Captain Scarlet

5 hours ago, Deadlake said:

Knowing the dimensions of the bag and the LZOS I have is 130 mm will your 140 mm scope plus handle with rail fit in the bag??? Mine just sneaks in the bag with a low profile handle attached, no rail is attached to the 130 mm I have.

As it is at the moment, with a reduced rail, it fits in the bag quite comfortably. With that handle definitely not, but that handle is designed to be taken on and off in a moment. It’ll be great for transporting my 12” tube outside for instance.

38 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

Apart from the 12 month wait for the part it add quite a lot of wait to the EP end of the scope.

I've thought of going with the manufactures focuser for that reason...

But yes FT's are very smooth...

I’ve just set it up inside (it’s raining again 🙄) and have been looking out across the countryside through some double-glazing. The focuser is very good. I’d say slightly better feel for the fine knob than BD Steeltrack (which adorns my 2 newts and a Mak). So I’m very happy with it.

7 hours ago, Stu said:

Magnus, can you promise us you won’t end up changing the tube, objective and focuser on this one? 🤣

I can’t promise anything Stu, but my LZOS has so far survived 3-4 years in my charge without any interference.

HOWEVER. The LZOS has a FT focuser, and I would ideally have wanted the SV to have a FT…

No, I won’t do it 😁😁.

46 minutes ago, 900SL said:

That's a beauty! Congratulations Cap'n!

Kiitos! Hopefully as much a beauty too when I get a chance to look through it! 🤞

Oh no! What are the odds. On the basis that’s it’s reasonably minor, if I were your neighbour and on good terms I would without hesitation offer to pay to make good any damage you might have, without troubling insurance companies or even mentioning it to them.

Magnus

I think the way to reconcile that some cannot see them off a planet is that there will be a certain level of LP which will extinguish the bands. It’s no coincidence that the two here who have said they generally see _bolder_ stripes than the above photo also happen to be the ones to have 21.8 skies: @jetstream and me. The level of LP to render them invisible may not be very high. Also Jupiter in particular has I suggest a similar overall colour to that of LP.

Cheers, Magnus

3 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Absolutely stunning, Magnus.

When does the handle arrive?

You mean this? Couldn't resist a couple of accessories from SV while they were at it, and this Losmandy/Vixen handle-to-end-all-handles had my name all over it. I now need a suitable Vixen bar to put on top of the rings to allow it to work.

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

Did you get a Stellarvue bag, very good for transporting around?

Yes indeed, as you say a very good bag. It came as part of the price of the scope, together with the rings.

You can see it here, sitting in front of my 12" Newt, which is itself in front of my 16" Newt hot water tank .

Oh dear I hope it doesn’t become one of those things “you can’t unsee”.

My own experience is that the stripes are more prominent and longer than shown in that photo.

The spider diffraction is destructive to contrast in a planet. Returning to the “many stars each with spikes bundled together” analogy, and combining it with the fact that thicker vanes produce shorter brighter spikes, you get that each point within the planet is overlapped by all the diffraction thrown from the neighbouring areas in the planet.

What you want to try to achieve is long, thin spikes (from each “planet-pixel”) so that the diffraction from each point is thrown _beyond_ the disc. To do that, you need vanes to be as thin as possible, and accurately straightened up to present as small a profile to the sky as possible. And, if possible, 3 vanes is better than 4 as it results in 25% less total diffraction.

Apols, I’ve perpetuated the slightly-off-topic theme 😬

When the nights are good here, I _always_ think to myself “am I dewing up now?” when observing M45. Some of those times certainly will have been dew, but not all. The problem is trying to tell one from the other on the night. The Ally’s Braid trick and going immediately to another cluster I’ll try next opportunity.

Gerry, are your other scopes not getting a little bit jealous by now? You should be worried they’ll start a revolt. I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of an angry 24” dob!

1 hour ago, F15Rules said:

Lovely scope Magnus👍.

I assume that's a sliding dewshield? How heavy is the OTA? And what will you mount it on?

Congratulations 👏

Dave

Thanks Dave, the OTA weighs around 9.5kg apparently but it feels heavier. I’ll try to weigh it today, fog still persists so I have nothing better to with it! I have a Skytee2/Uni which will be fine for the load but only has a vixen dovetail. So I’ll probably only mount it on my az-eq6.

9 hours ago, Louis D said:

No, not even remotely close.  The highest sales tax anywhere in the US is 13.725% in one municipality.  The average across all states, however, is 5%.  Four states have no sales tax at all.  You paid 4.6 times as much in VAT as the average American pays in sales tax.  Most states don't tax food and medicine, either.

Yes fair enough but I meant it in more or a “replacing the line item” sort of way. I’m used to VAT rates over here in the 20s so I don’t especially resent it. It still worked out in total slightly cheaper in total than a Tak 140 would be if such a thing existed.

Well the scope arrived yesterday, as you may have noticed from the “Postie” thread. The mounting plate and some accessories arrived in a separate box today.

The weather as the box was delivered was fine. But almost to the minute I had it out of the box, cloud rolled in followed by a deep thick fog that’s still there 36 hours later! The forecast is for this to remain for the next week at least 🙄. This tells me it must be a truly fine scope 😁.

It’s bigger than I expected even though I knew its dimensions, and when hefting it about I get a feel of some lovely engineering. The focuser in particular I was concerned about, having opted for SV’s own-brand focuser over the months-to-arrive Feathertouch. I needn’t have worried, it feels really good albeit from just a “dry twiddle” inside. First Light will tell me more…

With the mounting plate having arrived today, a day later, I’ve just got it into a state where it’s “mountable”. I’m blessed with 200 degrees of elevated views of dozens of miles into the distance, hence the FOG and wind having arrived preventing me using it even during the day.

More to follow pictures too, as soon as a break in the weather arrives. And hopefully eventually a proper First Light report.

Magnus

You can imagine Jupiter as an aggregation of bright stars all bunched together to form a bright circle. Each of those quasi-stars will produce its own diffraction spikes. When bunched together, they form not so much a set of diffraction “spikes” off Jupiter, more of a set of wide (the width of the planet) “stripes” streaming off at right angles (if you have 4 vanes). Very pronounced every time I’ve used a newt to observe the planet.

Cheers, Magnus

The second of the two deliveries from US just arrived. The Losmandy mounting rail/plate, and a very nicely-engineered eyepiece-counterweight set-up. Plus a device for carrying awkward objects whose technical name temporarily escapes me 😁:

Magnus

2 hours ago, cajen2 said:

Ooh, a Stellarvue! More please, Magnus.

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.

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Yummy! A TEC140 in all but name 👍👍

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

5 hours ago, Dave-P said:

… before we descend into an astronomical version of West Side Story and things get really ugly between the Fracs and the Newts 😀 …

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

9 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

How exciting, just be prepared for two weeks of cloud cover though, that's normally taken as read 🙂 

Steve

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

Just now, Alan White said:

I presume the reply you sent @Captain Scarlet was no, don't worry about it, please send it to Alan White in England instead.... 🤣
You know that is the right thing to do after all.

Seriously, nice news and always uplifting to receive.
I await the arrival with anticipation.

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