Captain Scarlet

... oops should’ve been in imaging section not observing. By all means move it there if necessary ...

... and Antares bonus extra

Thanks John. That's very like what the SW Quattros get supplied with these days I think, and a friend lent me just such an adapter to screw into the focus-tube of mine before my last trip to Ireland. Unfortunately my 2" didn't quite reach focus using that adapter on its own, I'd need a modest extension tube in addition.

That's what I thought too at first, but the opening thus revealed is bigger than 2". A 2" eyepiece will go in, but gets pushed to the side off-centre by the grubscrews. The pic above from @tooth_dr shows exactly how it is, the 1.25" adapter (also shown in my own pic) needs to be removed and replaced with the 2" one shown to allow 2" eyepices to fit properly. It's the style of SW newts from a good few years back, they've changed the design since. M Edit: @John answered first, far more eloquently too!

Brilliant, thanks all. M

... this is the sort of bevel my existing 1.25" has - although this pic is a 2" adapter - perhaps this is precisely what I need...

Thanks - that looks like the same/very similar problem, but IIRC the bevel on the shown adapters looks less than what I remember mine to be. Trouble is, the scope is in Ireland and I'm in London.

that would be good, thank you. either a bit that screws onto the drawtube, or a bit that replaces the bit that "flanges in" to the existing bit that screws into the drawtube...

Thanks. Funnily enough I do actually have that exact 80mm Revelation extender (bought from David Hardie's collection), but the problem with it is that its male end is 2", so it won't fit into the mewt's focuser.

A year or so ago I bought a 12" SW newt from a fellow SGL-er. To say I am very happy with it would be an understatement. However, take a look at the picture. The 1.25” eyepiece shown (TV DeLite 18.2) is slotted into an adapter which fits, via its circular angled-flange plate, onto the main drawtube-end-adapter, tightened in place with thumbscrews. If I remove the 1.25" adapter, the exposed recess is too big for a 2” eyepiece. In other words, this scope as it is will not accept 2” eyepieces. I understand they now get supplied with an adapter which allows one to fit 2” units and achieve focus. My problem is that I don’t know what it’s called nor would I likely recognize it from a picture Could some kind soul point me to a link which shows what I need please? Thanks, Magnus

I'm no AP-er but this sort of thing is nearly enough to tempt me over to the dark side. Superb.

Judging by his avatar it would be right up @Stu’s street 😂

Well that’s exactly what I had to do to remove and fix (parallax and reticule alignment) the polar scope in my then-new AZ-EQ6 a year or so ago. Took a lot of courage, but it worked. Everything had been cemented together. M

I would imagine the plates in which the eyepieces sit rotate about their centres so that you can effectively change eyepieces. Think filter wheel for eyepieces... M

I have 2 Revelation 2” dielectric diagonals. One for use in Ireland and one for use in London, so I don’t have to worry about hoiking one back and forth and potentially forgetting one. I accidentally took the London one on my latest trip to W Cork, and naturally I accidentally left it there. So I have both my diagonals in Ireland whilst I’m in London. I do have a little WO 45 deg erecting prism here though, and it’s that I’ve been using with my 105 f/6.2 refractor lately. It works, but produces a sharp diffraction spike on bright things. Looking at the off-focus diffraction pattern of Vega, for example, it produces a beautiful vivid mesmerizing kaleidoscope of all the colours of the spectrum. So, I’ve ordered a Baader-Zeiss 2” prism and am excitedly expecting it shortly. When I get my dielectric mirror Revelation back to the UK, likely October, I’ll do a proper comparison between the three: the 45, the Zeiss and the Revelation mirror. M

... I think it also remembers various “enhanced accuracy” settings as well, such as so-called PAE re-centerings. I think these as they accumulate have the potential to thoroughly confuse the handset. I now routinely reset to factory settings to clear all those and reestablish my alignment star settings before every alignment.

I've been pulled into a pond by one of those, an old Allen Scythe, desperately struggling to disengage the drive

Ah, there you have me ... for now I am visual only. And @wimvb is right about the bearing thing - my EQ35-M has bushes not bearings. M

Ah yes, Graff's Cluster and (perhaps actually also known as?) "Tweedledum & Tweedledee". One of the very first astro objects I looked up after first getting in to this pasttime and taking a (terrible) photo very close to Altair...

I agree, but it seems to be ubiquitous. I now have 3 polar scopes, one on each of my Astrotrac, AZ-EQ6 and lately on my EQ35M. They have all come out of the box severely misaligned, and, worse in my view, all 3 with serious parallax. I have fixed these problems on all of them, but the one on the AZ-EQ6 was cemented into the mount and its individual components cemented together, and took huge effort and courage to remove from the mount and to adjust to fix the parallax. As you say, unacceptable.

I have the EQ35-M, and I really like it. The model is fairly new, and because it's designated EQ3-something, I think people assume it has the same load capacity as all the EQ3s, which is not the case. I think SW have got their marketing wrong here, I'm sure people have been put off by the nomenclature. The EQ3-2 has a stated load capacity of 5kg, whereas the EQ35-M has a stated capacity of twice that: 10kg. It has no problems at all handling my 7.5kg APM-LZOS plus bits. M

Absolutely stunning

I would suggest setting up a DSLR on a tripod in a rather dark room, set its ISO as high it can go, sit yourself in front of it and take a few shots of your face using a remote. Then in bright conditions, take a similar shot with a ruler held up to your forehead to give you a measuring scale. I've been meaning to do just this for a while, just not got around to it yet. My understanding is that your pupil will dilate in dark conditions very quickly, like a matter of seconds. It's your rods' dark adaptation that takes much longer, but you're not measuring that. Cheers, Magnus

If you zoom in and stretch it a little in Photoshop, you can just about see what it is:

Wow I thought I was bad ... you make me feel much better