Louis D

You need to remove length from the OTA if you run out of in-focus.  Some refractors come with rear sections that can be unscrewed and removed to shorten the overall tube length.

Before blaming BV alignment, try checking that neither eyepiece is tipped in its holder due to undercuts.  Next, rotate the diopter adjusters to see if the images demerge due to lack of concentricity in the adjusters.

1 hour ago, Astro_Dad said:

No, you haven’t missed anything here - the manual is fairly high level with limited detail, and realigning in the way that is possible with SkEye is not an option that’s available (at least as far as I’m aware!).

Sounds an opportunity for a future improvement by Celestron.

25 minutes ago, Ags said:

I think zero power means zero electrical power.

That could very well be the case, especially being prefaced by electronics rather than optics.  Mea culpa.  I've got optics on the brain, apparently. 🤪

On 03/06/2022 at 04:53, Astro_Dad said:

The galaxy pair M81 and M82 first - the targets were found - close enough at least but required slight manual adjustment to have either target centred in the eyepiece (25mm Plossl so 48x power). Further minor adjustment was needed to have both Cigar and Bode’s galaxies framed in the eyepiece together.

I couldn't find anything in the manual about realigning on objects once centered in the field of view.  My decades old Sky Commander DSCs (section 5.7 Realign on Object Menu) and the much newer SkEye app (section 3.3.4 Adding more Alignments) both have the ability to tell it that the object is centered in the main telescope, and thus to adjust its alignment to compensate.  Did I miss something in the Starsense manual about how to do this?

The AAAS article referenced in the linked story makes a common mistake:

Researchers are bringing into focus novel electronics such as systems on plastic, which are deformable and implantable, zero-power, and wireless and have numerous applications for sight and vision.

I'm pretty sure they meant unit-power (1x), as with Telrads and QuikFinders.  Zero-power (0x) would act as an infinite telecompressor and make everything infinitesimally small, which I doubt anyone would want or have a need for.  Sort of a black hole in effect.

32 minutes ago, Ags said:

I think scatter and internal reflections might be a problem, as well as a tiny exit pupil.

Just get in there with a flat black ink pen and darken the edges. 😉

Sounds like the perfect project for a 3-D printer.

SL 1113 may have been built as a spare and never flew.  At some point, it was probably surplussed, leading to your acquisition.

42 minutes ago, faulksy said:

what did you call him 🤣

You have been assimilated.

Those Starlink satellites are pretty intrusive during twilight.  Hopefully, bringing broadband to underserved parts of the world will make it worthwhile.  Apparently, it's already been helpful in Ukraine.

16 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

How it could have found its way that far tho is another issue as I thought there was a stop to prevent this happening.

Probably the job of the thread-on eyepiece holder that was removed.  Why someone would have unscrewed it all the way off is the real question.  Maybe the previous owner's kid did it?

1 hour ago, TheycallmeRiver said:

I'm still learning about eyepieces and I don't own a DeLite yet, but my take on the only XW I own (the 10mm) is that eye placement seemed pretty fussy.  I've tried with the eyecup flat, extended all the way out, and at various steps in between. 

It's probably more inexperience on my part than anything else because i'm aware that this is a much loved eyepiece, but my first and second impressions of the XW weren't brilliant.

I have my eye on a Morpheus 9mm that might eventually replace it, but until then i'll keep persevering.

Try a 12mm Nagler Type 4.  It is extremely fussy to take in the entire field of view.  The moment the field stop pops into view, blackouts start raging around the field of view.  The 12mm ES-92 is much better behaved in this respect.

I've not noticed that the 7mm and 3.5mm Pentax XWs are any fussier than my 5.2mm and 14mm Pentax XLs, 9mm and 14mm Morpheus or 10mm Delos.  I do wear glasses at the eyepiece, so I always have a reference distance thanks to them.  That may help with eye placement stability.

2 hours ago, Astro_Dad said:

Note above with interest that the Lacerta and other equivalents still available though.

Not so much still available as a new production run.  Notice that the 35mm ED is not available from Lacerta.  Apparently, they decided it wouldn't be a good enough seller to add it to their production order.

2 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

So it will be interesting to compare it with the Stellalyra, when it arrives, and if my modest mount can take the extra weight (it's twice as heavy as the SL !) Otherwise it will sit on the shelf until I get around to buying the Big Dob.

The Altair version is reportedly heavier due to having a stainless steel barrel.  The APM version uses aluminum.  My 30mm APM UFF weighs 548g by my scale.

Good job snagging it for half retail. 

4 hours ago, Highburymark said:

Mega? Though not sure that suggests anything greater than ‘hyper’, which already sounds painful. 

Meade had their MWA line which I assume stood for Mega Wide Angle.  They claimed 100 degrees, but delivered somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees, depending on the focal length.  The eAFOV was around 90 degrees due to barrel distortion.

10 hours ago, noonenca9 said:

How is it that none of these collide with our planet?

Eventually most will once their orbit degrades enough.  Those in very high orbits generally won't ever return to the Earth.

4 hours ago, Pixies said:

The Aero ED variants get lots of recommendations for a reasonably-priced 2" eyepiece. I still have the 35mm, but have just sold my old 30mm one.

Can't see anywhere with them in stock though.

The Lacerta branded ED 30mm and 40mm are in stock around the European mainland.  Perhaps @FLO could stock them locally to the UK for y'all.

4 hours ago, Highburymark said:

I’d class them all as medium-wides, perhaps allowing myself a little bit of poetic licence with the Delites. They certainly feel like more than 62 degrees in a binoviewer.

50 degree Plossls used to be considered wide angle when Huygens, Ramsdens, and Kellners ruled astro catalogs; thus 65 to 70 degrees were Super Wide Angle (SWA).  Then came Ultra Wide Angles (UWAs) around 80 degrees and Hyper Wide Angles (HWAs) around 100 degrees.  I don't know what to classify the 9mm ES-120 as, however.  Ludicrous Wide Angle (LWA)?  The first 10 that came off the line were missing their internal field stop and actually have a 140 degree AFOV.  Would that be Plaid Wide Angle (PWA)?

54 minutes ago, Dave scutt said:

The problem is they don't bark they yap, they yap at everything  and scared of everything as well   its funny my cats chase them and they run off yapping 

We had a Havanese that sounded like a much bigger dog when alerting and didn't yap at all (thankfully).  Great family pet and guard dog.  The only problem is how hard they are to get.

1 hour ago, FLO said:

We have good relations with all three manufacturers. They and we are delighted with progress. No objections of any kind 🤗

Absolutely top notch manufacturers.  I have a lot of gear from all of them under various brand names and have been very satisfied with all of it.

3 hours ago, FLO said:

 

StellaMira 🙂 

StellaMira 1.25" 90º Prism Diagonal

Steve

Is StellMira your house brand for Long Perng products while StellaLyra is your house brand for GSO products?  You've got to admit that using two such similar sounding names is a bit confusing.  Did the two companies object to making products using the same branding, so you had to come up with two different brands?

So only up to 4 resells.  Maybe not a big issue for Dobs, but if they can figure out a way to do this with eyepieces which tend to be resold a lot more, look out.  I'm thinking of some sort of future electronic eyepiece that uses an app on your phone to complete its functionality.

Sounds a lot like how ebooks have killed the concept of right of first sale that used to allow people to freely resell used books.  Celestron may have limited resellability with this new technology.  Next, they'll be requiring payment of a monthly subscription fee and internet access each time you want to actually use the product (this is the route Adobe is going with their products).  Good luck if you're observing in a remote area with no cell service if that comes to be.  My wife works with the Navy, and they nearly dropped all Adobe products because subs go for months without internet access.  Adobe had to issue a huge mea culpa for them and backtrack on their new licensing demands as a result.

4 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Maybe it's time to remember how we and other western countries used to be able to make so many items cost effectively and to high quality standards

And at a high price.  I was watching a rerun of a 1970s game show where you had to guess the price of an item.  An American made Oster blender cost $21 nearly 50 years ago.  They're about $30 today.  That 1970s blender would be about $160 in today's dollars, 7.5 times more expensive.  This is in line with the American-Chinese wage and overhead differential minus the additional cross-Pacific transportation costs.  How many Westerners would be willing to suffer a sudden 7x increase in the prices of low cost items to move production out of the Far East?

Think about it, if car production had moved entirely to China, we'd probably be paying about $12,000 for a new car instead of $40k to $60k.  Of course, they'd probably only run for 5 years at most. 😁  But hey, new car every 5 years!

When I worked for a semiconductor foundry company, I asked an executive why our company wasn't building new fabs in the US.  He pointed out that just the difference in utility costs between Taiwan and the US more than up for any additional costs in shipping from there to here.  If Taiwan has cheap electricity relative to the US, I've got to think China's is even cheaper.

Brandon eyepieces are entirely American made from the optics to the barrels to the assembly.  These four element eyepieces cost $280.  Imagine what a 21mm Ethos would cost to make in the US instead of Taiwan (let alone China, which they aren't).  Look back at how basic eyepieces and Newtonians cost about the same in 1970s astro catalogs as today.  Astronomy would only be for the well heeled.

@Don Pensack Can really steep light cones in super fast designs cause issues with dielectric diagonals or dielectric coated secondary/tertiary mirrors?  I've read that dielectric narrow band filters have to be reformulated for super fast telescopes.