Captain Scarlet

I'll add some before too long ... I'll also recount my attempt to replace the highly unusual finder-shoe with something more universal.

Removing the backlash proved rather easy in the end. Each drive worm housing has 3 allen-key recesses on it, one tiny grubscrew in between two larger adjustment bolts. The technical term for what I did is, I think, "fiddling around". I loosened the grubscrew, wound in the two outer bolts a very small amount, re-tightened the grub and the backlash was gone. I read around a bit too to see how people had adjusted their EQ3-series mounts, to get a feel for how it all works. Collimating the polar scope involved adjusting the position of the reticule until its centre-point stayed in the same place while I rotated the mount around the RA axis. The three tiny allen-grub screws for moving the reticule position are accessible even when the polar scope is screwed in. There's no end of advice on this and other forums showing how to do the adjustments. The only thing I would re-iterate is to make the adjustment allen-key turns in very small increments. The Berlebach tripod is there as much for its looks as its function. Functionally, it's much less awkward to micro-adjust for levelling than the SW tripod. Also, it turns a scope on its mount into a thing of beauty, sufficient to pass the acceptable-to-my-wife test, free-standing in the living room. I find the standard steel-tube Skywatcher tripods rather ugly, and question the design of screwing the spreader plate against its stops very close to the hinges, introducing more and more energy into a quite springy system. The Berlebach has a spread-stopper, as opposed to a spreader. When ordering a Berlebach, one of the options is to specify what head you want, and the one I got was an EQ5-style head, which is compatible with EQ3 series mounts. I also have an AZ-EQ6 mount, and that sits on a Berlebach Planet, again beautiful. Good luck with your Mount and your renewed interest; I hope you get to use it before too long! Cheers, Magnus

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...

looks like a Moire effect you get when photographing a PC screen at critical focus

Having spent the last couple of weekends setting up my new mount (removing parallax from polarscope, collimating it to the mount’s RA axis, removing backlash from the RA axis, finding and marking Home Position and polarscope reticule clockface-position), Saturday night’s forecast was looking good to give it first light with my APM-LZOS 105/650. As it turned out, clouds persisted the whole night, but there were enough moving gaps to make it worthwhile. This was my first time using a mount in Equatorial mode, so I took my time over polar alignment and 3-star alignment. I used my new £1.99 app as well: Polar Scope Align Pro. Two or three weeks ago I tried to finish off a night with Mizar on my previous alt-az mount, but I couldn’t: it was too close to zenith. So this time I started with Mizar and admired it, its “B”, Alcor and Ludwig’s star. Unusually for me for this location, I could see Alcor quite easily with my naked eye, cloud-gaps permitting. I tried next for M51, which I just about managed to detect with averted vision. The wisps of cloud moving across weren’t helping. I moved quickly on to M13, which was in a clear patch and much more gratifying: actually the best I’ve seen it from here, definite stars towards the edges rather than the dim lurking smudge I saw before. I moved on to one of my favourite London targets, the Double-Double. My shortest eyepiece, the 6mm Delos gives me 108x on this scope, with which both doubles were easily split. I spent a few minutes on this, before deciding to shift a bit to Struve 2470 & 2474, the so-called “Double Double’s Double”, also in Lyra, and which I’ve only just found out about and never seen before. I needed to nip inside the house to check the SAO numbers (SAO67867 SAO67870 apparently). When I came back out, having found out what to tell the Synscan to point at, guess what? The clouds had come to stay! Bah! I hung around for 15 minutes or so to no avail and packed up. Still, I’m getting the measure of the new mount, it’s a good mate for the APM-LZOS, bring on more clear nights… Cheers, Magnus

They do, at least for the manual that came with my v5 handset...

It certainly looks almost identical. But the EQ3-2 is rated at 5kg, whereas the 35-M is at 10kg. I wonder where the extra capacity comes from. I'm interested as I have just taken delivery of an EQ35-M, to support my 105-650 LZOS for a more or less grab&go set-up, albeit with a Berlebach Uni tripod in place of the SW one. BTW I have both the Skymax 127 and the 180. I like them both.

I do point out what I think might be interesting if anyone is nearby, mostly actually when birding rather than planet-watching. The only planet I've ever done it for was Mercury this last Feb/March, when cycling through Richmond Park. I was catching someone up, and when I came alongside I pointed out "that bright dot", and that although featureless and unremarkable, it was rare to see it as it's generally close to the Sun and therefore always low when visible. He was impressed and grateful. I also often get people asking what I'm looking at. People's reactions can be amusing. On one occasion, and I was staring at a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Richmond Park, a woman with her child asked, and I explained and handed her my binoculars to have a closer look. She seemed to slightly panic, she had no idea how to use them. Also, if it's a young couple, often the woman will ask what I'm looking at and the man will look slightly irritated.

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

Re: the hairdryer: I found that simply pointing the airflow at the secondary at an angle from the front of the scope through the spider was enough to very quickly clear it. The airflow "wraps" around the whole assembly quite well. Being very careful of course not to touch anything with it. Similarly for the eyepiece itself, I suffer from eyepiece fogging at the same time, and blowing the eyepiece worked just as well. Cheers, M

I have sequestered one of my wife's old hair-dryers after similarly frustrating sessions. It's a total game-changer, and if it contaminates viewing slightly because it's heating up the secondary and/or the spider-vanes, although I haven't noticed it, it's something I can live with for the sake of making the difference between that and seeing nothing at all. Cheers, Magnus

My immediate thought was anoxxle of some description. Nearly 50 years takes us to 1969, so lunar module or lander nozzle perhaps? Magnus

My first DSO image, taken Sep 2017 on an EOS7D/2 + 300mm f/2.8 , 9 x 50 secs tracked on an AZ-EQ6 GT (using alt-az) from a really quite dark place near Baltimore in SW Ireland. Stacking in Pixinsight and curves in Photoshop. TBH I was a bit shocked (in a good way). I'm looking forward to improving it... Edit: each "sub" was 50-odd seconds, f/2.8, ISO 1600 . I recorded 12 in all, but I rejected 3.

I'll keep in touch with your website - do not neglect it! By way of quid pro quo if you're interested you might be interested in my website, a good starting-point bearing in mind what we're talking about here, is www.slidingseat.net/stars/stars.html#startingout . Cheers, Magnus

Hi Victor, getting to this thread quite late. I had a quick look at your blog, it seems you've moved on a bit since those pictures! One thing I noticed, do you realize your 2nd pic in the series posted above features Triangulum (M33) as a noticeable object as well as Andromeda (M31) ? Your first pics are very like my first ones, which is what drew my interest. Good luck with your journey, seems like you have an interesting future ahead of you! Cheers, Magnus

This matches my experience of my first properly dark site a couple of years ago in furthest SW Ireland, a couple of miles from Baltimore. Walking back from the pub one evening, I couldn’t actually make out most of the constellations, they were just drowned out in a sea of stars such as I'd never seen before, it was incredible. It was at that exact moment I decided to re-indulge my interest in Astronomy. Having said that, I do recall the only one that WAS obvious was Orion, perhaps that's what was meant by "an Orion sky" ? Magnus