Mr niall

its called Al's collimation tool - think it's designed for SCT but works for anything with a mirror 😀

Good work pal, M13 is a great one definitely one of the best out there. Now you’ve bagged M13 next try M92 it’s quite close. If you’ve got the hang of Cygnus try M29 too, not as impressive but quite bright and easy to find.

I would say without question, sort the mirror first. The sheer challenge of making and fitting one of those in a cell would keep anyone busy for years. Its going to weigh an absolute ton. And probably cost several thousand pounds to construct. I've seen people make parabolic mirrors from those silver emergency blankets on inflatable jigs; but I've never seen one work. And they'd never be much use for visual. What are you planning on using as a blank? Are you going to grind it yourself?

Looks like you're still a smidge off. These circles should be concentric and line up. But you're getting closer! If you loosen all three screws 1/4 turn then tighten one of them up all the way you should be just about perfect

There's an altair 102 f11 for sale on the classifieds right now that would be perfect

Are you following astrobaby's guide? Basically you tackle it in two stages: 1. Secondary; The reflections from the primary to the secondary give you a massive headache and are very confusing. That's why you use a piece of paper to block off the primary (like you've done), and ideally a different coloured piece of paper behind the secondary so you can tell the difference between what you are looking at. The secondary has three axis of adjustments - forward/back angled up/down and spun side/to-side. Your first mission is to make sure the forward/ back movement is right eg; you can see the whole secondary mirror through the collimator. That is relatively straight forward - you do that by adjusting the big screw in the middle of the vanes. Your second mission is to make the shape of the edges of the mirror exactly circular; you've got an elliptical mirror angled at 45 degrees. So you know that when it appears circular then the light from the main mirror will be bouncing perfectly at 90 degrees up into your eyes. The third stage is adjusting the twist and angle so that you can see the edge of your primary mirror clips; so you'll need to take the pieces of paper out. Ignore everything but the edge of the mirror clips. You'll need to loosen off the three screws in the centre of the vane for this so you've got a bit of play. Avoid touching the mirror if you can but its not the end of the world if you do. It's important that you remember you aren't trying to "line anything up at this stage" as your primary may be out still (we'll get to that later) If you can't see your clips at all - there's a chance that you have moved your secondary too close to your primary, or possibly your vanes aren't straight and tight but yours look fine. Try racking your focusser out all the way if you are using a Cheshire collimator, this sometimes helps. But either way the clearances are quite tight, with some scopes you can only just see the edge of the clips. Then tighten everything up. There's a chance that these adjustments mean that your secondary mirror doesn't look quite circular anymore - so have another go. This whole process is very very painful and time consuming. It really is a case of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. The good news is that as long as you are reasonably gentle with your scope its only something you need to do every couple of years. As a rule - collimating a scope usually only involves adjusting the primary, and this takes a few seconds and is only a tiny job. 2. Primary Now looking through the collimator all you have to do is line up the centre dots of the main mirror with the cross hairs on your collimator. If your scope is f5 of lower then the crosshairs wont necessarily all line up perfectly due to something called the "offset" but that doesn't matter - just get the circle aligned with the cross hairs using the three adjustment screws at the bottom of the scope. When done you should have: a nice circular looking secondary mirror, the mirror clips of the primary should be more or less equally visible, and the centre spot of the mirror should be in the middle of the crosshairs. It's time consuming, it really is. But once you've done the whole thing once it gets much easier. And as above, a typical collimation only usually requires the primary adjustment which is dead easy. Don't lose heart.

No you're OK you haven't broken it don't panic. Collimation of a scope is somewhere between a skill and an art. Primary collimation (the big mirror) is easy and takes a few seconds: secondary collimation (the little one) is a real pain and can take hours the first time - and I do mean hours. But luckily you don't need to do it very often. Deep breath, cup of tea, go slow and you'll get it. This guide is absolutely brill and takes you through the whole process: http://www.astro-baby.com/astrobaby/help/collimation-guide-newtonian-reflector/ Niall

I'll bet, but this is only 60mm. I'll admit to being very impressed 😀

I bought this scope primarily for solar work but as its the only scope I own, and allegations of green squares everywhere over the weekend, I decided to chuck it in the camper for our trip to Anglesey. Weather was pleasant all weekend but the only clear night was Sunday (last night) which was almost a bit of a shame as we were all absolutely exhausted and ready for bed by 9 but clear night's being so few and far between I felt obliged to do something. Skies were lovely - the milky way easily discernible. Although it is a slightly surreal feeling observing in a campsite surrounded by lots of lights music and beer fuelled conversation while you are trying to observe! Luckily we had a good pitch out of the way and found a nice little dark spot in the corner. I was also interested to see what a 60mm scope could achieve. First off Jupiter - fine with the 20mm but a challenge with the 10 - struggled to get to focus and the image was smushy and smeared. My gut feeling is the supplied 10mm is the culprit here or possibly the diagonal which is a very very cheap plastic affair. Diffraction rings either side of focus looked fine. Or maybe it's just the limitations of the scope? Either way 2 bands easily visible and the four moons looked great. Box ticked. I didn't have any astronomy books with me and no phone signal so, still dubious about the power of a 60mm, played it safe and aimed at bright stuff that I knew I could find. M13 was an easy find, no stars but enough grasp to see a transition between an inner and outer level of fuzziness which was very pleasing. Spent 20 mins on it. For the life of me I have no idea why I didn't go straight to M92 it just didn't occur to me but in my defence I was knackered! Next stop M27. I always use Saggitta and go up from the end of the "arrow" on the way there I had a go at M71. I've never found this at home but, maybe it was the tiredness, or the beer, or my imagination, but I was sure I could pick it out. Definitely a "suspected". M27 surprisingly another very easy find. Even more surprisingly had moments of great definition with a definite square shape jumping out. I was intending to have a go at M57 but was already in danger of falling asleep at the eyepiece and the lens was already dewing quite heavily so called it a night. All in all very productive, good scope on a good mount. I'll need to replace the 10mm I think but my only real criticism is the 6x24mm finder. It is truly useless, narrow fov and dim and fuzzy. Essentially unusable. Definitely an upgrade required. But for a £48 setup you can only expect so much!

From the camera setup it looks like the SCT is the guider in this setup 😉

Hello there and welcome

Good work, keep it up! However if it were me I'd save your money for a while, it's true that the eyepieces that come with your scope aren't amazing - they are definitely not bad though. Of the two that come with your scope the 20/25mm is actually not too bad, it's the 10mm that's the weaker one and you've replaced that with the BST. I wouldn't say that buying more eyepieces would provide the transformative experience you may be expecting. And they definitely definitely won't make previously invisible objects jump out at you. In astronomy the improvements are more incremental. As cheesy as it sounds the best investment you can make is time. Observation is a skill and takes time to perfect - the views will improve as your experience improves.

What you are seeing is about right. The biggest challenge preventing you from getting clear views of planets is atmospheric turbulence, which causes planets to wobble and smudge in and out of focus no matter how big your scope. The planets are really poorly placed at the moment (quite low) and this exacerbates the issue. General Consensus is that 250x is the reasonable max on a big aperture. I used to have the same scope as you and I found 75 to 80x gave the best views. After that the view starts to degrade. The best thing to do is to focus on Jupiter's moons not Jupiter itself. When these are tack sharp then Jupiter is in focus too. You should be able to make out at least two bands. You should be able to see the gap between saturn and its rings. This photo is pretty close to Jupiter on a really good night Edit: I was always told about 35x per inch of aperture max on planets and that puts you in the same place as mentioned above.

From the spaceship, thats clearly a shot of button moon (although I can't quite see Mr Spoon) 😜 I'm so grateful when people add little markers to these things really adds context. That looks like quite a tricky landing site. Do you think they came in from the North East? Or would it be North West on the moon 🧐 Always confuses me!

Hi Rob; I must admit the irony of this amuses me as the significant changes were in fact made to add a lighter touch to a post in which- in all honesty - I've felt fairly "got at" from the moment I posted. What was meant as a "heads up", seems to have turned into a bit of a Niall bashing and quite frankly I'm getting tired of being told why I'm wrong and what is and isn't good form. I wish I'd never started this thread.

Well its a good old debate if nothing else! I can think of other astronomy forums where we'd all be driving round to each other's houses with baseball bats by this point in the argument! 😉 I love this place! 🤪😀

I see. So if I said "Skipper Billy has increased the prices of items in his shop, that's disappointing. To buy the same item will cost me more today than a week ago", and you had indeed increased the prices of items in your shop, then that would somehow qualify as a criticism of you and your shop? Have we somehow moved to a universe where people don't care what things cost anymore, and any observation of the relative cost of items is taboo? If I was planning to spend £10,000 on a car that was advertised as £10,000; and then they increased the price of that vehicle to £10,800, I think I would be perfectly entitled to say "that's disappointing, why have you put your prices up?" Or is that "having a go"?

I don't think anyone on here has had a go at FLO. Or Skywatcher. And I disagree, I think this exactly the place to discuss it. As seen above, FLO took the opportunity to rationalise their increases which they didn't have to do and further reinforces their excellent reputation. I don't see how the price match isn't a good move. They were already the cheapest for just about everything anyway so all we're talking about is a limited extension of an existing pricing strategy. In fact in the vast majority of stuff that is price matched will still be selling for more than the original FLO price anyway due to their undercut.

coat of paint on that tube and it'll look a million dollars (not that it matters in the dark).

That's almost definitely M22 or - more likely M24 just above it from the description. Its a good one! edit: actually no, thinking about the description of nebulosity it sounds more like the lagoon, it does have a sort of elongated fuzz off to one side if I remember right.

My frustration isn't aimed at you Steve, or FLO in general, just an expression of disappointment. The current economic climate more than justifies any price increase (not that justification is needed). I would still rather shop with you or RVO than any of your competitors. However as a consumer, more expensive is still more expensive! Edit; fair enough, I will amend my original post to reflect my poor maths skills!

Tried that with a star adventurer 6 weeks and they refused. And it was RVO.

Looks like FLO have just put a blanket 10-15% increase on pretty much every Skywatcher item in the shop... not sure about other brands. That's disappointing, have been mulling over a big spend for the last couple of months, completely priced out now.... Edit; thanks @FLO for pointing out it is actually much lower than 10%, apparently 6-8% Edit 2: Having done some research overnight it appears that @FLO are still just about the cheapest around for everything I was after even with the price increases. And yes it looks like everyone has increased their prices. Probably should have titled my post "Everyone has just got more expensive" rather than make it look like FLO bashing - which was never my intention either way. But yes - Boooooo!

You'd think that would make it much cheaper....

Well they're Japanese for a start. And they're high ticket items which means that, Takahashi being relatively small, a limited distribution network probably means dealers have to buy the scopes and then sell them on rather than acquiring them through a sale or return deal that the sellers of more mass-market scopes enjoy. And that means a higher amount of risk - especially for warranty returns etc etc. Once you add shipping, import taxes, the relative strength / weakness of the yen vs the dollar, distributor mark up, sale and then the dealer overheads of actually holding these things then you usually end up with a relatively small markup even for a higher price. As a Japanese seller or distributor you probably bypass a lot of that. A lot a lot. But... the relative scarcity of Tak's and their reputation, means that some people might be "pushing the envelope" in terms of markup. Conversely they may be expecting to sell lower despite the advertised price. I remember when it happened here in the 90's with Levi's and Nike Jordans. We were paying like double US prices. It happened with cars here too in the mid-90s. Edit: Have you tried asking them? They might give you an honest answer.