JOC

That^^^^ starts to look replicable. A section cut from square profile drain pipe, and a couple of translucent discs (cut from Ice cream tubs or glace cherry pots) a hole punch, a set of compasses, an indelible pen and a hacksaw and I reckon I could make one. You might even get the angled section from out of the corner side of a square form ice container. Then a cheap lightweight bungee.

Oculus Rift? So are you responsible for the VR DarkNet? I am not a gamer, but Samsung sent me a free VR headset and when I tried experimenting with it I discovered DarkNet. I don't get much time with it, but it is quite brilliantly addictive.

Alfian, you should get on OK with those. A cable release takes away a lot of shake. I managed to get a cheap wireless one for mine that really works great too.

A packet of Explore Scientific solar film to make a filter for my Dob when I get a moment - I'm not getting enough night time use and hope it will work for the sun too - currently taking suitable advice on this prospect from the solar observing board so I do it safely

This morning I got an Explore Scientific H-Beta filter - Horsehead Nebula look out! and a Baader ND 3.0 because it seemed rude not to at the price. I know better than to use it for the sun in my system, but it isn't completely dark and I am interested to see how it reacts on other bright objects - later in the year Venus might be interesting. I also got one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Oxbridge-Black-Chiminea-Chimney-Waterproof-Outdoor-Garden-Furniture-Cover/361644973591?_trksid=p2045573.c100033.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131017132637%26meid%3D2e5f31d7a6bc48dc841bc85bd76e49e2%26pid%3D100033%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D8%26sd%3D142361623965 For covering up the telescope if I don't want to bring it back in any late night until the moring - it's a great fit, seems quite robust enough and for a smidgen of the cost of a proper telescope cover.

I hope you have fun with it and lots of clear skies. It looks just like the sort of classic telescope that as a child you envisage a telescope should look like. Apologies to other Dob relector converts, but they don't have that classic telescope look about them like the one here does do they?

Oooo...that's a 12" Goto - nice toy - much larger than my baby. Hope you have fun with it - pity you don't live closer to me!

Yes, I agree and that thought did run before I commented. My telescope also needs collimation, and EP's, but came to me sufficiently collimated for me to play with without any initial adjustment, it also came with two perfectly adequate EP's which enabled me to get some early satisfaction and being a reflector I didn't need a diagonal. This Meade LX90 seems to have caused its owner a certain amount of consternation and they don't appear to have to the immediacy of some satisfying use early on which I think I would have found really disappointing - I took mine outside plonked it down found the moon and went 'wow'!. I have seem a good number of people with similar telescopes to this LX90 on there and have often admired their compact form compared to my own and I can't shake the feeling that their sheer value must make them superior instruments to my own, but I think I am still glad I wasn't swayed into considering one. - there seems far more things to consider when you buy things for them for one thing!

Whilst I am sure looking at the cost that the Meade LX90 must be a top class instrument I read through this thread and for some inexplicable reason remain supremely glad that I went for the scope I did.

How odd to see a picture on here of a telescope like that without a right angled attachment. I know absolutely nothing about them, but I am surprised that they can be used just as a straight through viewing telescope.

Here you are: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/clearance/hubble-cassegrain-reflector-telescope.html

Never have a read a truer word and it doesn't matter what sort of telescope you have!

You know what I hadn't considered it from that perspective, but yes, given the logic of the argument you must be right i.e. my head, the plane the red dot is superimposed upon and the star will all line up no matter which angle I view it from. So providing I can see the red dot on the screen it should be lined up with a star and if the finder is properly aligned with the telescope (which I will look into doing the next time I play) the telescope should then be aligned with the star. Yep, put like that it makes perfect sense.

Many thanks for this, I think I had experienced a stray thought sort of in this direction and dismissed it. I collimated the telescope for the first time successfully the other week, since doing so it has been out of action having a squeak fixed and I have not had a chance to see if the collimation has achieved anything. However, this comment about the finderscope is usefully made as I have not tried the optical finderscope since doing the collimation. If it could make a difference then I will be sure to try it before I unscrew anything. So it does! It's very subtle isn't it? I have been twiddling those knobs, but couldn't see what was changing - I've just spotted where the movement occurs on both axis. Before spotting the movement I did wonder if the RDF aligned in a similar way to the optical finder (which I've always had the hang of doing), but then wondered if the fact that it sat so close to the end of the tube meant that it perhaps wasn't as critical. Now it seems likely that I should be able to find a distant object in the scope and twiddle the knobs on the RDF until this is also aligned with it. Talk about learning as you go LOL SGL threads are wonderful!

I wonder if this sort of modification could be useful to non RDF finders too. I have a RA Optical finder on my telescope and always notice that to get it aligned I am literally right on the limit of one of the adjustment screws - I always think that its a good job that just it just about gets plumb on as I would have no adjustment left and I think that a bit more starting angle under the back of the finder would be useful. I am still trying to work out how to align my new Skywatcher red dot finder as when you move your head the position of the red dot varies - I guess the notion is that I should get the red dot bang in the middle of the finder, but I can't work out how the adjustment on the RDF functions at the moment. It looks identical to the Celestron one above, but is on a Skywatcher bracket so possibly sits just a bit higher off the tube.

Hi SilverAstro, thank you for that. Well its not exactly broken, but has exhibited an ear splitting squeak (audiolise a dozen trapped budgies!) when the goto drives it larger distances from object to object since first arriving. Said squeak has not improved with use and I read on SGL that Astro Imp had the same issue and had sent back their base and got the squeak fixed. Mine was also still in its guarantee period and FLO said that mine also sounds like it needs adjustment and are kindly organising this for me, but I had to get the base packaged before we could organise a courier (I did this last Thursday) and I wasn't around for a pickup yesterday so it is going off today (hopefully). Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to get it fixed. In the meantime idle fingers are sill costing me - I had a cheap USB video camera arrive yesterday that fits in the focusser - I saw someone take some take footage on something similar at the astro club viewing night and they had some neat software (I need to find out what this was and I hope its free) that picked frames from the footage and stacked them - they got a lovely image of Jupiter with very little effort and I'd like to do something similar if I can.

Excellent, I am minus my telecope stand until it is repaired, but with this amount of time hopefully I can see what I can do with jupiter ?

Ah! the two competitions overlap!

What do you do when you acquire an EP that is too big for your EP case?

I'm still waiting for clear skies and a repaired telescope (my mount has to go back for adjustment) to find that out myself LOL!

I am also a very new beginner and am happy to share what I learned so far. Have you tried taking it outside in the daytime, make sure you are pointing away from the sun and see if you can find a distant object - tree, church, house aerial about 0.5 miles or more away, etc.? You should be able to focus clearly on a object outdoors - if you can do that the moon should not be problematical. I found when I first set things up that doing it in the daytime was much easier as I could see what I was doing. Once you learn how to focus things outdoors you are ready to play with the goto (someone above suggest you have one) and might find it useful to download the app. synscanInit 2 which with the location on you phone turned on should provide all the settings that you might need for the goto unit. I have also been playing with a red dot finder. As I understand the Telrad you look through it in a similar way to my one. You look through and beyond the surface of the finder to the object you wish to find lying behind the screen - a bit like looking through and beyond shotgun aligners to the clay pigeon are shooting at. Imagine a heads up display with a circle dot on it - if you wanted to look straight at a tree you would need to move your head to align the circle of the heads up display with the tree, As I understand the Telrad the concentric circles provide a certain concept of distance that can be seen in terms of maybe one or two degrees. Thus, you get a starting object in the middle and move the telescope so the same object arrives at the edge of one of the circles and this means you have moved the telescope a certain angular distance relative to the sky - thus and following instructions that are published in star guides, you can 'hop' from one object to another using the coloured circles for reference.

Chefgage I have the equivalent of your 200P and have just tentatively completed my first collimation. I was advised to google and follow Astro baby's collimation guide - if you Google just that you will find the PDF. In places it's slightly misaligned text wise, but in this finish and having gone through all your problems this (and a Cheshire collimator) is what I succeeded with. Before I followed it I watched several videos of people collimating their telescope with both lasers and cheshires. Although they use a laser this first one will give you the confidence to move the mirrors There are fewer videos out there that use a Cheshire, but Astro baby's guide detailed it well for me - including how to use sheets of paper (I used old coloured envelopes) stuffed in various places to make things easier. I had both a laser and a Cheshire - I had previously failed with the laser, but I got the Cheshire and found that when I started to follow Astro baby's guide it all started to make sense. The three black notches on the dark grey circle in the diagram above are the three holders for the primary mirror. I found with my basic Cheshire that they are only just (and I mean only just) visble in the Cheshire view when they aligned - if you see one more than the others its not quite right, but you will see what I mean if you follow the guide. The other advantage in finding it is that she is describing a 200P in the guide. It did take me about 1.5 hours and it is fairly frustrating when things move as you tighten them, but once I got the hang of it (and I was dead scared when my secondary went all floppy!) the guide made everything plain sailing and it all made sense when I realised what I was looking at I cannot recommend following it to the letter highly enough. The key is keeping the secondary as a perfect circle as you work on from that point, but you will see that as you follow the instructions and I did go back and check that point a couple of times. My finished collimation looked identical to her pictures of what she called a perfectly collimation telescope, even down the slightly offset she describes for our type of telescope. FWIW I was chuffed beyond belief with what the guide let me accomplish and I used a Cheshire to do this. NB. I used and continue to use my laser for a quick day to day check, but the Cheshire would be just as quick

But did you do all that on the phone? Which I think is also one of the rules? ;-D

FWIW before you discard the whole combined object as irretrievable I've got a couple of other suggestions - OK, its a slightly different scenario, but I used to have a certain amount of success by setting up vibrations in stuck ground glass stoppers by tapping them with another glass stopper, sometimes the frequencies would shake things loose. OK, it might not work in metal, but some tapping with a metal object might be worth trying. An ultrasonic bath (if you have one available - I've actually got one), might also work or as a final warped suggestion I've seen curious things happen to things that have been left outside overnight. This includes a top box lock which wouldn't give up its key on a camping site - having struggled for about 1.5hrs I gave up and went to sleep. I walked up to it the next morning and the key literally fell out of it like a hot knife out of butter. You might do worse than drop it onto some damp grass and come back to it the next morning - it might not work, but I've seen curious things happen to a variety of objects left outside overnight.

Apologies for continued thread de-railment It depends on the source of the hydrocarbons. It is possible to build up a hydrocarbon mixture from sources of pure individual hydrocarbons that with enough added would replicate a hydrocarbon fraction achieved from an oil. Hydrocarbons derived from natural sources can contain a huge variety of unresolvable and complex materials and this might make them 'dirty' in the sense being mentioned above, such natural sources might also be contaminated by natural bacteria (though not a lot would survive a cracking or distillation process due to the heat and pressures applied). However, very 'clean' hydrocarbon mixtures can be derived from previously 'natural' sources with very specific distillation mixtures being obtained and combined - such sources might only produce <10 completely isolated and identifiable traces on a Gas Chromatograph with Mass Spectrometry or Flame Ionisationdetection. The differentiation of organic and non-organic sources of hydrocarbons (particularly those derived from mined oil (oil wells) and non-mined oil sources) presents huge problems for the regulation of the Exploration and Production industry and the perception that non-mined oil sources are cleaner than mined-oil sources - it is actually the degree of refinement which really determines the 'cleaness' or otherwise of a hydrocarbon and it is equally possible to obtain a 'clean' (limited number of specific chemical hydrocarbons being present) hydrocarbon from mineral oil and non-mineral oil stocks - a fact which entirely complicates their regulation. In any event when it comes to growing bacteria they will scoff and thrive on whatever hydrocarbon source is available - if its a branched chain hydrocarbon source they just take longer to destroy the length of the molecule as they tend to scoff the side chains off first before working on the hydrocarbon longest chain length. If they are already present in the hydrocarbon source then they may take hold quicker as they are already adapted, but they will arrive and feed on hydrocarbons if they are present in due course even if not there from the start! NB. The above is written from the perspective of over 25 years experience working with and regulating hydrocarbons.