Louis D

When did Telrads start getting sold with built-in pulsers? None of mine have one. You generally have to install one of these kits yourself to get a pulsing function. Are you referring to a Rigel QuikFinder instead?

That scope package has several optical knocks against it right out of the box. First, it uses a spherical mirror, so it will always have some level of spherical aberration leading to blurring of details. Admittedly, at f/8, it's not as bad as at say at f/4 as with the Celestron FirstScope 76, but it is still there to some degree. Second, the three eyepieces are of ancient designs (Ramsden and Huygens) more suitable to f/12 or slower scopes. While they will work at f/8, they will only be sharpest on axis. I would primary use the H20 and H12.5 without the Barlow lens to learn your way around the sky. See if those two produce sharper, more pleasing images with a cellphone camera held up to the eye lens (afocal projection). Third, the Barlows packaged with these scopes tend to be of dubious quality. Many are singlets instead of doublets, so they introduce a lot of optical issues themselves. A good Barlow will simply magnify the center of the image without degrading the image. It may magnify the shortcomings of the scope's image not visible at lower magnifications, though. The moon is a very good target to experiment on while learning what works well with a scope and what does not.

I've had issues with multiple Telrads over the years. They all seem to revolve around the switch (a potentiometer with switch) failing. I've had some that won't come on at all, some that won't light until at full output, some with limited brightness travel before full brightness. I generally just buy another because I don't have the spare time to mess with repairs, but you could try swapping out the switched potentiometer to see if that fixes the problem.

Dad joke ahead warning: So, a Quirk of owning a Quark. 🤣

I had to look it up. Y'all call it zed instead of zee. It sounds cooler than zee and is less likely to be confused with other letters ending in ee. I have heard it used, but I thought folks were using it trying to sound cool when spelling words. It also makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from Pulp Fiction: Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.

I'll bite. Does standardisation rhyme with condensation in the UK? If so, then that would indeed be the correct spelling for y'all.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest, running two phones with the two apps instead of waiting for them to be integrated together.

It's an ETX model. Since you didn't take any photographs of the front of the optical tube with the cap off, that about all I can be sure of. Take the cap off and take a photo of the writing around the front lens and post it here. Based on its size, I'd say it's either their ETX-60 or ETX-70 model. I don't think it's the ETX-80.

How did you make that work? Did you shorten your truss poles? My Dobs have low profile focusers with about 25mm of in-focus from the primary focus point. This was done to minimize secondary obstruction while maintaining decent illumination levels.

I tend to be very thoughtful about my eyepiece purchases, so I rarely feel a need to sell anything. I did buy a Meade 5000 UWA 20mm for about $50 because the price seemed too good to pass up. It is a decent eyepiece, but the eye relief is tight and SAEP is horrible. I'll see if my daughter wants to use it sometime. I doubt she will, though, because she also likes to view with eyeglasses on. I may end up selling it someday without regrets at that point.

The only concern I would have with carry-ons would be if you board late and all the overhead bins are full, and your bag either won't fit under the seat ahead of you or you're against a bulkhead with nowhere to put a personal carryon. In that case, I've been forced to gate check my bag. In that case, it then goes through the regular checked bag process. The only exception I've seen are for umbrella type strollers where they'll put them by the airplane door for you to grab for transferring to your next flight.

Should also cut down on thermal build-up if using a 1.25" wedge.

Makes you wonder why there is no telescope tripod mount standardization.

As long as it's an interference type that reflects rather than absorbs IR energy, they work fine and don't heat up in my experience. I keep one on the front of my 1.25" Hercules wedge to block IR that is passed by the ND filter. Here's a thread on SGL discussing this very topic: Check the transmission graphs in this post of mine: Basically, the more IR filtering, the better. You don't need to unknowingly cook your eyeball during solar observing.

Just did a quick google search, and the FAA and all foreign airlines now allow airtags. Lufthansa clarified their policy in October, 2022 to allow them. They were the lone holdout in 2022.

Whatever you take, put an Air Tag in it somewhere in the case of theft by air cargo handlers. They mostly take electronics, but have been known to take photography equipment. Telescopes resemble photography equipment. Don't think putting clothes around it hides it. Every bag is screened via X-ray scanner. Those running the scanners tip off conspirators deep in the bowels of the airport of anything valuable looking.

Ouch! They go for between $265 and $299 used on CN classifieds today. $165 CAD equates to $120 USD today. No wonder you had so much interest.

Well, the galaxy looks quite nice indeed. Too bad about the stars. It looks like the various color layers need shifted radially. The shift grows with increasing distance from the center. I recall Helmut Dersch had a feature in his Panorama Tools to do just that.

My biggest eyepiece regret was buying a 21mm or 22mm Rini "wide field" starting out on a budget for maybe $20 in the late 90s (figure close to double that in today's dollars) to fill a gap in my lineup. It was basically a 3 element eyepiece of some sort with terrible correction and maybe a 50 degree field, hardly what I would term "wide field" even as a beginner. Then, the central lens came loose in storage within a year for unknown reasons, jamming at an angle. It rattles around in there now. Since the whole thing is sealed tight in thermal plastic, I can't do anything about it. I felt totally duped on that purchase. It's now a focuser plug. Live and learn.

Especially considering it must have been a one-off engineering-only prototype since the shortest production Panoptic was the 15mm before it was discontinued. 😉 I can't imagine what the collector's value would be. Probably not as high as any Nagler Type 3 would fetch, though. 😁

Imagine the possibilities of putting polarizers on the bottom of each eyepiece and then rotating them individually so each eye sees a slightly different brightness. I wonder if the human brain could combine the images into an HDR photograph-like semblance.

Sounds like a winner for most beginners. For more advanced users, it's like getting a two-fer deal. The Starsense unit for use on more advanced scopes, and the actual scope/mount/RDF/eyepieces for beginners like your grandson.

Depends on the usage and telescope for me: Lumicon OIII (90s and modern versions in 2" and 1.25" respectively) for most nebula observing Wratten #8 (480nm cutoff and no violet) or Wratten #4 (470nm cutoff and very slight violet) Light Yellow for fast achromats to cut violet fringing for general observing Meade Green interference filter for best planetary/solar/lunar detail with a fast achromat, color cast be darned Alternatively for easier to find/afford options: The Svbony UHC is nearly as good as the Lumicon OIIIs on most nebula except under the most light polluted skies Cheap, Chinese yellow filters on ebay are roughly Wratten #4 equivalents and thus cut almost all violet The vintage Hirsch #12A is almost exactly a Wratten #4 if you can find one Vintage 48mm K2 Yellow filters are exactly a Wratten #8 if you can find new old photography stock. 48mm is the same as an astro 2" filter #56 Green or cheap Chinese green filters only pass half as much light, but have similar bandpass characteristics to the Meade Green Vintage 48mm X1 Green filters are exactly a Wratten #11 Yellow-Green and have higher transmission than either of the above green filters and yet cut almost all violet/blue and red light The modern GSO and other astro-specific yellow filters are either too weak (#8 cuts off around 440nm) or too strong (#12 cuts off around 500nm) to be useful as minus violet filters. The modern #11 Yellow-Green filters pass too much red to be useful. They're basically the same as a Hoya X0 Yellow-Green.

The Collins Electro Optics I3 was pretty much that. It didn't sell well, so it was discontinued years ago. There are plenty of ad hoc NV astro solutions out there today, but I'm not aware of any as plug and play as the CEO I3 was.

So what's keeping the 40+ countries in Europe from designing and selling their own high spec NV sensors?