Louis D

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Since it came with a 9mm eyepiece of unknown quality yielding 650/9=72x, that should be enough to easily resolve Saturn's rings and some of its moons.  However, if you want to push up the power some, I would recommend getting a 5mm BST Starguider, Dual ED, or AT Paradigm (they're all the same) for 650/5=130x.  It's a very good eyepiece with comfortable eye relief and generous 60 degree apparent field of view.  At 130x, you might start to resolve the Cassini division in the rings.

Do you have a 2" diagonal and 2" visual back?  If so, there are multiple 56mm Plossls (Meade, Astromania, Astro Essentials at FLO in UK) which would maximize your true field of view, greatly enlarge your exit pupil, maintain decent correction, and be reasonably priced.  Otherwise, stick with a 32mm Plossl from GSO (Agena Astro has them).  It's as wide as you can go with 1.25 eyepieces for under $35.  I have one, and it is an excellent eyepiece.

You might as well ask for a car that is sporty, good for hauling cargo, gets great mileage, fits in your garage, and is inexpensive.  There are too many conflicting requirements to all be met at once in both cases.

I would recommend you get a SW Heritage 130 or 150 when they come back in stock as it would meet many of your needs as a good starter scope.  It's sort of the equivalent to an entry level, compact hatchback.

Meade filed for bankruptcy protection to try and shield itself from the Orion USA's antitrust jury award.  I have no idea if they can use this approach to shed themselves of the court ordered payment.  If so, it guts our antitrust laws.

For now, I wouldn't buy their stuff on principle.  Their owner, Ningbo Sunny has acted in bad faith repeatedly before, during, and after the court case.

2 hours ago, Nicola Hannah Butterfield said:

Just a visual aspect, as things on the horizon have a relevant reference point.

Take a coin distance it so it covers the full moon at moon rise, do it again at midnight same distance for the coin and it's the same, you might need a really small coin though.

Totally aware of all that, but it's still a startling effect when seeing it for the first time of the season on the horizon.

6 minutes ago, jacobingonzo said:

Don't understand the lack of love for a cheshire- Doesn't need collimated, Spot on during daylight and at night shine a small torch in the indent and your scope is collimated as quick as you like 

 

J

They're a little hard to use with a 6 foot tall truss Dob unless you could mount a camera where your eye goes.  I can get the primary quickly on target with the laser by watching the return beam coincide with the outbound beam on the secondary while adjusting the primary knobs from the rear of the scope.  After that, a cheshire is handy for tweaking the alignment in small increments, but with lots of back and forth motions between the focuser and rear of the scope.  I have a 20+ year old AstroSystems laser which doesn't have the handy side cutout invented later.  It is dual fit, 1.25"/2" though, unlike the current version.

The Revelation/GSO Astro 2.5x Barlow tends to get good reviews here and on CN.  I've not used one since I'm quite satisfied with my vintage TV 2x, Meade 140, and Orion Deluxe Barlows.

15 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

Oooh......quite a trip down memory lane.  I remember huge bell-bottom pants, with the belt about 3" or more below your waist.  And "Earth" shoes.

LOL.

I'm younger than you, but even in my youth during the late 60s to early 80s I thought those fashions were hideous.

16 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Sorry, but I use an alt-azimuth mount for planetary imaging and I don't de-rotate the video frames. Nobody does. It is not necessary.  (De-rotating the spin of the target planet is a  totally different issue.) Not many planetary imagers use Dobs - check the planetary imaging section in this Forum.  Not many people seem to use Dobs on equatorial platforms for deep space imaging - check the relevant imaging section in this Forum. There are better tools.

I was thinking that the OP could get a bigger Dob for visual at first and then add a dual axis equatorial platform later for some basic imaging like Bob Brunck on CN in this thread has done.  It seems quite doable.

10 hours ago, Voyager 3 said:

How much is that "bit more" for reasonably tight globulars ( most messiers) ? 

I totally agree with @John.  GCs begin resolving around 200x in an 8" as well.  At 150x, they still look like fuzz patches.  Smaller PNs also do well at 200x.  In my 15" Dob, 300x or more is quite usable on these targets given reasonably steady skies.

2 minutes ago, Ken82 said:

F ratio of the refractor is f5.3 so quite a short focal length 

Alright, you can forget about the 40mm eyepiece then.  I was thinking more of an f/7 TV-85.  I take it you're getting the Tak FSQ-85EDX.  At 450mm FL, the 31mm Nagler will yield 14.5x and a 5.65 degree TFOV, so not much need to go lower or wider.

You could go with either a goto Dob and derotate video frames while stacking planetary images or a Dob on an equatorial platform and not have to derotate frames.  Either should be doable on your budget.  The latter would work better for DSOs should you ever want to go in that direction.

15 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

how in the world did any self-respecting person ever wear these in public where they could be seen?

The same way they wore 6" wide ties, leisure suits, and any other of a large number of questionable fashion choices:

If the focal ratio of your 85mm is a bit longer than the 10" Dob, you could add a 41mm Panoptic or 40mm Pentax XW for an even wider TFOV without exceeding a 7mm exit pupil.

Both telescopes could benefit from a 5mm to 6mm eyepiece while still maintaining a very usable exit pupil for highest power observing.  159x is not all that high of a power in reality.  You'll need a bit more to resolve globular clusters.

10 hours ago, Alan64 said:

Perhaps the owner of AA didn't want to pay extra to have them branded

More likely as a US retailer, AA would have been on the hook to pay royalties to the Back family for use of the logo which they likely still own the rights to.  The Chinese company you bought from is under no such legal requirement because even if Back had registered his trademark in China, their TM enforcement is woefully inadequate.

1 hour ago, banjaxed said:

I see what you mean, looking closer the eyepiece lens moves away from the cup. When I first noticed I thought it was the barrel only moving but I see now the whole interior moves. Must have had this eyepiece for about 18 months and never realised it moved 🙄😀

 

We have all had those moments in our lives.  We won't tell anyone if you don't. 😁

If I'm not mistaken, some folks with limited focus accommodation who don't observe while wearing glasses can also perceive a blurry field stop because they have to move the eyepiece off of the scope's focal plane to compensate for their near or far sightedness.  Thus, the field stop is no longer positioned at the focal plane on purpose by the user.  This was certainly not the case for the OP's ortho, but I've read of many folks complaining about blurry field stops while not wearing their glasses without realizing the connection.

That's also why I always focus my eyepieces with glasses on before taking my FOV images.  This is particularly difficult to do with eyepieces having less than 5mm of eye relief, but I manage.

Are they Chinese made perchance?  Chinese stainless steel is notorious for rusting in grills, kitchen knives, and other usages.  In comparison, I've had no problems with American or German stainless steel products rusting.

You can try using an aggressive brass or stainless steel cleaner and then sealing the surface with a clear urethane coating after you're done.  However, there's no guarantee it won't return.  I would just live with it knowing it has no affect on its usefulness.

For lowest power at a reasonable intersection of price, weight, and performance at f/6, I'd recommend the 35mm Aero ED SWA.  It's 44.4mm field stop diameter will just about max out your largest possible true field.  The inner 75% is quite usable while the outer 25% isn't too bad given the price, size, and weight.

Otherwise, I'd say you're in a good position to get started with your existing eyepieces and Barlow in the new scope.

7 hours ago, Armand Popa said:

Thank you for the advices. I bought the Skywatcher 3.2mm HR planetary. Should I wipe off that grease on the eyecup? I couldn`t try it yet due the clouds  

Probably wouldn't hurt to thin it out if it is exposed and could get on your fingers.  From there, it would get on all of your equipment.  It should work fine with a very thin coating.  It's not like it's a load bearing surface as an axle on a mount would be.

On 24/11/2020 at 11:20, Don Pensack said:

One advantage to the shorter GSO ED barlow is that it is available under at least 8 different labels.

Many companies import the GSO under private label.

That, and it has almost exactly the same focal length as the TV Big Barlow, so it couples quite nicely with the TV PBI if you can find one used to make a poor man's 2" 2x Powermate for use with longest focal length eyepieces.

By comparison, the PBI makes a mess of the image in the 2" Orion Barlow because its focal length is way too long.  I can't really describe what happens to the image other than to say it gets very messy and headache inducing.

15 hours ago, Steely Stan said:

Is a £250 filter really 10 times better than a £25 one?

For astrophotographers, the $400 Astrodon OIII is worth it over the $230 Baader OIII if just to get rid of halos around bright stars:

Can you imagine trying to clean up all the halos around bright stars in a typical image in post processing?

I just remembered I had taken images through my 127 Mak of most of my eyepiece AFOVs, but haven't had the chance to composite them yet, so I went ahead and did the 32mm to 42mm group and posted it in my thread below:

Follow the link above and have a look at the changes going from an f/6 AT72ED to an f/12 127 Mak.  It includes both the 35mm Aero ED and 40mm Meade 5000 SWA as well as some modified Plossls and a true Erfle (three achromat variation) for comparison.  I think it supports my position that the 35mm Aero ED lies between a modified Plossl or Erfle and a Panoptic type design.  I don't have a 36mm Baader Aspheric to test to see if it falls into the same category, but I'm certain it probably does.

Here's the 32mm to 42mm 127 Mak group, minus the military surplus eyepiece that I forgot to include when taking the images:

Here's the original group image through the AT72ED at F/6:

It's pretty clear that everything improved quite a bit going from f/6 to f/12.  However, the AFOV of some eyepieces, especially the Rini MPL 38mm and Rini Erfle 42mm, changed somewhat.  Since neither has a defined field stop, this doesn't surprise me all that much.