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Captain Scarlet

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Everything posted by Captain Scarlet

  1. Our local Astro club meet tonight, and a very good showing. Of people, not skies! Forecast clear, so it was when I started setting up. Literally the exact moment my scope touched the mount, I heard pat-pat-pat on my jacket. OTA back in the car for half an hour or so, then it seemed to clear. As we were all back out and I’d just done my alignment, the heavens truly opened! So what did I see tonight? Just Alcyone, my 1-star align. All kit, OTA, eyepiece, diagonal, finder, lifepo4, handset etc etc now arranged on my table, dabbed down with towel and drying. Magnus
  2. I recently, from our classifieds, got a 3” Feathertouch focuser which I plan to attach to my Stellarvue SVX140T refractor, replacing its stock focuser. Inevitably I need extra adapters, one from Starlight and one from SV. I ordered and paid for the relevant bits from Starlight in the USA last night, to be delivered to Ireland. Immediately on doing that, I went to my email to check whether I had an acknowledgment. Rather than the usual auto-generated “order confirmed” message, I got this pair of emails: ”Magnus, Hello. I think I can get this shipped out today still. My FedEx guy already came, but I have to take another package to the facility so I will take yours. I do have the address in Ireland. I imagine it is beautiful and maybe out in the middle of nowhere? It won’t give me an estimated delivery date. Sometimes the stuff I ship to England gets there in 2 days, so you should have it next week sometime. I didn’t use USPS because they have recently lost a lot of my international packages. Your FedEx tracking number is I hope your day was good. …. Also, FedEx really wanted my business so they gave me some really nice international rates. I haven’t had time to put it on the website. Chris will be issuing you a partial refund for the freight cost difference. Dena Joseph President Starlight Instruments, LLC” The email was within minutes of ordering. What a lovely-sounding company! Cheers, Magnus
  3. Personally, and as the happy visual owner of a skymax 180 (and author of the reverse engineering skymax180 thread) I would go for the CC8. Dewing of the corrector plate on the skymax is a terrible problem. M
  4. I have two 90-degree 1.25” diagonals, and I did just that a year or so ago out of curiosity when my SV140 arrived. It worked very well, but as @Louis D says, to get the image upright you have to view it from the side. Attached a picture of it when _not_ viewing from the side, where the image would have been 90 degrees rotated IIRC. Magnus
  5. Finally got to see Mercury this apparition, through 10x50 bins and _just about_ naked eye. Then a wodge of black cloud appeared in just the wrong spot. Hopefully I’ll have another opportunity in the next few days, but at least the box has been ticked this year. M
  6. I‘m another one in the camp that disagrees with the notion that mirrors rarely need cleaning. The most telling thing in the first (quite funny) cleaning video was where you see the part of the mirror that had been under the side-clips, and contrast it with the surface immediately adjoining. A huge difference, that I also see whenever I’m cleaning my mirrors. And looking at my own reflection in such a mirror it’s obvious the contrast is heavily dulled compared to that small bit of reflection from the tiny “under-the-clips” bits. When I look down the tube of my 12”, having not cleaned it for a number of months, I see a blue-ish haze. With such a mirror I’ve been disappointed by the visual experience under the stars, then comparing a day or so later to a cleaned mirror, the difference is, er, night and day. Massive difference in what I poorly describe as “overall sparkle”. I’ve been puzzled as to the source or mechanism for this haze. It looks like condensation when illuminated, but it’s not water condensation. It does clean away though. The penny only dropped a few days ago when browsing Kriege & Berry’s dobsonian book. Talking about condensation, they say that a thick mirror (stored in say a garage) rarely dews up in the field, but does dew up in storage, as the area daily heats up and cools down, and the thick mirror’s temperature lags behind. That daily micro-dewing gradually sticks and deposits any very fine dust in the air onto the mirror. It makes sense to me. So, I’m very much an advocate of a regularly clean mirror, and the visual difference in overall contrast is to my eyes dramatic. Cheers, Magnus
  7. Well blow me down with a Feather(touch). Thanks to @steppenwolf, my SV 140mm refractor will before long be adorned with the ultimate focuser. Not sure what to do with the extant one, SV native 3.5” I believe, but it has very much the feel of Baader Diamond Steeltrack about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s made by the same. Also @bosun21 for the Morpheus 12.5, which may well oust my Ethos 13. And a couple of eBay delights, a BCO 6 and an old “25x” Zeiss microscope eyepiece that cost very little. Magnus
  8. check the price and you’ll see how serious I was being 😁
  9. If I were you I’d opt for maximum stability and go for the Berlebach Graviton. It’s only slightly more expensive than the Planet 😉 M
  10. I have an az-eq6, and I regularly mount my 12” newt on it. Although these days it’s always in alt-az mode, I did initially balance it all up in eq mode, see the attached picture. The scope shown, a steel-tube 300p, was 28kg with attachments, significantly heavier I think than the OO12. The mount was quite happy with it, though as @John suggests, it does take a while to cart it out and set it up (and pack away afterwards!). cheers, Magnus
  11. Skymax 127. My very first scope was a Skymax 180 (which I still have) but for light-polluted use in London my wife shortly afterwards bought me a Skymax 127. Then a member here offered a straight swap for a Skymax 150, which I accepted, so the 127 departed. Skymax 150. A somewhat battered Intes M603 (also a 150mm Mak) came up on here, which I restored (and still have). So the Skymax 150 was sold. Skywatcher 200p. I bought this as the largest aperture likely to be useful from London skies. But the tube was flexible, changing collimation as I changed altitude, and the secondary was smaller than the principal light-cone, so it was really only ever a 7” newt. Luckily just then a VX8 1/10 (which I still have, though re-tubed with carbon) came up, so the 200p went. Skywatcher 300p, sort of. This one’s a bit involved. I’ve got rid of almost all of it in several stages. Trigger’s Broom one might say. Bought from here as my dark-sky larger-aperture companion to the skymax180. As it was it served me very well. But I later replaced the mirror with an OO 1/10. I replaced the tube with a Helmerichs carbon. I replaced the cell with an OO cell, and the secondary with a Hubble Optics. Only the spider and secondary boss remains (they’re quaking). I’ve just sold my Leica Televid 62apo spotter to a friend here. I occasionally used it as a super-finder on my skytee2, but since I got my extraordinary Kowa 883 a number of years ago I’ve not taken the Leica out for birding. That’s it I think. Cheers, Magnus PS I’m eagerly anticipating @Stu1smartcookie’s response. I reckon it’ll take him a few days to compile 😁.
  12. Yes that’s right, AZ-EQ6 in alt-az mode. My most memorable planetary moments have been Saturn/Mimas recently with my 140mm refractor, and Mars, at opposition, just when I first got the mirror which is now part of my 12” newt. At that time I had just evicted the SW mirror from its 300p blue steel tube and drilled a lot of holes to provide temporary accommodation for the longer-FL OO mirror. Mars that night was like an atlas-map with the 12”. I have observed Jupiter through it but seeing hasn’t cooperated. The best I’ve seen Jupiter has been through its smaller sibling, my 8” newt. Magnus
  13. I’m lucky enough to have moved to a lovely dark-sky place, and although I have some enviable scopes, whatever I take out there is always a tinge of regret that if I had my 12” out, it would be better. So my “one scope” would be that, my 300mm Newt. Magnus
  14. A lovely Spring clear day so I set out my LZOS 105 hoping to catch Mercury. Sadly a stubborn patch of cloud remained just where Mercury was. I consoled myself with some surprisingly good but very brief views of Jupiter and all four moons flung far out from the planet. As soon as I switched from 93x to 217x, same cloud started to dim the view. Scope remains out, though.
  15. I have a collection, mostly TeleVue, including some very high-end eyepieces. They are almost all very good indeed, to my reckoning, but only one has totally blown me away with its capability, showing me one particular object one night that others could not. It was my Baader BCO 10, showing Mimas easily at only 94x through my 140mm refractor. Barlowing with a Celestron Ultima 2x continued to show it, but I could not see it at all through my TV Delos 6 or Tak LE 5. Returning to the BCO again, there it was. In that test, the best eyepiece I own, and the cheapest! I have a BCO 6 in transit, it’ll be interesting see if it matches that performance. Magnus
  16. What is about John Nichol mirrors that makes it so difficult for them to become actual telescopes? That’s two I count in this thread…
  17. I have 7.5 scopes at the moment. - Intes M603, a 6” f/12.9 Mak which I hardly ever use. - Skymax 180, f/16, flocked inside and silvered outside, which gets occasional use. - 200mm f/4.3 Newtonian (which used to be your OO VX8) and which I re-tubed with a Helmerichs carbon tube. I use it more often than the Maks. - 300mm f/5.4 Newtonian also carbon-tubed and OO-celled. I use it as often as low-Moon skies, time, energy and weather permit. My first choice. - LZOS 105/650 f/6.2 refractor. Used frequently. - Stellarvue SVX140T f/6.7 refractor. Lovely scope. Used frequently. - my half-scope: a 20” f/3.7 mirror-set, which I plan to build into a Dobsonian. - an 88mm spotting scope, used as grab & go and birding, a Kowa TSN-883 ive just sold my small spotting scope, so only 7.5! Cheers, Magnus
  18. I optimistically put out my SV140 this evening on the off-chance of enough cloud gaps. In the event it was actually clear, the first night for weeks, and almost no wind. But Capella twinkling high up to the west didn’t bode well for the seeing. But beggars … etc. Tegmine was first. I’ve never failed to split this before, perhaps because I may have only ever observed it through my 12”. No split at 134x with the DeLite 7, at 208x with the Delos 4.5 or even at 268x with the Delos 3.5. Not even close. Algieba was of course easily split but not very pretty, a wobbling orange pair. The Galactic Wanderer far-off globular NGC 2419 was fairly easily seen though, a dim smudge at the end of a trail of 3 brightish stars. NGC 4565 Needle Galaxy in Coma was obvious, as was NGC 2903 a mag 9 galaxy just off Leo’s nose. Izar was split but to confirm the poor seeing I went to eps lyrae and for the first time ever was unable to split either pair. I was still very happy to get out after so long, and those two galaxies were firsts for me. SQM-L 21.66 as I packed up. Magnus
  19. Excellent addition to my Spring List - thanks. Should be readily doable on the right night with my 140. M
  20. I knew I was going to get called out on that 😃. Anthony Davoli Machining, now I know
  21. Not at all Dave I too feel the same frustration for the same reasons. Thank you - yes they’re always on my list, some of the very few that I can always remember.
  22. Lovely report. I have Telrads and I’m afraid I’ve moved on from them, for the very reason you mention: they fog up before anything else. A shame because when not fogged up, they’re superb. Baader SS V is what I use now. Next up try M51 and M81/2 both in Ursa Major. They’ll be fabulous where you are in a 10”! Cheers, Magnus
  23. Thanks John. I’ve seen it a few times in my 12 inch, where your description “faint and indistinct” still applies, although in that scope it’s not difficult IIRC. Good you’ve got it in your 4 inch. It’s on my Spring list so I’ll definitely give it a go with mine next clear night!
  24. In my 7 or so years of observing I’ve never got organized enough to put together a seasonal List _before_ the season. Occasionally I’ve compiled a list more or less after the event, then forgotten it for the next year. Now, thanks to @Stu’s latest session, I have already got a good list going. I want to add some PNs, a session for which I’ve never actually done. See the screengrab below. What else should I add, and please share your list! Cheers, Magnus
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