Captain Scarlet

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

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 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:

... in the meantime this arrived today. 16” extension pier to go between my Uni tripod and eq3-5m and/or skytee2. It weighs nearly 6kg!

... precisely this is currently top of my shopping list. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to hold out...

... actually that’s a VERY expensive way of doing it ... you need the flock to be all black

haha it wasn’t so long ago I recall wasting entire sessions not finding anything! It teaches you quickly M

Not sure where you are in London but I find it quite easy to find M13 with 10x50 binoculars from Sunbury-On-Thames. It’s always most difficult finding and recognizing it the first time, but thereafter it’s almost as though you can’t miss it. It is a naked eye object from dark sites but definitely nowhere near London. You need to be able to find the “square” of Hercules, and look up where on the perimeter of that “square“ it sits. Then just scan around that area with the bins. Basically M13 sits nearly equally between two stars of equal brightness, the three objects making a flattish triangle. It looks like a fuzzy blob compared to the stars. To see it as an actual cluster of stars you will then need a darker site and a telescope. one of my favourite objects good luck, Magnus

All the above. However if like me in London you have no view of anything sufficiently distant to line up on, you can get rough finder-alignment by, say, aiming the main scope at a feature of your house, then aiming the finder scope at a point the same distance above and to the side of that feature as the finder is above and beside your scope. I find that even that rough alignment is better than vainly trying to find a star blindly at night with a relatively high magnification scope, and then risking aligning the finder to a different star (been there, done that).

I recently imaged the Moon, which is more or less the same size as the Sun, using an 800mm focal length combination onto a Canon 7dmk2 crop sensor. On the basis of the images I got, I could probably stretch that to 1500mm focal length before cutting off some of the disk... Magnus

... I’ve thus temporarily evicted my Astrotrac to accommodate them plus my new 3.5mm...

My eyepiece collection has grown a little. Finally my APM-LZOS 105/650 can give some nice magnification, 186x. And of course my Mak 180 can now bring a highly useful 771x 😂

Baader and Stellarvue as well, by the looks, having spent some time researching this...

It seems TS have upgraded their finders since the one I have was made. The one I have is more or less indistinguishable from the OEM Skywatcher ones, including the "drinking straw" eyepiece, except it has TS Optics printed on the side. To get the eyepiece to achieve focus on the reticule, I've had to unscrew it to such an extent that I need spacers and electrical tape to hold it together. Their current offerings on their site look rather better: very similar to the APS ones, in look and price.

Once upon a time, I had just one scope, 1500mm focal length, and three eyepieces, 35, 18.2 and 10mm, giving me what I thought was a reasonable range of magnifications. I had a case for them, all neat and tidy. Now I have 4 scopes, ranging in FLs from 2700mm to 650mm, and have added a 55mm and a 6mm to the eyepiece and accessory collection, along with collimation tools and a couple of reticule eyepieces. I plan to add a 3.5mm before too long. So my case now looks like a complete dog's breakfast. I think I need a case-upgrade... Cheers, Magnus

Like many of us I suspect, I have accumulated a selection of finders, mostly that came with various scopes. In ascending quality-order: a SW 6x30 straight-through (never used); a SW 9x50 straight-through (never used) that came with my 300p newt I bought around a year ago; a right-angle SW 8x50 (never used) and an old-style TS-Optic 50mm RACI which I bought off a fellow SGL-ite. This last I have used mainly because it's RACI. But they're all, even the TS-Optic, obviously very cheaply made and a bit, well, nasty. So I caved in and ordered an APM 50mm erect-image finder, and I have to say the difference in quality between it and the others is immense, not least the fact that it'll take any 1.25" eyepieces...

Catadioptric: hybrid reflecting telescope with refracting elements; Dogadioptric: A catadioptric once it's been Collie-Mated. (I'm really sorry...) M

As I understand it, and I can't remember where I read it but I did read it, with Win 10 you actually don't need to purchase a Windows license. It will let you run any applications you like for as long as you like on the free download. It will, however, occasionally politely remind you that you don't have a license, and there are certain fairly non-essential things you can't do, like personalize your desktop with your own pictures: it says something like "you need a license to do this". But PixInsight, MS Office etc are all "full use" on it. I run Windows 10 on my MacBook pro via VMWare Fusion, and used it like that for 18 months before finally coughing up. Cheers, Magnus

It would depend where I was living. If in a dark place, a 12"-or-larger newt or Dob. If in light-polluted skies, a high-quality 130mm refractor.

wow as may be evident from my sig I'm a bino junkie, and these fill me with lust... Magnus

Hmmmm. Not quite sure. Best forward it on to me, I'll do some investigation and report back with recommendations in a year or so ... Magnus

New Unihedron SQM-L given to me over the weekend as wedding anniversary present. 2220 last night from my garden in Sunbury on Thames with full Moon up showed 18.20 . Magnus