Littleguy80

Interesting idea, Gerry. My first thought is that competition is healthy. It drives those at the top to keep innovating to stay at the top. APM seem to be releasing good quality new eyepieces at good prices too. Their upcoming super zoom looks to be something new rather than a direct clone of another eyepiece. I think Televue will be fine. At the very least, it’s within their control to remain successful.

Experimentation is definitely the key as it really varies depending on the target. The Swan and Lagoon are nice with an OIII so I think you can afford to go lower mag to get a larger exit pupil for the filter. One of my favourite views of the Swan was widefield in a 72mm scope with an OIII. I think the eyepiece was a 24mm Panoptic. The view was wide enough to show both the Eagle and Swan in the same FOV. Stunning! Without a filter I’d agree that high mag will probably be needed with that scope. For dark nebula, it’s a trade off of enough mag to gain contrast vs big enough FOV to pick up the edges of the nebula. It really comes down to the size of the nebula and how dark the skies are.

I think Barnard’s E is a great starter dark nebula. You can pick it up in binoculars from dark skies. It’s a nice one where you can really pick it out by the absence of stars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Nebula Couple of nice articles on other dark nebula you can see. http://eastexastronomy.blogspot.com/2010/08/messier-24-sagittarius-star-cloud.html?m=1 https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/dive-into-scutums-dark-nebulae071520151507/ E.E. Barnard’s Atlas of dark nebulae has also been digitised here: https://exhibit-archive.library.gatech.edu/barnard/ I have a hard copy of this which is a good resource too.

Excellent report. Glad you got to see it again. Mag 15 stars in a 10” is really impressive!

That’s great, thank you very much! Noticeable improvement! Excellent tip. I have lots to learn on processing.

Was observing the beginning of the Europa transit of Jupiter last night and decided to indulge in a little smartphone astrophotography. Taken with iPhone 11 through 6mm BGO, I think the left most picture might have been a different eyepiece. Telescope was my 10” dob. Not the best quality but you can see the shadow

Congratulations John. It’s not just the advice but the enthusiastic and detailed observing reports that have added so much. Much like Stu, I’ve seen countless great targets that would have passed me by otherwise. Many thanks John. Keep up the great work

Sorry you missed it, John but great story with the tool bag!

As a ball park, around the same distance as there is between Al Fawaris (Cygnus) and Vega.

It was traveling around the same speed as the ISS and maybe 1-2 seconds behind it. I’m terrible with judging distances. It was further behind it than I was expecting.

Just saw it too. Thanks for the heads up, Stu. Would have missed this otherwise. Tracked the ISS in the frac for a little bit. Spotted the Russian module naked eye following along behind. Very cool!

Nice one. Thank you

Thanks Jeremy. Does this Nova have an official designation? I’ve been Googling around without much success.

I was looking yesterday evening and thought I spotted a new AR on the limb. Great to get it confirmed

It’s taken me about an hour but I think I’ve seen this Nova. Using the chart from @JeremyS and @Wyvern’s excellent image I tracked it down. I’ve marked the location that I believe I saw it on the SkySafari screenshot below. It looks a little dimmer than the nearby mag 12.5 stars so I’m guess it’s somewhere between 12.5 and 13. Fingers crossed I matched up everything up correctly!

Looks great, Paul

Thanks Mark. It was only just above the rooftops when I caught it last night. It was around 00:40 so it’s bright enough that you don’t need it to get really high in the sky.

I managed to observe this last night. It seemed brighter than mag 12.8 initially and I started to doubt I was seeing it. I did some testing on nearby stars of similar mag and decided it was about right. Very close to the centre of the host galaxy which gave a nice ghostly glow. Many thanks to@michael.h.f.wilkinson for the heads up.

I’ve always wanted to try for this. Last night, I carefully set everything up. Planning on having my 80mm refractor tracking on Star Adventurer with TS Optics Herschel wedge and Canon 250D. I would then observe this visually in HA with my Daystar SS60. With the rush of getting kids ready for school, it was all a bit rushed. I was struggling to get everything aligned so switched the camera over to the manual mount. As SkySafari was showing the ISS getting closer, I was desperately trying to get the Sun framed correctly. I stood for a few seconds wondering if I missed it. Then I saw it on the screen, quick tap to capture the image. Phew, I could see that I had something that was in focus enough to see what it was! Little bit of processing in Affinity Photo led to the final result below. Not a smooth ride but I’m pleased with the end result!

Similar here. Stunning!

It's fine without the Barlow. I do have floaters but these dart about as I move my eye around. These remain fixed in place and only move when I rotate the eyepiece. I'm certainly not dismissing that it's an exit pupil issue but I use much smaller exit pupils elsewhere and only see the normal floaters when really pushing it. The behaviour just seems more akin to something on an optical surface rather than eyesight.

Just run this test again in daylight using the 80mm frac and Barlow. Managed to see the same spots exactly the same as I see them in the SS60. At least this confirms it’s the eyepiece. I’ve emailed Telescope House and RVO to enquire about cleaning and costs.

I went hunting for this tonight. Found it using my 80mm refractor, which added an extra level challenge as I would normally use the 10” dob for something like this. Nice little glob which I will revisit with the dob. Thanks for highlighting this one, John!

Just picked it up in the 80mm refractor at 16x. It looks dimmer again than Sunday night. HD 176156, listed at Mag 9.5 in SkySafari, looks about the same to me.

Just wanted to added a note of thanks for all the responses to this thread. Much appreciated!