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McNewt

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Everything posted by McNewt

  1. My luck was elsewhere last night. The clouds cleared just in time for Mars and Moon to rise just above the tree tops. Unfortunately the seeing was quite poor. Mars just resembled a snowball edged by some atmopheric dispersion. I held out for a couple of hours exploring the Moon, but had to call it quits becasue of the equipment dewing up. The tube was dripping, eyepices dewed up, the telrad was rendered useless. I still have high hopes for the perfect view. Colder weather is coming fast which usually means better seeing.
  2. Thx! The one thing that is not superb (yet) is the balance with the setup as seen in the photo. The CC8 is a bit back heavy, add two long focal length TV eyepieces and it gets a little bit unwieldy. I need to tighten the alt axis a bit too much for my liking. I have a longer V-style dovetail and a balance weight to be fitted on the refractor side. Need to do a bit of drilling first though. The scope rings have metric threads, but he the dovetail is UNC.
  3. Indeed it is. It is fitted with a Mach1 adapter, though it is possible to change it to fit for example an EQ6 or AZ100 for that matter.
  4. Sorry for the mess. Flooring to be done.
  5. Telescope Express have these https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p78_TS-Optics-Dust-Cap-for-1-25--Barrels--male-.html
  6. Interesting thread. Following. I have an 80mm refractor with limited in-focus. All of my eyepieces will reach focus with a Baader clicklock diagonal, but some just barely. This made me scratch my head when looking for a 2" Herschel prism as these tend to add a longer optical path than the Baader diagnoal. On searching for a solution I noticed that the Baader Morpheus eyepieces supports both 1.25" and 2" fittings with the same barrel so in 2" "mode" these will sit lower in the diagonal potentially gaining back some of the lost in-focus travel. I'm adding the Explore Scientific 92 degree eyepieces to the list of "problem solvers". Though, for the time being I cannot justify starting on a new eyepiece set.
  7. Are you able to keep this configuration reasonably balanced when you are using a heavy eyepiece? I also have the TS 8" CC, which is rather back heavy. Adding a diagonal and a long focal length eyepiece and an extender for the focuser I need to tighten the alt clutch on the AzMaxLoad a bit too much for my liking. Perhaps the AZ100 is a bit different in this regard?
  8. Jeez. It is big. I wonder how you look through such a big eyepiece. I imagine you grab hold of it with both of your hands and put your entire face up against the eye lens. I believe this is the video https://youtu.be/b-N2ksV32pI .
  9. Yup. That's where my brain hurts. It got the AzMaxLoad for its simplicity. No electronics that needs to be powered and get in the way of what I'm actually out there for. I also love the idea and feel of having a fully analog rig that allows me to see things that are so immensely far away. Yet, having the option of adding the DSC makes the AZ100 so compelling. You don't need to, but you can.
  10. If I didn't already have the APM AzMaxLoad I would be all over this mount. It does add encoders and it does add slo mo controls. Still, I cannot justify another purchase at this point. Maybe I'm just battling some kick in of gear acquisition syndrome... in public.
  11. This one was waiting all day at home. It is quite a bit heaver than the Baader 2" mirror diagonal that I have. First light has to be some daytime spotting judging by the weather forecast.
  12. Ahaa! *LOL* I must be tired. I didn't see it.
  13. Oh yes. Report please! It is raining and all miserable here so I'm relegated indoors for some armchair astronomy. £49 is a great price.
  14. 1. When you have the laser in, if you bend it gently from side to side. does it move? Slight movement usually makes the laser go all over the place. 2. Is the secondary centered in the tube? I have a 130mm newtonian that, initially, was impossibe to collimate. When checking the placement of the secondary I discovered that the opening end of the tube wasn't round. After having fixed that the collimation process was quite a bit easier.
  15. Yup, I need to pulled the trigger on one of those. It looks very nice. I'm not drooling. 🤤
  16. Nice! Now that my mount was delivered one of these are at the top of the list.
  17. Have you had to do any service to it? Does it still operate as fine as it did when it was new?
  18. I'm happy that they still offer them. AFAIK there is no other non powered mount that has the same payload capacity. Do you still have yours?
  19. I just got it through the door an unboxed. It has been an anxious wait to see how APM would solve my request on getting a hybrid version that can be converted between single and dual mount. It turned out just perfect! It is supersolid but still not at all hard to carry thanks to the integrated handle. Since I'm not that heavy it is likely that I can sit on it and swing around with a scope mounted. 🙃 Clouds covers most of the sky tonight as usual. I don't care. I still contemplate taking all the gear out and watch the coulds just to get it out for a first spin. Rain would be bad though.
  20. And one would think an eyepiece design from the early 90s would be old and dated technology. If you already have an eyepiece of same focal length that does the job I see no reason why buy another one. If it wasn't for the larger exit pupil needed to compensate for losses by the filters I wouldn't have considered a longer focal length eyepiece at all. I did some research and was about to pull the trigger on the 40mm ES Maxvision. It seems to perform well, but it also seems to be absolutely massive in size. I hesitated and a few weeks passed. As I was shopping around for a new tripod the Pan ended up in the shopping cart just to see where the totals would land. Agony. I reasoned that if it didn't work well for me I could send it back, but if it did it could be a keeper for life. I didn't remove it from the shopping cart.
  21. Reminds me of target practice. I was taught SARA (Swedish military term for Ställning (posture) Andning (breathing) Riktning (aim) Avfyrning (fire).). It just occurred to me that I've used it without thinking about it in situations with high magnification and a wobbly mount.
  22. I had my worries when I ordered the eyepiece. One was the inward focus travel and the other FC given that I do experience some FC with the 31 Nagler in the same scope. Luckily it works great. A different designed scope may give a different result though. I do have an f/5 newt as well. At the next session I hope to get both scopes and both the long focal length eyepices out for a comparison.
  23. I received the 41 pan and the Astronomik UHC and Astronomik UHC-E filters from FLO Thursday. The weather wasn't all that great so I had to wait until yesterday before trying them out. I started out at 9pm. Seeing was okay. I live under a Bortle 5 sky bordering Bortle 4. The Milky Way can clearly be seen only a few nights a year. Yesterday I could make out the Milky Way after my eyes had dark adapted. I have quite a few tall tree around my garden, but there are a few openings; one directly south and one directly east. With some planning it works out fine for observational astronomy. I brought out my TS Optics Photoline 80mm f/6 triplet APO, a Telrad, the Pan and the filters and I aimed at studing M27 since I know what it usually looks like. Under dark skies you would be able to see the Milky Way and quite a lot of nebulosity in the Summer Triangle area. For example the North America nebula. In my backyard with an 80mm these are invisible. I also planned to look at M31, without filters just trying the eyepiece, since it would be in the east at this time. The 41 Pan is quite a hefty eyepiece, but compared to the 31 Nagler I would say it is lighter and somewhat smaller and by no means a mismatch for a small scope. I did not have any problems balancing the setup on my small Skywatcher alt-az mount. The 31 Nagler is a different story. Using the Telrad I put the scope in the rough location of M27. Basically the forth corner of a paralellogram drawn from Sadr, Gienah, Albireo and the location of M27. Checking the eyepiece M27 was in view at first try. It should be. The outermost circle of the Telrad is 4 degrees and the FOV of the 41 Pan and a 480mm focal length scope is 5.5 degrees. M27 was faint. I had to look at it with averted vision. Other nights I could look at it straight on, but not now. Perhaps seeing wasn't the best. I decided to try out the filters. I popped in the UHC-E and yes, contrast was noticeable better. It made the sky a lot darker. Stars still clearly visible although given a bluegreen tint. The zillions of fainter stars were lost however, BUT I could now study M27 straight on. Wow! I proceeded switching to the narrower UHC filter. It made the stars quite faint and clearly bluegreen. Unfortunately it also made M27 a bit too faint to look at straight on. My best guess is that under a darker sky and better seeing the UHC filter would make an improvement still. I continued the session by pointing the scope to Deneb keeping the UHC filter in. When panning around a bit closed to Deneb I could clearly see a lot of nebulosity. Quite faint, but the filter provided the contrast needed to see it AND I could make out the North America nebula. My first! It was not a spectacular view. I could clearly see the shape. Exhilarated by the experience I decided to pop in the UHC-E filter since it brought out M27 so well. Nah. All nebulosity disappeared. I switched back to the UHC for a while and then removed the filter to view the area without. As expected the sky was washed out, but not too bad. I then relocated the scope to have a look at M31. At this point in time it is located straight above Mirach so it is very easy to find. On getting my eyes on it; GASP! Wow. The core was well defined and so were the arms. I could see most of the extent of M31. I kept studying it and I didn't want to stop. For the sake of it I tried the UHC-E filter not expecting much and no, only the core was visible. I did not notice any field curvature as I've done with my 31 Nagler and this scope. However, yesterday I was well rested and it was fairly early in the evening on a weekend which do make a difference. Eyes tired by a full day in front of a screen is a pain. TL;DR; stars were sharp to the edge. I've read quite a few threads were people complain about a fuzzy field stop in the 41 Pan. I'm not sure about that. I didn't see it. At least, it was nothing that bothered me and this was something that I came to think about after I had brought in my equipment. I did notice some pincushioning. Nothing bothersome. At least not to me. Overall it is a very nice eyepiece that I found to be very comfortable to use. I did also bought the TeleVue eyeguard extender in case I would have problems with eyepositioning. I don't need it. To sum it up; The 41 Pan with an UHC filter in a short focal length refractor does works great. It allowed me to see the North America nebula under a Bortle 5 (/4) sky which has never been possible before. Not even during late Nordic winter nights and roughly double the aperture. The downsides; It doesn't replace a truly dark sky. Addendum; I was worried that I would not have enough inward focus travel with the 41 Pan. With the 31 Nagler it is a close call. Only 1 1/4 rev on the fine focus knob before end of travel. To my surprise I had to move the focuser quite a bit out before reaching focus.
  24. iOptron TriPier. It is very solid. I'm still waiting for the mount to arrive from Germany so it'll be a couple of weeks before I can try it out.
  25. I save up and once a year I order a bunch of stuff all at once. Last time was in May, which is approximately a year ago. One delivery from FLO and another one from ADM.
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