Captain Scarlet

Your report on Jupiter and Saturn uncannily resembles mine from Saturday (second light for my OO/Helmerichs 12”) except that whereas your viewing was “advanced” mine might be better considered “beginner”. I concentrated on Jupiter and saw more belts and bands than I ever have before, including a mesmerizing Io transit. Your description of the planet and its features though mirrored mine quite closely. Seeing was only so-so but with occasional momentary freezes into amazing clarity. Saturn too briefly revealed the Cassini Division, again a first for me. Though I spent little time at Saturn. M

I wonder if the BHF knew what they’d been given. It’s nice to imagine they had no idea and were astounded at the final price.

I’ve removed the brass ring on my baader diamond steeltrak, because every time I unscrew and re-screw the grubs, with a laser fitted, secondary collimation would be completely different! Removing the brass ring solved it. I had the same with my baader click-lock adapters on different scopes, but I simply sold those in favor of a parallizer. Magnus

Fair enough; I also haven't dared for similar reasons

Are the nosepieces simply threaded into the bottom of the eyepiece body? In which case one could just unscrew them and replace with non-undercut nosepieces (keeping the originals aside and pristine for when the eyepiece needs to be moved on)?

Lovely read. It makes me itch for a lovely night for those planets. I've never yet been able to make out more than the two main equatorial belts or the Cassinin Division. Thanks, Magnus

I have the “build your own Dobsonian” book by Kriege which has a section on building cells, and also dondd we ideas of my own. I would be interested to see your designs too, do yes please send me your sketches please.

Ah yes I can see what OO do to get their tubes so light, they just use the CF shell. The CF shell on my Helmerichs tube is indeed only around 2mm thick, but he’s lined it with an extra 4-5mm of hard foam to lend extra stiffness and provide a base in which to drill and mount extra things. Obviously that adds some weight. Magnus

Funnily enough that name did occur to me. It would be too confusing though as I already have a bike with that name 😁. It’s done 43,000 miles and the only parts remaining of the bike I originally built are the saddle and the right brake lever. Everything else including the frame has been replaced at some point, but it’s always been the same bike to me! If I called this scope by the same name, imagine my confusion when I try to set up the bike on my AZ-EQ6 and look through it! 🤣

Regarding my M603, for its own sake it was just as well I bought it. I dismantled it to try to address the coarse focusing and to shim the primary mirror to the focus-tube axis. When I removed the secondary central boss holding the secondary mirror, the mirror dropped out luckily right into my hand! The glue had completely degraded. Better my hand than onto the primary! For last year’s conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, for example, it was my default instrument, permanently affixed to a tripod and mount. M

I have an Intes M603, a 6" Mak. I acquired it from a fellow SGLer, who I think slightly regrets having sold it, and I absolutely love it, coarse focuser and all. I hanker after a bigger one though, in addition. But they almost never come up. They have/had quite a large range, Maks and Mak-Newts, and they must have sold a good few scopes over the last 25 years, but you rarely see them on the used market. Why is this? Are they so valued that owners will be buried with them? I can sort of understand that, if so. Cheers, Magnus

It really irritates me that you seemingly cannot "hold off" these updates etc until you've done what you wanted to get done. Generally you think "I want to do this or that" NOW, you switch the computer on, and either you cannot because it's doing its update, or more often it's doing it in the background, killing everything else and you can't understand why it's suddenly so slow. Then it dawns. For my frequency of use of my PC, it happens perhaps 25% of the times I switch it on. As I said, it REALLY irritates me. Mac OSX allows you to choose when you update. Rant over, sorry, very nice image and (or course) scope, Magnus

Thanks Dave It really is s nice-looking object and it’s close to what I want it to end up as, both form and function. The only thing that bothers me is the mirror-cell. It’s the original SW one and it’s only just, actually maybe not quite, adequate. I’m vacillating between making my own, or splashing out on a teleskop-express custom jobby. I think I’ll probably fabricate one in due course. M

… ah yes I should add that the one I had was the goto version. Although it worked perfectly well for me, it has to be said it’s not very attractive. I always thought it looked like a toy. The az-gti and the new virtuoso have a much more serious “look” to them.

I started out about 4 years ago with exactly the combination you are considering. The Mak 127 was sold as a package on and with the Supatrak by FLO and the other retailers. It worked very well for me, even using relatively heavy Delos eyepieces in that scope. I even mounted my heavier APM/LZOS 105/650 on the Supatrak for a while, while I waited for a SkyTee. so yes you will be fine with that combination. Cheers, Magnus

Like trying to have your cake and eat it!

That I couldn't say Jeremy - I've actually never seen an OO tube. I'm not too concerned about the weight: it's the stiffness I was really looking forward to. The 5kg weight saving is a bonus.

I've dug out my measurements and calculations. My weights quoted above are "all in", in other words including the weights of not just the tube+mirror, but tube, mirror, mirror-cell, telrad, finder, paracorr, eyepiece, rings and dovetail. Just the rings and dovetail you can see amount to 4kg. My memory did unwittingly exaggerate slightly, the before and after weights are 27kg and 22kg actually, assuming an Ethos 13 as the eyepiece. The table below shows the breakdown: At 27kg yes I guess the AZ-EQ6 would be close to its limit. But having used it like that for 3 years, it's never given me any problems at all, even when unbalanced. Obviously at 5kg less things are better. The OO mirror is lighter than the SW one because its glass slab is actually only 300mm diameter, as opposed to the Skywatcher's 309mm (bevelled down to 305mm reflecting surface).

Thanks Mark. Another thing about the new setup is the fact it’s much stiffer. The old steel tube was annoyingly flexible and if I could be bothered I had to recollimate every time I adjusted eyepiece or altitude. No such problems with this, even with the monster Nagler 31!

Thanks Jeremy. The Mount handles the ota with ease actually, and in fact was also fine with the previous steel-tube incarnation at 6kg heavier. I’ve never had a problem. The screwdriver head you notice is yes exactly for that purpose, it’s the handle of a Stanley Fatmax modular screwdriver to allow for extra leverage, I find the original capstan bars don’t allow enough, especially trying to undo.

Haha I am 6’1”. It’s not too bad actually. Anything up to about 49 degrees altitude is fine. I have a small set of steps for anything higher, and never need to go beyond the first step.

Last year, during lockdown, I replaced the 12” mirror on my blue-tube SW newt with an OO mirror. The OO had a longer FL than the SW original, so I ordered a custom-specified carbon tube from Klaus Helmerichs and in the (long) meantime I drilled a new focus-hole in the blue tube as far up the tube as I could. That was fine for a while, but only used about 10 inches of the available OO aperture. With the new tube finally in my possession only recently, I finished mating the cell to and installing the focuser, finder-brackets etc a month or so ago, and since then have had two aborted attempts to get First Light for the new set-up. At the first attempt, my battery ran out of juice just as I achieved alignment on the second star. The second attempt, 3 nights ago, saw the whole tube dripping with dew-water and the primary itself completely dewed-over before I’d even begun alignment. Finally, 2 nights ago, on 15th August, everything lined up and I had a most enjoyable session. Chiefly thanks to SGL’s Observing Reports, I’ve been accumulating a list of targets over the last few weeks, so if you see unusual something below that you recently reported or read, it was probably partly those reports whence I stole my inspiration. (I’ve just realized, on re-reading and editing, that only one object listed below fits the “unusual or off the beaten track” category, but I put so much effort into creating the fine words in this paragraph that I’m keeping them :). My equipment was: OO 300mm mirror in Helmerichs carbon tube with Paracorr2; AZ-EQ6 mount on Berlebach Planet tripod in Alt-Az mode; Nexus DSC control unit, directly used rather than via, say, SkySafari; Telrad and APM 8x50 finders; kitchen cloth and hairdryer for dew mitigation (both used during the night). The new tube has saved about 6kg, bringing the total OTA weight from 28kg to 22kg. It may not sound much, but it’s certainly noticeable lifting it into the rings! Alignment - I succeeded in aligning on Polaris and Markab at the second attempt after making my usual mistake whilst selecting the second alignment star: pressing “OK” instead of “0” to select the second star before slewing to it: this effectively tells the unit “OK the second star is now centred”, while the scope is still pointing at the first, causing a fatal-error message and necessitating a complete switch-off and start again. Alignment finished, I was ready to go. During the night I mostly used my Nagler 31 and Ethos 13, with Oiii-fitted Panoptic 24 for the Veil. Lovely and dark with the Moon fairly low, the MW was clearly on view. Jupiter - First look was at Jupiter, still with my 18.2mm alignment eyepiece, for 100x. Judging from this view it was clear that seeing was only so-so. It stayed like this all night, for Jupiter and everything else. Better than clouds though. There was plenty of atmospheric CA, mushy wobbly edges and barely 2 equatorial bands on display. 4 Moons all there of course. Saturn – Saturn was mush the same, though I did take time to look out for his Moons which I’ve never done before. Titan, Rhea and a background star were evident, firsts for me, and perhaps Iapetus though that was further afield and I wasn’t sure. Barnard 142/143 “E” dark nebula – Never having heard of this but having seen images and read that it should be easily seen even through binoculars, I slewed to it, a little NW of Tarazed, still at 100x and 0.62 degrees FoV. The dark “E” is apparently about the size of the full Moon, and with only a touch more FoV than that, I couldn’t make the “E” out at all. Putting in the Nagler 31 for 59x and 1.4 degrees allowed a bit more background for comparison, but I still wasn’t convinced. Grabbing my 15x56 binoculars worked, though: it was definitely there, dark void-channels against a field of stars and diffuse background forming an upside-downish E shape. M22 globular and M11 Wild Duck Cluster – I remember @Stu chancing across M22 with his bins a few nights ago from his new dark home so I had a quick look, but only a quick one at low mag (59x) as I was impatient to see the Veil, so I didn’t bother changing up the eyepiece. M22 nice, I’ll have to revisit it with more intent. Similarly for one of my favourite open clusters, M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, so-called because of its series of lines of stars in “V”s. Lovely and angular as ever with its single brighter star. The Veil – I first saw the Veil around this time last year through a Heritage 130p for which I was providing temporary accommodation while its owner moved house. I saw it a little later with my SW 12” and Oiii filter and was amazed. This night, it didn’t disappoint, through the Panoptic 24 plus Oiii. I started on NGC 6992, part of the Eastern bit, without the filter, and was able to quite clearly see it without the filter. With the filter, absolutely superb! I moved across the the Western part, NGC 6960, and again it was lovely with the embedded star 52 Cygni. I followed it up and down getting a bit lost in the process so wasn’t really able to name or recognize the various smaller features. The filaments weren’t perhaps as sharply-defined as I remember from last year, I guess from the poorish seeing, but still a wonderful sight. Pi Aquilae - Recalling @John’s mention of Pi Aquilae (very tight double) from some time ago I had a quick look for it, having put in my Ethos 13 for 141x, but there was no chance of a split, stars weren’t tight at all. At this point I pressed a wrong button on the Nexus DSC repeatedly, thinking it was the “slew up” button, and ruined its notion of where we were, so I quickly had to re-home the mount and do another alignment. Having had quite a lot of practice, I did this quickly, and resumed my list. M52 – a familiar sight now with all my viewing of the Nova in Cassiopeia, very nice. Like so many OCs, there is a single bright star. M57 Ring Nebula – I hadn’t actually looked at the Ring Nebula since my very first time three years ago, my first-ever target with my then-new 12” SW newt. It made me gasp then, and it did again this time. I even said aloud “Wow”. It’s so bright, and there even seemed a bluish tinge to my eye. M27 Dumbbell Nebula – Similarly to M57, I haven’t seen this since a first look ages ago, and I’d forgotten how BIG it is. And so bright again. M13 Great Hercules Cluster – M13 I have returned to again and again, and have used it as a showcase object for guests, it’s usually their favourite. I generally start off by asking them “you see that smudge just there?”, and they normally can see it naked eye. I then move up to binoculars, where it’s a brighter larger smudge, and finally I amaze them with the full twelve inches’ view. The “Coronavirus in the sky” one called it this time last year. My purpose this night was to see the Propeller, which I have seen before but it’s always a bit tricky. As I readied my self to start concentrating, I looked away briefly for some reason, and when I returned my eye to the eyepiece, it had completely disappeared! I looked up: dratted clouds!! An increasingly thick patchwork was creeping across from the NW, so I gave up on M13 and decided to finish my night looking East before all was subsumed. M31 Andromeda Galaxy – naked eye-visible, and with M110 visible in the binoculars, with the Nagler 31 installed for my widest-possible 1.4 degrees at 59x I could easily see various lanes in its structure. M32 was especially bright. I finished off the evening with the 15x56s, taking in Kemble’s Cascade, the Coathanger (naked eye too), the (now rather dim) Nova in Cass. Packing up from my South-facing site around the back of the house takes 25-30 minutes, mostly with up to 10 trips to and fro carrying tripod, head, OTA, weights, eyepiece case, cables, controller, etc etc. Why haven’t I just got myself a wheelbarrow to make perhaps one or two trips only? Off to the local hardware shop I think. The Nexus DSC in “driven-mount mode” has some annoying glitches, such as only deciding to start tracking perhaps one in eight times once an object has been decided and slewed-to. You have to keep selecting the object as it drifts away by pressing OK until suddenly, randomly, it’ll start tracking. But its ability to select from any number of esoteric catalogues is extremely useful. And its “nearby stuff” feature is good too. A satisfying night. I turned in around 3am. Thanks for reading, Magnus

Nice read John thanks. I had a similarly clear night last night and gave my OO 12” and Helmerichs tube its first proper light, which I’ll write up a little later. I turned in around 3am. A little tired, Magnus

All I can say is “you lucky blighter”. I’ve yet to see a wild Tawny. Magnus

Ah yes Kemble’s Cascade, I’ve neglected it this season thanks for the reminder! M