LukeSkywatcher

This was today?. Visible from UK and Ireland?. It was a beautiful clear day here in my part of Ireland. 

Dagnamit, I had no idea. 

Myself and Lorna are going to Upstate New York in April 2024 for the Total Solar Eclipse. It will be our honeymoon. 3 weeks. Meet family and friends, and hopefully catch the eclipse. 

I have the 130P. I bought it the year it was released. I love it.  I don't think the 150 was even available. For £50 extra, I'd go for the 150.

I saw this. I thought it sounded like a good idea. Not sure I'd like to effectively be living in/on a giant microwave oven. 

It's very glitchy. Very unuser friendly.

11 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

Ask Jeremy..👍😂

Dave

Jeremy......

Fess up.

4 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

..only seems to have 11 or 12 handles though, Jeremy?🤔..

Dave

What is the running joke about Jeremy and handles?.

I obviously missed something.

On 19/09/2022 at 08:27, Mr Spock said:

I'd go for the hairdryer option. With SCTs dew heaters tend to create tube currents and low level 'tremor' in the image.

I saw a good lecture a few years ago by Damien Peach where he detailed all this. With a hairdryer the effect on the scope is only temporary.

That's actually really good advice. I'd never of thought about it like that.

I do have a dew heater, but will buy a small travel hair dryer.

Good old Damien Peach.

M31 is often a naked eye object from my location. Conditions have to be perfect though.

I always bring a pair of 10x50 bins when I travel. 

I was in Marakesh when I was 21, but was in a time of my life when astronomy wasn't that important to me. I was more interested in other heavenly pursuits.

I was going to suggest 4Se, but tripod and mount are a big weighty.

My neighbour had the trees at the end of his garden "pruned" last week. I thought it a great idea as it would give me a better view of my western/southwest view. 

How wrong was I. Now I'm staring at 20ft tall flood lights in the football pitches behind. 

This week he has erected a wooden fence between our gardens. It's 6ft 4 tall. It's visible above my 6ft 2 metal fence. Flood lights still visible.

Not content with this, he is now constructing an 8-10ft tall wooden structure the whole way across his garden. It's possibly a home garden office or annex. 

Hopefully it will block out the light from afore mentioned lights.

I still have to stare at it though. It may even block out sunlight from my garden, which I'm not happy about.

I have a Celestron 8Se, a Skywatcher Heritage 130P, a Bresser ARxs 102.

One is for trousers, one is for shirts and one is for jackets.

My bedroom floor is immaculate.

This brought back the memory of the 1st time I saw Saturn back in 2007. 

Exactly how I remember it.

On 08/10/2022 at 19:25, JeremyS said:

Must be Red Nose Day again.

It reminds me of an episode of Fr. Ted

22 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Placed a wanted ad for a 2" nosepiece compatible with my MKIII Baader zoom.

Thanks to Sheila, who came up with one for me..note-this is not the same as a standard Baader 2" nosepiece, this one is threaded specifically for insertion into the Baader Zoom body (all models).

I love Baader's connectivity solutions..I can now use the zoom as a 2", as a 1.25" and with or without the Hyperion Zoom barlow in both formats..👍

With 2" nosepiece..zoom barlow just threads up the inside onto the bottom of the zoom body.

With zoom lens in place inside 2" nosepiece..

Zoom with 2" nosepiece into 2" Clicklock into Baader Zeiss BBHS prism..

1.25" nosepiece with Zoom barlow threaded onto the bottom, for use in Baader T2 prism with my Vixen SP102 which can't take 2" fittings.

Dave

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Baader 8-24 zoom come with both 1.25 and 2" adapter?. Mine did.

1 hour ago, craftui said:

The view was.. hmm.. how do I explain it? Claustrophobic I suppose. It felt as if I was lying deep in a hole underground looking up at the sky. Everything was extremely dark except for the very bright objects - Jupiter in my case. As for Jupiter, I could only see it for a moment before I had to nudge the scope again to follow it and the image was sort of "on fire" - not a pleasing sight. I'm in my 30s and the eyesight is still ok, fortunately. As for the collimation, I think it is good ?(image attached) So I concluded I just don't enjoy the high power views in my scope and don't find them as beautiful and pleasing as the peaceful and harmonious 7mm and 11mm views. 

Maybe it's the angle of the photo, but the collimation looks to be a good bit off.

Dad dancing. Head,arms,legs flapping all over the place.

Self-employment is great at facilitating astronomy. I wouldn't dare tell the boss to go to bed at 2-3am.

3 minutes ago, allworlds said:

A few have suggested the short tube frac. And I could get for example a Startravel 102 on an AZ3 for pretty much the same price as the Mak on the Pronto. I hear the advantage that they're probably the most durable type but my doubts are threefold. One, unless the f ratio is very short they're not coming in as compact as the Mak. Two, the CA is putting me off (and I'm pretty sure apos are well out of my budget). And three, if I want a scope that's good for widefield and poor for high power, I already have that in the Heritage 76. I think I'm taken by the idea of a Mak as almost the exact opposite.

And yes. I used to have a "department store" 60mm frac bodged onto a lousy photo tripod. It did an OK job looking at the Sun with a Baader film filter on the front; watched the Venus transit in it. But pointing at anything at night was hopeless.

That's another thing to factor in when transporting a scope on a bike (I assume a motorcycle). Tripods and mounts are not the easiest of things to transport unless in a car etc. 

P.s.- PLEASE don't consider anything like this: Celestron 70mm Travelscope. Yes, it comes in a nice backpack. The scope is just OK. The tripod is absolutely a no go. You'll throw it in the bin.

Lesson learned by myself.

8 minutes ago, sorrimen said:

You’re asking a lot i.e. basically everything you can ask for in a scope. Portability, ease of set up, both visual and AP, significantly better than 6” of aperture, and to top it all off not too expensive 😆

I think your wisest option is to think about what you can compromise on. GOTO dobs are great and for a ‘significant’ upgrade over 6” you can get a 10” or 12” that is still relatively manageable in multiple trips, albeit getting heavy. That said, you will be rather limited photography-wise. As you understand, you will have field rotation limiting long exposures, and the tracking itself isn’t going to come close to guided set ups. There are people who do great work with quirky set ups, but these are generally people who already have a lot of skills and experience. I for one, without many skills, have done solar system imaging with an 8” dob with reasonable success, but I wouldn’t even dream of recommending this for someone wanting to get into solar system imaging unless they were very financially constrained. It’s possible, but you’ve said you want something ‘easily adapted’ to AP and I’d have to say that AP with a dob is simply the hardest form of AP there is. 

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a visual rig that is a significant step up above 6” (i.e. 10” or more as you specify) that can be adapted to AP if you suddenly decide you want to pursue it. Visual requires large aperture over everything else and arguably favours certain f/ratios (e.g. not too fast for aberrations, but not such a long focal length that limits any low mags). AP favours fast f/ratios and the best tracking you can manage, with aperture being as large as you can afford with good tracking. There are middle grounds that work e.g. a 150mm apo on a good mount, a large reflector on a good mount but these middle grounds are incredibly expensive and don’t fit your requirements anyway, either being too small an aperture or too heavy/unwieldy a set up. 

The issue is that whilst you can take photos with GOTO dobs and have good visual experiences with small scopes, neither are optimised for those purposes so it’s very difficult to recommend options without feeling you’re likely to be disappointed in one aspect or another with your very strict and expansive requirements. Note that you have also asked for improvements in detail and quality of views. Detail in DSOs is by far dominated by light pollution. Andromeda from my bortle 7 skies will look like a big grey smudge from 50mm of aperture right up to probably 250mm or more. Regarding planets, seeing is the dominant factor. 6” of aperture let’s you push well into most average places’ seeing atmospheric conditions, magnification-wise. Larger scopes will show you more detail to a certain extent, but they will be more affected by seeing and the magnification will be limited by the atmosphere unless you live somewhere with fantastic conditions. Improvements will be there but planetary detail is subtle so you have to be realistic! 

Hope I haven’t pooped on the party too much but I know if I was in your position I’d want someone to be upfront with whether my expectations were realistic. With some compromises you can be very satisfied, but I feel as though right now you’re on the path to be let down in one aspect or another. 

Best of luck!

Very honest reply there. The main question is do you want to be a visual observer or an astrophotography?.

Astrophotography is about the most expensive road to take. It's more about the mount than the scope. Visual is more about the scope than the mount. 

It's probably been said already (I didn't read all the comments). A small short tube refractor would be great. They rarely lose collimation, sturdy little things etc etc. I have a Bresser ARxs 102. Granted I don't take it for a bike ride.

The Skywatcher Heritage 130P or 150 are also great travellers. The collimation on them is tight. I've had a 130P since 2009 (I think), and never needed to collimate it. 

My Bresser 102 (stock photo). Mine has no tube rings for attaching. Its a Dovetail mounting. 

My Skywatcher Heritage 130P (Stock photo).

For me personally (being a wheelchair user), until a few yrs ago, the biggest aperture scope I had and able to manage was a Heritage 130P. Brilliant scope, but I wanted MORE. 

I did research, and asked people what would be best for me. The conclusion was a Celestron 8se. 

I love the scope. I'm purely visual, so it ticks that box. It's light and easy to set up. It ticks that box. It's not overly expensive. That's another box ticked.

My point IS, that even a modest jump in aperture (in my case 130mm-200mm) was a giant leap for me with regards to observing. 

I now have an 8" scope that I can single handedly carry outside and set up on my own, without having to rely on anyone for help. 

I'm not suggesting that you buy an 8se (although it's a good choice).

I bought something that works for me. My 1st scope was a 90mm refractor on an EQ mount. I found it difficult to use, so it was only used a handful of times. The best scope is one you will use often.

I was in Copenhagen in 2015 (during the day). It was anything but cloudy. 30C+ in July. 

On 29/09/2022 at 17:49, Sabalias said:

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to do anything on the astro front this September. Some forecasts have been clear but the reality has been anything but. Missed Jupiter in opposition too. Very disappointing but I guess that’s the joy of this hobby in the British Isles.  On the plus side I managed to see the aurora borealis on a trip to Norway at the beginning of the month 😁

Stu

That certainly makes up for it. I'm hoping to go and see the NLs for my 50th in 2024.