Louis D

I have the Astro-Tech 72ED which appears to be made by the same company as the StellaMira.  I really like the scope except for the focuser which slips under heavy loads.  It appears that the SM 80 fixed this with a R&P focuser.  I would go for the FPL-53 over the likely FPL-51 of the SW any day.  Even at 72mm, I can see plenty of violet/red flare on bright stars and planets at higher powers in my FPL-51 equipped scope.  Also note the nice long focuser travel.  The SW doesn't even show the focuser extended or mention how much it extends which makes me suspicious.

2 hours ago, Ags said:

66° is still a good FOV for a zoom. Still, rule 1 of engineering is to never overpromise...

But not the first rule of marketing.  I'm dealing with that at work right now.  Marketing and the execs have already oversold our product before it has even been designed.

2 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Poor review. Ignore those figures until someone reputable measures it. All I see there is guesswork.

Never claimed it was a review, merely a comparison.

A comparison to the BHZ over on CN.

Biggest surprise, a sub-70 degree AFOV.

Combine push-to with an equatorial platform, and you can have both computerized object finding with tracking.  Since the tracking is equatorial, some astrophotography is also possible.

1 hour ago, Spile said:

Now I understand and I agree. The reason for my eyebrow raising was because I thought the OP was questioning the quality of the mirror(s).

In particular, the GSO mirrors can't be too bad if Rob Teeter offered them in his 8" and 10" Solid Tube series scopes.  Why would he have put GSO mirrors in his multi-thousand dollar bespoke scopes if they were terrible?  It's pretty much everything else that made his telescopes so expensive that the Synta/GSO scope lag behind on.

3 hours ago, Roog said:

It has got me thinking that there must be a need for a similar low cost device, if somewhat developed to make it safer, to help less ambulant people in and out of their homes.   

For that short of a rise, most folks in the US put in a ramp (generally made of treated wood so it can be removed when no longer needed) where your pavers are to the left, and leave a platform large enough for a wheeled chair to spin 90 degrees to enter the doorway.

For longer rises, there are these lifts available:

3 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

I had a white smartphone and someone told me “am I not worried that white is girly”. I politely told them where to go.

So, are all the white pick-up trucks and work vans driven by burly contractors in the US also girly by that person's thinking? 

4 hours ago, Roog said:

Thank you , but it really is a very dull watch! But in order that others can suffer, do you have any ideas as to how this could be posted?

If you have a gmail account, you can post the video to YouTube and post the private link to it here.

The Bresser is JOC made (sold as Explore Scientific FirstLight in the US).  I like the giant alt trunnions just like custom made Dobs use.  The azimuth bearing design is also closer to custom made Dob designs.  I've read it does need a bit of bar soap smeared on it to get the motion smoother, though.  Overall, it seems like the best starting point of the bunch.

Skywatcher is Synta made, which is not surprising when you think about it.  Synta specializes in basic scopes of all types.  They work, but the mechanicals leave a lot to be desired.  For example, that focuser is inexplicable having to swap the entire adapter to change from 2" to 1.25" eyepieces.  Literally no one else does it that way for good reason.

Stellalyra and Ursa Major are both GSO made.  The former is the premium scope while the latter is the entry level scope.  In the US, the former is sold by Orion as Skyline and by Apertura as AD8/10/12.  The latter is sold by Orion as SkyQuest (with a slightly restyled base) and probably others.  Both are good deals, but I'm not a fan of their small altitude trunnions.  They don't hold their position when switching out heavy eyepieces unless high tension is applied via either tension springs or tension knobs.  Large trunnions don't needs such crutches to hold position.  I also have my doubts about the durability of their lazy Susan azimuth bearing.  That, and it can have too little stiction to resist slight motions at the eyepiece such as when swapping eyepieces.  The focuser seems nice, though.

Back in the 1990s, I planned my initial observing sessions using Xephem running on a Unix box at work.  I made copies of Wil Tirion's The Bright Star Atlas 2000.0 charts at the back of Binocular Astronomy for reference and laminated them (also at work😁).

I use Stellarium on a PC ahead of time to plan my observing.  It's lightyears ahead of 1990s Xephem in terms of usability, features, and appearance.

Nowadays, I hold SkEye to the sky on my phone to help find objects due to the massively increased sky glow in my backyard skies.  Once I know where the constellations are and have swung the telescope in the general direction, I can take it from there using the scope and a low power eyepiece to narrow it down.

I also have Orion's DeepMap 600 star chart in my astro toolbox.  The light on dark printing is nearly impossible to read at night, and the distortion near the poles is immense, so I mostly use it as the background for eyepiece beauty shots.

I still like to pull out my Chandler The Night Sky planisphere to quickly figure out where constellations will be at what time on a given date.

A much cheaper ED option to dip you toes in the ED spotting scope water is the Svbony SV406P.  Even an 80mm ED spotter will "show" Saturn's rings and some banding on Jupiter along with its Galilean moons.

Spotting scopes may have limits on what eyepieces you can use with them.  Both the Celestron and Svbony take 1.25" eyepieces natively, but with their limited back focus, not all might come to focus.

Spotting scopes also have loads of undersized prisms that will tend to vignette widest field eyepieces like a 32mm Plossl or 24mm Panoptic.

36 minutes ago, jjohnson3803 said:

The pluck foam in all my plastic cases has eventually come apart, so using your own might not be a bad thing.

Try and locate high density P&P foam.  My Doskocil case came with it 20+ years ago, and it's still in great shape.  The rest of my cheaper cases came with the standard lower density P&P foam, and it is indeed tearing apart more easily despite being much younger.

I don't know how to distinguish it when ordering online other than mine is a lighter gray than the lower density foam with a much finer hole size.  You might need to talk to a foam distributor specialist to make it clear what you want.

I took a closeup picture of my darker low density foam left and above my lighter high density foam in the lower right to try and show the difference:

9 hours ago, Ricochet said:

I have 7/10/14 XWs. In an f6 scope this is all that is really needed for DSOs, but maybe I could add a 5 at some point. 

What focal length scope(s)?  I use my 5.2mm XL to resolve globular clusters at around 230x in my scope.  My 7mm XW is just starting to resolve GCs at around 170x.  The 3.5mm XW is usually too much power.

I would get a deep case and store your eyepieces and Barlows vertically.  I've been doing this for over 20 years in an XL Doskocil case to good effect.  The closest equivalent at The Case Shop is the MAX CASE MAX505.  You'll have plenty of space for future expansion as well.  It would be just over 100 Euros with foam.

9 hours ago, cloudsweeper said:

Yes, I reckon there is an improvement.  Without the Reducer, the (well collimated) SCT was less sharp than the fracs (of course).  And the Dob was better too.

In similar posts, other members have also remarked on noticing this.

Doug.

At low to mid powers across the field, the R/C will certainly improve star images just as Newtonian coma correctors and refractor field flatteners do.

My point was checking at high powers (let's say less than 1mm exit pupil for starters).  At equivalent powers with and without the R/C, do star images improve or degrade on axis?

I've found both the GSO CC and TSFLAT2 to degrade star images on axis at high powers due to spherical aberration manifested as star image bloat.  Splitting tight doubles would be a good test of this.

I leave my correctors in 99%+ of the time.  However, during the Mars opposition for example, I found the images to be sharper and contrastier without the correctors, so I left them out.

I'm just saying be aware that the R/C may not be a panacea for all observing.

At high power, most correctors induce spherical aberration on axis.  They're mostly intended for use at low to mid powers.  The Tele Vue Paracorr 2 is supposedly an exception to this rule and can be used at high powers.  I can't say that SCT R/Cs aren't usable at high powers since I have no experience with them.  It might vary brand by brand how usable they are.

This has given me some ideas.  Solar observing in Texas is brutal most of the year (we're just north of the tropics).  To expand the number of months I can solar observe, I'll have to work out how to make a full body screen using some sort of collapsible pop up beach sun shade tent to make storage compact and lightweight.  Perhaps something similar to the one below could be made to work by unzipping part of the opposite side door and keeping the tripod low?

3 hours ago, Zermelo said:

the Pentax XW 1.25" series, being closer still:  3.5, 5, 7, 10, 14, 20  giving 43%, 40%, 43%, 40%, 43%

The original Pentax XLs were 5.2, 7, 10.5, 14, 21, 28, and 40mm.  Thus, every other was a doubling in FL (almost for the 40mm, should have been 42mm) or roughly 1.4x between adjacent eyepieces.  For years, I just used their 5.2mm and 14mm along with a much cheaper Rini 38mm MPL.  Then my eyepiece collecting started in strongly about 12 years ago.  That's about the same time my disposable income started jumping upward after the Great Recession.

For very low contrast planetary observing at high powers, you'll probably want to revert back to a 1.25" visual back (or 2" with 1.25" reducer) to eliminate about 8 extra lens elements in the optical path.  I do a similar thing by removing my GSO coma corrector in my Newtonian or TSFLAT2 in my refractors.

Compression rings are in most of my focusers, CC, and Barlows.  I'm not always a fan of them with undercut eyepieces.  I get an occasional snag, but never a complete jam.

I prefer nylon thumb screws over metal.  They hold as well without marring anything.

Given the number of reports of BCL jamming and not releasing, and pushing the eyepiece off axis, I'll avoid them.

The Antares/Olivon Twist-Lock adapter seems nearly ideal as being closer to a true collet.  They may not grab as hard as the BCL, but I've never heard of them jamming.

There used to be a 7mm LV that didn't get carried forward to the NLV and SLV lines for unknown reasons.

7 hours ago, StarryEyed said:

But my favourite astronomical filter is a solar filter! 

When I lived in New York state in the late 80s/early 90s, the haze was so bad most days that I couldn't see the sun even with cloudless skies.  Astronomy of any sort was often a no-go there.  It wasn't until I moved to Texas that I took up astronomy thanks to the clear, dark skies I enjoyed at that time.  Nearing retirement, I'm looking to move further out to more rural surroundings.

I've found that if I can get my Dob on target, I can resolve M22 at high power despite it being completely invisible in the murk at low power.  It's amazing how high power works well together with stellar objects even in bright skies.

6 hours ago, Voyager 3 said:

There is a Omegon version of the 10mm in TS.

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p13051_Omegon-Eyepiece-Oberon-10-mm---82--Field---1-25--Barrel.html

Nope, those are the same as the Celestron Luminos line, just with the 31mm labelled 32mm.

Young suburbs at the very edge of a growing metro area adjacent to farms or a forest and having low density housing tracts with no commercial development can easily have Bortle 5 skies.  Mine started out that way 30 years ago.  I'm closer to Bortle 7 or worse in most directions now that we have tens of thousands of houses, many giant shopping centers, night lighted school fields, car dealerships, supermarkets, etc.