Louis D

Just this week, 25585, who used to regularly participate on SGL, had his Berlebach Nix II chair snap at the hinge, dumping him on the ground.  Apparently, the metal rod that is the hinge in simply threaded through holes in the wood without any reinforcing grommets.  All the stresses were focused at two points, and the woodgrain split, releasing the hinge rod.

Do other folding observing chair designs avoid focusing all of the stresses at the hinge onto bare wood?

I'll have to check my AT AF70s to see if they're as shiny as the Astromania up top.  I've never noticed any reflection issues at night with any of them, though.

I took a pass on an early Celestron Omni Plossl because it was silver, like the main body color, right up to the edge of the eye lens!  Apparently, they've fixed this missive in later runs.

Just be careful not to accidentally unscrew the housing when trying to do photography with it like this poor fellow on CN.

I bought the Astro-Tech AF70 (Omegon Redline SW) version and just screw off the eye cup with the cap still attached to use it with eyeglasses.  The revealed M43 thread makes it handy for afocal photography as well with my ancient Olympus C4000 camera.  The eye cup is so stiff it cannot be folded down.  Alternatively, a Morpheus eyecup can be screwed onto it.  I tried it once to verify, and it fit perfectly.

versus

I paid $181 for my 14mm Morpheus in 2016 and $158 for my 9mm Morph in 2018.  I paid $217 for my 7mm Pentax XW and $226 for my 3.5mm XW in 2012.  I recall paying about $229 for each of my 14mm and 5.2mm Pentax XLs in 1998.  I also recall paying $300 for my 10mm Delos in 2011 or 2012.  So, overall for me at least, the Morpheus were the cheapest of the three 70-something degree LER eyepiece lines.  Now, the Morpheus are $299, the Pentax XW are $269 (for now), and the Delos are $387.

I haven't tried the 17.5mm Morpheus, but my 9mm Morph is nearly the equal of my 10mm Delos, so I can highly recommend it.  I've been hard pressed to justify getting the 17.5mm Morph when I already have the 17mm ES-92 and NT4.  Yes, it would be 1.25", but almost all of my scopes handle 2" eyepieces just fine.

There are cheap, retro style 0.965 sized eyepieces on ebay as a stop-gap measure.  They won't match up well with modern 1.25" eyepieces, but they'll at least produce an image.

Here's the view through a generic 0.965 6mm Huygens in an f/6 72ED refractor:

Here's the view through a generic 0.965 20mm Huygens in the same scope:

They're actually not too bad for what they are.  The AFOV is 39° for the H6 and 30° for the H20.  Usable eye relief is 3mm for the H6 and 13mm for the H20.

What about a simple 42mm to 37mm step down ring?  Have you tried that yet?  A T-mount thread is simply M42 (42mm x 0.75mm tp).  Here's the same link on ebay UK.

Back on topic, I'm still using a pair of 26" NEC 2690WUXi2's from over a decade ago for photo editing.  I tried a single 43" 4K monitor at work, but didn't care for it.  There was just too much head swiveling and tilting at the distance I had to view it from.  I do like the single 27" 4K monitor I have on another computer at home, other than it's twisted nematic tech and solarizes unless viewed straight on.  One guy at work a decade ago had a 34" center screen and two wide screens vertically on either side.  That way, he could do silicon chip layout in the center while having text documents with multiple pages visible on either side for reference.

1 hour ago, Swoop1 said:

Ahhh, the dulcet tones of technology.

The youth of today are missing out on a lot- dot matrix printers, electric (or even manual) typewriters etc. 

Ah yes, there was nothing quite as satisfying as the thwack-thwack-thwack of an electric typewriter.  My older sister had one of these.  I was totally smitten with it:

5 minutes ago, SthBohemia said:

Only problemo which you plainly state @RobertI is they are all high end scopes. Be interesting if he happened to throw a Chinese made scope or 2 into the fray! However, that might be akin t throwing a sparrow amongst the vultures 😞 

The Oak scopes have always left me dumbfounded, having made many mirrors it astounds me that they are figured 1/74th!! If I get one to 1/16th I consider I have done extremely well.. 

Chinese scopes in 2007 were pretty bad in comparison.  Mechanically, optically, etc. they were just no where close to the same league.  It would be interesting to test again to see if there is much of a visual difference between a Chinese APO and a TEC/AP APO or between a Zambuto mirror equipped Dob and a Chinese made Dob.  I know Teeter had a GSO mirror option, so they couldn't have been all that bad.

10 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Also note that this test was 15 years ago. I wonder what scopes people would choose for a similar test now....

Until recently, Teeter was still making solid tube Dobs with Zambuto mirrors.  TEC makes pretty decent APOs.  I'm not sure about a modern, high end Mak-Newt.

2 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

Lets also not forget the teletype terminals with paper tape punch and readers

I was thinking back to the old continuous chain printers that were so loud they had to be in sound proofed enclosures.

1 minute ago, Swoop1 said:

I still receive stock from a supplier accompanied by delivery notes and invoices that are the product of a dot matrix printer. I loved the sound of those.

I remember the first one I ever heard in the early 80s being near deafening.  It was fast, but the whole printer swayed left to right to achieve that speed.  It was about as loud as contemporary daisy wheel printers.

1 minute ago, RobertI said:

Nice comparison, although admittedly on premium scopes. So basically (spoiler alert) the 5” apo refractor and the 7” premium Newtonian gave similar performance overall, beating the Intes 6” compound scope. Kind of backs up the traditional wisdom about 4” fracs and 6” Newts being similar performance. But it also makes the point that you can enjoy whatever scope you happen to possess! 

At least it was a fair fight.  It wouldn't have made sense to compare scopes of different refinement levels.

Yeah, last year my son-in-law the gamer and webpage hosting software developer got one of those 49" ultrawide monitors that nearly fills the width of his 5 foot wide desk in his home office (not his actual office pictured below):

I'm not sure if his new employer paid for it or if he did.  I didn't ask or care.  It looks comical to an old timer like me who learned programming using 3270 terminals in the 70s/80s:

At least they were a major step up from punch cards and punch card readers that were still in use at some universities well into the 80s:

Graphics?  Here's what passed for computer graphics back then:

Here's an Ed Ting comparison between a reflector, a refractor, and a Maskutov to see which yielded the best images.

Let us know your thoughts on it once you've had a chance to use it.  The discontinued 35mm Aero ED would have been a viable alternative a few years ago.  At f/6, it's good out to about 75% before astigmatism sets in.  At f/5-5.4, I'm sure it would degrade faster, but I have no way to test that.

Think of a focal reducer as an image circle compressor.  It takes that 46mm image circle and compresses it down to 29mm as Don says above.  It also flatten the field a bit.  Depending on the design, it might also correct some of the aberrations inherent in an SCT.

Thus, the amount of light per area is increased leading to a brighter image using the same eyepiece.  The trade-off is less magnification and image scale.  To get back to the same image scale and magnification would require a shorter focal length eyepiece.  However, image fidelity will suffer at some point because focal reducers tend to introduce some spherical aberration into the image at higher magnifications, much like Newtonian coma correctors and refractor field flatteners.  As such, removing the FR for critical planetary observing would probably be recommended.

In that case, I would suggest putting a longer dovetail on the tube so you can move the pivot axis back toward the focuser.  You would then need to put ankle weights or similar around the back of the scope to bring it back into balance.  That way, the eyepiece end would swing through a smaller range and would also be less likely to hit the tripod legs.

Notice below how I have a 14" long dovetail plate on my 90mm APO because, despite being a triplet, it's still massively back heavy thanks to the 2.5" focuser, finders, 2" diagonal, and my use of heavy 2" eyepieces.  As a result, the eyepiece swings through a fairly modest range of heights.  With heavier eyepieces like my ES-92s, I move the clamp even further back toward the eyepiece than shown, practically next to the focuser housing.  Moving the tube rings backward isn't as much of an option because they only fit in one position back into the fitted case, and I don't feel like moving them each time.

What telescope are you using that swings through such a wide variety of eyepiece heights?  A giant Dob?  If so, Starmaster used to make an observing chair/stool that you could probably duplicate with a bit of woodworking and pipe cutting skills.

But imagine the surprise of an Ark ship arriving at a planet that has been fully colonized for centuries by folks who arrived via faster drive technologies.  That, and they're tech knowledge is centuries or millennia out of date.  Perhaps they would have appreciated being "hailed" centuries earlier now that they have no place in the modern world except perhaps to make period dramas.  Imagine a 1600s cross-Atlantic ship full of colonialists just now arriving in the Americas.  Awkward!!!

11 hours ago, Mike Q said:

I hope they bring it back.  I would cut the check tomorrow.  Unfortunately i just looked at their website and even the push to scopes that were there with expected delivery dates in November are gone

See this CN thread on Orion USA discussing their (literal) trials and tribulations.

I put together a 127 Synta Mak on an alt-az tirpod mount for my daughter to take camping.  It takes up a relatively small amount of space in the back of her Chevy Equinox, which is small by US SUV standards.  It wouldn't be good for AP, but it is decent enough for camping.  That, and its collimation takes the trip to the campsite very well.

The alt-az mount is a DSV-2b on a Manfrotto 058B tripod.

I cobbled it together from parts I had lying around from previous projects.  The Synta/Vixen finder foot, mini ball head, and cellphone mount all came from ebay back when supply chains were good and prices and shipping from China were quick and cheap.  I couldn't find the exact same phone mount I bought.  The new ones are all plastic, which is probably best for SkEye usage.

I removed the central thumb screw from the mount, discarded the eyepiece clamp part, and screwed it directly onto the ball head where a camera would normally sit.  Luckily, the mount used a standard tripod thread of 1/4"-20.  I can't guarantee the mount I linked to would as well.

Next, I threaded a 1/4"-20 hex socket head cap screw up through the finder foot into the base of the ball head.  I don't recall the exact length since I again had some sitting around, but it was probably about 1/2" to 3/4" or thereabouts.