SIDO

4 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Will a 100mm Frac trump  a 250mm dob in anything except imaging?

Yes indeed it will...

While one guy waits for his 250mm dob to equalize with the surrounding air temperature the other is observing with his refractor, this is true providing everything is equal mount wise and both individuals are utilizing none goto altitude azimuth mounts as goto and equatorial mounts require additional setup times.

A refractor will also not likely require collomation as a newtonian mounted dobsonian most certainly will and newtonians above 150mm most definitely will.

There are a few more areas of trumping but the formentioned are hands down trumpers so I'll leave it right there 😉  

                        Freddie.

Better late than never they say, Welcome to SGL...Best of Luck and Clear Skies of course.

                        Freddie.

5 hours ago, tomato said:

It does give the impression that there is some artistic licence in there, but I love the photo of the instrument, proper machined components, bolts and not a bit of gold foil in sight!

I bought some heavy quite expensive wheels for a diamond plate mobile work table in my shop some years back, the wheels on that cart in the shot are awesome...

3 hours ago, Adry said:

Sorry, my English is not good and I did not understand what you wanted to say with "That's a cracking image".

Its a very moving image,  or to say it is a surprisingly good image.

That's a cracking image, nice setup for capturing too...

Same here, Version 2 is sharper and has better colour. I as others have said think V2 is a significant improvement over V1...

Very nice all around, scopes looking great and changes ring of freedoms to be enjoyed...

Best of Luck with it all and Clear Skies of course.

                           Freddie.

Welcome to SGL Yash, Best of luck with your paper...

                           Freddie.

Awesome, Thanks for sharing...One of my favorite lunar scenes...

11 observing days since Jan 1 here in Wisconsin, only one of those a Milky Way sky and the rest all high thin cloud where extended objects were only visible by astronomy camera and longer exposures and even then the stacked images were lacking. Has to be the worst in many years here and last fall was also a bit of a washout but the first part of last year was quite good, clears sky's soon I hope...

                       Freddie.

Welcome to SGL, Best of Luck with your new telescope and Clear Skies of course...

                             Freddie.

Beautiful shot!

1 minute ago, johninderby said:

The cheap single lens one on the top can be had fot £5.99 incl postage from eBay and the double lens one on the bottom can be had for £9.99 incl postage from eBay.

So indeed the Gso my supplier is listing for $30 can be had for much less and my eyes for aberrations are still quite good.

36 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Svbony sells two different focal reducers. The cheap single lens one isn’t very good but their better one thats the same as the GSO is actually quite good but more expensive.easy to tell apart as the cheap one is thinner.

 

Ok this is making sence now, in the US the top reducer pictured is branded Gso through my supplier and the more expensive one so I'm guessing that the supplier is running out old stock or Gso is just supplying them with theirs. Here the wider aperture reducer is unavailable at least through the suppliers I am dealing with branded Gso.

5 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Svbony sells two different focal reducers. The cheap one isn’t very good but their better one thats the same as the GSO is actually quite good but more expensive.

Clearly two different objectives loaded in two different cases and swaping them in use its my opin that the Svbony is superior, but just my opinion and I haven't tested more than these 2 units against each other.

I bought 2 different focal reducers one from Gso and one from Svbony, they are different by clear aperture and case length with the Svbony having more clear aperture  but both 1.25. The Svbony is clearly superior, since beggining eeva I decided to upgrade focal reduction from two 24mm binocular objectives I installed in filter cases some 8 years back for visual purposes and am very pleased with the Svbony and plan to replace the Gso I'm now employing ahead of one of the two cameras I run together on my eeva rig.

I also own an Svbony dovetail and a helical focusing eyepiece adapter and am also pleased with those items. I own Baader, Celestron, Meade, WO and a host of brands and if the shoe fits wear it I say.

I always work with sellers using a full return policy and have been happy with some brands components and unhappy with others per my specific needs.

With all that being said Svbony is selling the same focal reducer Gso is selling for $30  for only $11 but Svbony is also selling the reducer I wound up preferring for $20, of the 3 Svbony items I purchased the total savings was better than 50% of cost elsewhere for very comparable items and of course that put more kit on the stick...

I should add that my eeva scopes are running at f 1.8 and f 2 and the Gso reducer may work just fine in slower applications as many users like the Gso reducer just fine.

                         Freddie.

Excellent...

I understand both the cost issue and the weight difficulties, having a spinal cord injury and a 10 pound weight limit with my left arm and a one # limit for my right while being gimp without being able to look up or to the right most telescopes are more a burden than a benefit, have been observing forever and have owned and operated alot of heavy scopes and still own a few but one has to succeed where one can.

A small short focus refractor on an ultralite alt az mount or a small table top 4.5 to 5 inch Dobsonian and I had to choose only one it would be the table top dob because it would be a better all rounder compared to a short focus achromat on bright target's like the moon and planets chromatic aberrations would not be an issue like with the achro.

Down the road something like the revolution imager would expand the lightweight horizons of such a scope lightweight is the kit and a small roller table and chair = no lifting.

I currently am using astronomy cameras and small scopes with a lightweight utility desk and laptop computer all on wheels I just roll the stuff out of my garage and within a couple minutes I'm up and observing.

Hope this helps, Best of Luck and Clear Skies of course.

                           Freddie.

13 hours ago, -Joe_ said:

IIRC, planetary nebula can be viewed from any direction as they are near spherical objects.

As the star goes through a later stage of life, expanding into a red giant, it blows off it’s outer layer in a spherical shell.

We see this as a ring: Our view through the centre passes through much less gas than one through the edge.

I think they are emission objects, with the gas being excited by the light from the star at the centre... but I may be wrong on that...

M57 was the first object I saw with my own eyes when I first got a telescope, I still remember the excitement it caused in me, quite unexpectedly..

Welcome to SGL Joe, Best of Luck and Clear Skies of course...

                       Freddie.

3 minutes ago, Beltalowda said:

By the way, I actually have no idea what the drift method is.

Observing or Imaging without a tracking mount...

Ok I'll throw in too, f/6 8" Dobsonian 8/12/2018 2:32am LGL62V smartphone...

I used "Open Camera" in burst mode and selected the best image for processing in Snapseed.

Had the image handy on my ☎ so thought to share some more / haven't clicked an image this year yet with my ☎ but have been observing Jupiter with my eaa rig weather permitting and it isent permitting much...

So you know just what you have captured I added this graphic, to post your image in a wider field post process would require merging in onto a black background via Snapseed or other capable software or application. Pre process a wider field eyepiece or less magnification would suffice...

Welcome to SGL Mark, Best of Luck with the build and Clear Skies of course...

                          Freddie.

We just better hope a cme does not render them all useless because then replacement satellites would be launched before the old destroyed satellites orbits decayed putting twice the current satellites in orbit whatever that number is now and this would include military satellites some of which are uncounted. So I guess my point here is there is no real predictor as to what future numbers will be We can though count on an increase and if things go bad double that. If they go bad repeatedly and there are successive cme's than it might be worth finding another hobby or a hand crank generator...

Yes iso and exposure look a little hot, try exposure bracketing your next lunar shoot.

Use around 200 iso and 1/50 for shutter, the bracketing is just taking several shots around a baseline using different settings. The moon is a hot target and overexposure always a concern, bracketing insures better odds that a good exposure will be made...

                      Freddie.