Shaun_Astro

It iterally won't budge a single mm. I tried rotating it, it's jammed in place or glued.

Aha! No luck with the dew shield. But I may have found the issue. The eyepiece holder clamp was either knocked wonky or screwed on poorly. It was at an angle and off the threads. I've straightened it up and it seems to be reasonably in collimation now. The image shows after in took it off and screwed it back on again. I thought the dew shield didn't look wonky enough to cause that much of an issue. I assume the divergence from the centre now is due to that or poor collimation of the focuser.

The dewcap or the dew shield? How do you collimate the focuser, it seems to have 3 screws holding it in place, and none to adjust it.

Yes the optics seem great. Lens is about 1/4 the way up the dew shield as shown, and it doesn't seem to actually have a lens cell per se. It's fixed into the dew shield, which is strange! The dewshield assembly is absolutely stuck fast. In every other refactor you can unscrew it or pull it off, but not in this case. This this might be the R&P focuser out of collimation, but there's no way to adjust that either! I've contacted bresser and asked if there is a way to fix it my end or they can arrange for UPS to sort out their mess.

With bouncing the laser off a mirror back square into the focuser...

Yes it seems it is off a lot! I tried to unscrew the lens, it's either glued or stuck. Why would they throw it over a gate when I put in a note to put it into a storage box.

It's used, was a good price and there are no others available. It does look a tad wonky which worries me. I'll could check the collimation of the lens against a star next clear night, and if it passes I'll keep it I think. Is there a certain way to check or just see how the difference of in and out focused diffraction rings are circular or lopsided. Here is the sun through it just a minute ago. Looks OK to me.

I left a note on my door stating there is a storage box by my gate, which I left unlocked. I came home to find my ar90 had been thrown/dropped over the gate. I see the lens assembly is in the dew shield and it doesn't seem to be straight over the tube assembly. I just looked at the clouds and sun, it seems OK. It doesn't look right in the scope though, there is no way to collimate it apparently, this is a used version. What do you think?

Well that went off topic fast. Seems scopes on Ebay are very expensive currently, and widescreen centre also. People might actually start grinding their mirrors again at this rate... *Looks at my box with 1/2 finished 6" mirror and grits* 🤨

I've been looking for a new frac recently and I see every single one is out of stock on flo, what's going on? Has manufacturing stopped or everyone gone scope crazy?

These are nice, but they are £200+ without tripod, and with tripod wil weigh about 6kg, which is 50% more than the pronto or nano and double the price. I was hoping to walk for a while with that and the telescope and I'm a cheapskate. The omegon az baby looks good, but again with buying a tripod will be £300 nearly. Could just make a small copper pipe mount I guess. The Bresser nano looks like a mint az4 which I like. I guess it probably will be OK for lower mags only.

I'm looking for a lightweight, az mount for my small refractors that I can carry to a darker site. Im looking at the Bresser nano and sw pronto predominantly. Does anyone have experience of the two? There seems to be few first hand accounts of either. I like the slow motion controls and photographic type tripod of the pronto, I could get a gti head for it at a later date. But I'm put off by the weight of the telescope being above the center of rotation, I know it can cause balance issues. BTW will be using from 70/450 to 70/900 on it. Both under 2.5kg. Thanks.

£379 seemed a bit steep, and then am I right that this isn't including the tripod or slow motion control handles? That's £900 in total! Cripes!

Interestingly I found these telescopes being discussed from 2016. They mentioned making a batch of 100, and 50 were finished, I wonder if these being sold here are from that batch. If they really are that good, having one of only 100 made is quite a rarity, and enticing. Surely an exclusive club these long Fl achromats. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/553726-currently-available-standard-achromats/page-5 Also, the seeing in the SE UK was phenomenal last night. The moon at 200x was as steady as I have ever seen it. The terminator was directly over Theophilus , illuminating it's central peak. Here is a picture from my Meade 70/900 with a shaky phone camera (hence blurring at the top), I can imagine the 80/1200 would have delivered a much better view.

Do you have a link? The entire focuser looks plastic to me.

That's true. It is a very crisp view of the Vallis Schoteri and Aristarchus, I recall this is one of the features I looked at using my Meade Polaris 70/900 a few weeks ago with a yellow filter at 180x and to be frank this blows it clean out of the water (as one would expect). But then a 150pl for £185 (42% of the price) could perhaps give as good or better views?

Well, back on track... There's a nice clip of the moon using the STL-80 Maxi on youtube here: (a surprising amount of blue?)

Wonder how it would compare to an evostar 120 with an apo filter.

These look great, but a typical 80mm acromat is less than half the price. I guess Japanese quality and low production quantity put the price up. A bresser 90/1350 is £133.

The evostar 80 uses fpl53, the Evolux probably uses a new glass discussed earlier, which isn't quite as good. as FPL53 apparently. It seems very expensive if seems but then, maybe the 80ed was under priced. The WO 81apo is £799, and that's a fpl53 doublet. The lens design is perhaps better also than the 80ed.

£730 to replace a £375 80 Ed. Jeez I might buy the evostar if it's being discontinued.

Amazing, several clear nights all at once! NGC 2903. Unfortunately a very small target for the 130pds. 9.5 hours of 180". Unmodded 1300d, ISO 800.

Thanks for the replies. I did angle 12o'clock to the top, then used SAM APP to show where polaris should be. I got it smack on there. I did just get sharpcap PRO and used the polar alignment feature with my guidecam to check the position. I was about a minute and a half out. Managed to get it just under a minute with it, the bolts are too sensitive. At least I know I was doing it correctly!

I have the position of polaris on my phone. But when I look through the polarscope, the 12oclock doesn't point up, and it's about 30deg rotated. Do I rotate the DEC axis it so 12oclock is pointing upwards? Or this this an issue and that should be pointing upwards when the mount is in parked mode?

The current ED80 uses FPL-53, and retails at £379. The Evolux features effectively the same glass then, but is listed as $1500 AUD, that's £750, twice the price.