Captain Scarlet

I went for their native focuser as the FT I might’ve preferred would’ve added at least 3 months to the order. So I'm gratified to discover the focuser has a very nice feel, better than my Steeltracks at first touch. The zygo report seems to agree 🙂🙂

Possibly the most ridiculous packaging I’ve ever seen. In a good way. Quadruple-boxed and cubic feet of styrene buffering. To say I’m excited would be … accurate. It’s a bit of a monster. Only problem is, this was package 2 of 2. No 1, still in transit, contains the Losmandy plate and something else which various people on here will also get excited about. Magnus

Don’t forget the Cats! 😁

Gerry what were you using to find your way around? Supplied mount and RDF? I actually find those generic RDFs quite good. Magnus

Welcome back Gerry. I need to get myself an H130 or 150. I gave my brother in law out here an H130 a couple of years ago: he has 5 very inquisitive young children and I thought it’d be the perfect thing to create at least a couple of astronomers. He had to move out for some renovations on his house so gave the scope back to me for a few months. The first time I saw the Veil was through that H130! It’s a really good scope. Re: collimation. I’ve found out that this particular H130 does actually need its primary recollimating _regularly_, but for a particular reason: child says “what are these knobs for?” 🤣🤣. Every time I visit it’s been fiddled with 🙄. Cheers, Magnus

I've just paid the Customs & VAT. I thought it might be useful to let anyone know precisely what you're on the hook for if you do go down the "import from US" route, bear in mind this is to Ireland (EU) not GB but I wouldn't expect it to be too different: the difference will be in the Customs percentage and the local VAT rate. I paid upfront the US Dollar amount for the scope. Had I been in the US, I would have been charged a Sales Tax, but being an export, there was no Sales Tax. I got charged the shipping fee (in this case around 11% of the USD value of the scope - expensive yes, but a similar charge/markup may well apply from a local importer/distributor so in my mind I call this big shipping fee "markup".). --- @ollypenrice I fear I have put in one full stop too many here. I'd welcome your input: normally I'm pretty good with punctuation. I did some research and worked out that the extra I was going to have to pay was: - VAT (locally 23% on the order value INCLUDING SHIPPING). This simply replaced the subtracted Sales Tax. - Customs. It turns out (from the Taric Database) that for US=>EU this is charged at 4.2% of the value-including-shipping. - Customs handling theft fee: 2.5% of the Customs charge (in this case ~EUR50) I got billed by Fedex today for all these charges, and was within EUR 5 of my calculation. So, in sum, it's [Cost+Shipping] + your VAT on same + 4.2% on same + 2.5% of (the 4.2%) Customs Hopefully that's helpful to somebody. It was all a mystery to me before I looked into it carefully. I had been concerned the Customs might be of the order of 20% so I was relieved it was just 4.2%. Looking forward to the next few days Magnus

Phew thanks be to God I moved to the SW tip of Ireland 🤣🤣, should escape the worst

Unexpected gaps in cloud cover allowed me finally to give my latest several modifications to my Orion-Helmerichs 200 a proper First Light tonight. I now love this scope. Rigel, Comet, Mars, Luna, Capella (for star test), were all I really looked at. Luna was mesmerizing at 286x and could have taken so much more. Fuller report tomorrow hopefully with some pics and a question about what I was actually looking at on the Moon. M

It’s a bit like a second life sentence “to be served concurrently”: there’s already been 100% cloud cover for weeks!

Yes well of course I did, but now you've guessed and spoiled the surprise I’ll sadly have to redirect to myself

I just opened my email and my heart skipped a beat or two:

What about _scope_ field curvature, in, say, a short focal-length refractor? Obviously one shouldn’t condemn an eyepiece on the basis of a feature of the scope. I recently managed to achieve visual focus with my SW Evoguide 50, which has 240ish-mm focal length. It has strong field curvature. With my Panoptic 24, the centre was lovely and sharp, a match for my Leica 10x50s. However the edge was markedly blurred. But a slight turn of the focus-knob brought the edge to equally nice sharpness. Whereas a poor eyepiece will still look horrid at the edge after a refocus attempt. So in this context I would forgive the “de-focus” aberration when judging an eyepiece and consider only the others. Is that valid? Magnus

It is, but unfortunately Luna is overwhelming it for the next few days.

Just now, for me in nominally 21.8 skies, with a nearly full moon at nearly zenith, it was _barely_ detectable through 10x50 binoculars. 10 days ago it was naked eye. Quite a change. Magnus

Comet. Unforecast-until-last-minute clear skies. A chance to see the comet and compare it to a couple of weeks ago. My goodness what a difference! 2 weeks or so (moon down, 21.5 sky) ago it was bright and easy to find in all my binoculars. Tonight, full moon, it was BARELY discernible, you had to know you were in the right region and there was a very slight smudge. Like M33 on a hazy night. Very interesting difference.

When i observed it it was around 12-13 degs up at sunset. By May, it’ll be 35 degs up at that time and should be far better:

I had a look about 10 days ago. Venus was simply terrible. Like a cross between a kaleidoscope and a three-colour Venn diagram all moving at once, funnily enough through your former VX8 Orion Optics mirror. I hasten to add that mirror is just fine (I re-centre-spotted it, OO had had it placed miles out) … it was the seeing that low down, not so low down though, was appalling. Cheers, Magnus

No, in the context of this thread the forbidden B word is Bresser

Through the 130?

I bought my OO8 off Grumpy Martian, met him and did the exchange in a service-station car park a little over a year ago. Very nice chap. But that account appears to have been completely deleted, my old posts and PMs now appear as from “guest”. I feared the worst, so I am hugely relieved. I know it’s possible to change names, or merge or otherwise change the name back? Cheers and welcome back Martin. Magnus.

Bear in mind too that whatever you buy is an asset that continues to have some value. If you’ve bought used, the chances are the asset’s value is the same as you paid for it. In which case you’re not really “down” at all: you can turn it back into cash any time you like. It’s only really expensive when you buy new. I also get that you can become sentimentally attached to some kit, in which case disposal can be painful without losing any money. M

Perhaps try to get them to arrange it? Manufacturers will have particular relationships with shippers that you won’t have. I’ve just ordered a refractor from US to Ireland and there’s no problem with shipping (apart from the cost of course). Mine’s coming via FedEx, UPS was also offered. Magnus

Haha guilty as charged! I bought it off @mikeDnight IIRC 😄

Responding to the first post. I too have, within the last week, committed to a most-expensive-for-me astro purchase. It is a top-of-the-tree 140mm refractor from the USA (Stellarvue SVX140T). Finally after doing the currency exchange and clicking on the final no-recourse "send" to complete the order, I felt slightly sick. More than slightly, nausea is the word. Your description "horrified and elated" is good. This thread has been a touch of therapy for me too Magnus

I too am a “leftie” eye-wise, very much so: all my recent eye tests have shown my left eye to be more sensitive, but with much more complex astigmatism than my right. Nonetheless I tried a switch the other night, on a bad Mars, and I didn’t immediately reject my right eye. Interesting, I plan to persevere…