunately, farther away).

That's too bad about the housing development.  When I moved into my house in Texas, there were no more than 50 homes in a 2 mile radius.  Now, there are about 20,000 homes.  However, it wasn't the homes that were the worst.  It was the commercial development and 6 lane tollways and interchanges that were built nearby that killed my dark skies.  We now have car dealerships, strip malls, sports fields from elementary to professional levels, amphitheaters, etc.  It all dropped my skies several Bortle levels in most directions.  My best dark skies are about a 2 to 3 hour drive to the west or moderately better 1 hour east.

15 hours ago, Tiny Clanger said:

That seems an expensive way to get the 127 mak to be a wider field 'scope ... I just looked on FLO, and taking the very cheapest options for each component would cost £36 for a 2" visual back, £99 for a 2" diagonal and £70 for a single 2" eyepiece. I've read that some newer SW maks do not need a thread adapter, but if your model does add the cost of that , which looks like at least £30, so all together at least £235 .

For that you could by a 150mm aperture, 750mm focal length  OTA which comes with a 2" focuser and get a 25mm BST too !

Heather

 

I already had multiple 2" diagonals and eyepieces for other scopes, so I just added a 2" thread adapter and visual back for about $60 ($25/$35 for each).  The second used 127 Mak I bought for my daughter already came with both, so no additional cost there.

Without a 2" diagonal, I couldn't use some of my favorite eyepieces like my 12mm and 17mm ES-92s, 22mm NT4, or 30mm APM UFF with the 127 Mak.  A $60 upgrade to use my existing eyepiece collection seemed like a no brainer.

Your second point misses the point that if this is a travel scope (camping, for my daughter), you don't want to bring along multiple scopes just to get a wider field.  I added a 60mm finder scope to my daughter's Mak so it can take in wider views of around 6 degrees while star hopping.

22 minutes ago, vocalis said:

Thank you Louis D, good advice.  With the 2" diagonal I would need to change all my 1.25" eyepieces, right?

No, pretty much all 2" diagonals come with a 2" to 1.25" adapter/reducer.  However, the increased optical path length of the 2" diagonal will cause an increase of 200mm or possibly more to your native focal length, so you're best to stick with 1.25" accessories unless you really want that wider field on occasion.  I already have a bunch of premium 2" eyepieces that I wouldn't be able to use on the 127 Mak without a 2" diagonal, so I'm good with the increased focal length.

Greetings from Texas, @Dolybell.  No one telescope is the best tool for everything astronomy related.  As such, I'd recommend your husband start out with either a 6" or 8" Dob if space allows or a 127mm to 150mm Mak on an alt-az mount for strictly visual use.  There are some 6" Newtonian options on alt-az mounts available in Europe that are not marketed in the US, so I won't go into them at the moment.  A 6" SCT is also an option for your stated budget.  All of these will require manual tracking which actually becomes second nature pretty quickly.  They also require the user to learn the sky enough to locate objects.  Again, with help from phone apps like SkEye and computer planetarium software like Stellarium, along with those binoculars for wide fields of view, this, too, will become second nature pretty quickly.  Given your dark, inland skies, you're very fortunate to have good conditions for "star hopping" to locate objects.  It's very satisfying not to have to setup a computer or polar align just to observe.  This is not say that computerized and equatorial mounts don't have their place, they do.  It's just that for beginners, I've found simpler is better.

Right now, everyone decided to be an astronomer during lock-down, so all astro inventory has been depleted.  Wait times can stretch months or longer.  I don't recommend getting a gift certificate to any particular vendor because you don't know which vendor will get stock in of a particularly desirable scope first.  You're trading cash which is good anywhere for a certificate good at exactly one merchant.  Unless it comes with a 20% or more discount, I can't recommend one.

The main American vendors of repute are Astronomics (Cloudy Nights sponsor, like FLO is for SGL), Agena Astro (like FLO, huge and online only), OPT Telescopes, Woodland Hills (telescopes.net), High Point Scientific, and Orion USA.  There are also B&H Photo and Adorama out of NYC, but neither are astronomy specific since they are mainly photography retailers, so after the sale support is often nonexistent.  Additionally, there are Skies Unlimited, Optics Planet, Telescopes Plus, and Anacortes Telescope; however, I have no direct knowledge of them as a customer.  There numerous smaller, specialty vendors, but these are the main general retailers I'm aware of.

Work with your spouse to figure out what works best for him (and you).  Let him know you're fully supportive of dropping some big bucks on a decent telescope; he'll be so excited to know you're onboard.  I dropped around $2000 in today's dollars back in 1998 for my first scope and accessories with my wife's blessing.  I went to a few star parties first to figure out what I would like to use.  I would never have spent the money without her blessing.

13 hours ago, Merlin66 said:

If you Google Orion nebula spectra....

https://www.google.com/search?q=M42+spectra&tbm=isch&chips

It shows the main emission lines and relative intensities.

Typical spectra shown below (from Steve Broadbent)

 

That makes me feel better I wasn't losing my mind when I found using an OIII filter on it useful.  Based on what Dan said below, he made it sound like OIII emission was minor.

22 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

all large Hydrogen emission nebulae, like M42/43 emit most of their energy at H-α and H-ß

But, all of them also emit light from the excitation of other ions, like O-III, S-II, N-II and various Helium wavelengths.

So looking at M42, say, with an O-III filter will reveal different details than you might see in a narrowband UHC-type filter simply because the contrast on the O-III features will be boosted.

But, that will be at the sacrifice of the H-ß features.  The combination of the H emission and O emission will probably yield the largest view of the nebula.