KP82

This is primarily targeted at those who like to see DSOs in their digital image format but do not like tinkering with the gears. The same results are easily achievable with some imaging gears at a much lower level of cost.

Please be aware when buying these ultra wide fov (82deg or larger) eyepieces if you wear spectacles. Most of them have very short eye relief (usually 10 - 13mm only). Some also have restricted eye position (ie. can easily black out).

The BSTs are pretty much the best bet for sub £50.

For anything smaller than 70mm, I'd definitely recommend refractors over any obstructed designs.

If budget allows, the Tak FS60 is a good option: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/takahashi-fs-60-series-refractor-telescopes/takahashi-fs-60cb-f5-9-doublet-fluorite-apo-refractor.html

Otherwise the various 60 and 72ED f/6 doublets are all good choices (e.g. the TS-Optics 62ED posted by vlaiv). No way that scope would weigh 5.4kg (My 107 triplet is only 5.7kg). It's more likely 2 - 2.5kg.

10 hours ago, McQ said:

 

Politicians love to ban things; it makes them feel productive and powerful. Lasers are used against law enforcement, Border Patrol, and National Guardsmen. Criminal organizations buy them by the box from China. Source, my family are flyers and in or associated with all of the above. All the hand wringing over using them on telescopes is unnecessary unless you have domestic terrorists or drug dealers embedded in the local club, or some psychopath shining them at people during star parties. If we ban everything that can be used irresponsibly, we might as well stay in the crib. 

Yes, everything can be used irresponsibly. But the damages that can be done by such actions are different. That's why some tools/weapons are banned for purchasing/usage by the general public.

The Pentax XWs between 3.5mm and 10mm are universally praised by many. I'm sure you will love it.

Between it and my N9T6, I prefer the Pentax for its better eye relief and more importantly easier eye position. The advantage of the nagler is its slimmer body which allows easier balance when used in my 80 f/6 on the mount zero.

If they opened the list for the 130GTX again or introduced a 140-152 model, I'd sign up in a heart beat. But this 110GTX is simply too close to my APM115, so no despite the legendary AP quality (the chance is gonna be pretty low anyway).

Re: Bresser AR102xs. I had one and used it for about 6 months two years ago. Like others have said the CA was surprisingly well controlled for a f/4.6 achro. However don't let the use of unknown ED glass fools you, it is still a very fast achro. If you intend to use it other than widefields, you'll need to set your expectation straight. Personally I'd never go above 90x in mag (that was with a 5mm BST) or otherwise everything felt soft/bloated. 

A 60 - 80ED would be my recommendation if your budget allows. Just remember most of the 80ED f/6 scopes are triplets, so they will cost quite a bit more and be heavier than the doublets. Stellarmira offers quite a few good options: 66ED f/6 and 80ED f/6.25. The build quality is a notch above the Skywatcher equivalents.

59 minutes ago, StevieDvd said:

The starsense full unit needs to link to a goto mount, the starsense phone app version is just a cradle that can be connected to any scope.  For a plate-solving/PA setup then yes there are plenty of ways to do this on Astroberry/Stellarmate/Asiair/Eqmod/NINA etc.  Most usage of them don't require any coding.

I was trying to visualise a push-to guidance with plate-solving for a simple scope with no electronics using Rpi & Astroberry. I have an EdgeHD with the full starsense setup (plug & play on an SCT/AZ mount) and well versed on the Linux apps (have Astroberry/Stellarmate/Asiair) - but I expect a few on the forum would be interested in creating a cheap push-to system, like the Celestron app, if it were easy to create.

 

Without additional scripts those software would require the users to fiddle around with the complicated UI through either RDP or VNC, not very practical for visual. The device I made for myself removes this hassle and is basically plug&play similar to the full StarSense unit. The extra benefit is that it works with any telescopes/mounts and can be used for both GOTO and push-to.

1 hour ago, StevieDvd said:

If the starsense option was available on it's own it would only need the cradle and a code for the free app. So logically would cost less than a Rpi4 and less fuss. Unless you refer to the full starsense unit with camera and scope control.

It would be interesting to see exactly what you have done with Astroberry/Python/Sky Safari and how that would be used instead of starsense.

I was referring to the full unit. The code on its own will be cheaper than the RPi4 for sure, but does it not require the actual starsense explorer scope to function?

My own self-made device grants me camera feed with crosshair overlay for aligning the finder to the main scope, precise PA when using EQ mount, GOTO using plate-solving and push-to guidance using plate-solving. Astroberry with its built-in Kstars/Ekos greatly reduces the work required to write my own script to interface with the mount via INDI. All mount movements and plate solving can be done via DBus scripting to call relevant functions that are already available in Ekos. I could certainly install Kstars/Ekos/astrometry on a vanilla Raspbian (or ubuntu pi) manually myself, but why waste time when there was already a prepackaged OS with everything I need. Sky Safari acts like a frontend UI similar to the StarSense app.

1 hour ago, doublevodka said:

I totally get that it's possible other ways, there are many very good DIY projects out there for all sorts of Astro things.

My point was more if they released it stand alone at a reasonable price, say between £50 - £100 it would sell by the boatload. I understand it's Celestron trying to push their own optics etc but it seems a little bit of a short-sighted strategy.

I doubt they could lower it by that much. Otherwise they could have done it now. At £50 - 100 they would massively boost the sales of Celestron scopes among the new starters.

Looking at your equipment, you're an imager so I don't see any reason why you would not want the flattener. Dedicated flatteners from the scope manufacturers are almost always better than generic ones (e.g. larger size of flat image circle, ease of use, pre-defined backspace requirement so you don't have to work it out by trial & error yourself). If you really don't have the budget for the Tak one, a generic model designed for f/5 - f/8 refractors like the Hotech SCA is worth a try.

On 05/05/2022 at 09:28, doublevodka said:

I spotted these the other day too, they look interesting! It also explains to a certain extent why they haven't released Starsense Explorer as a stand-alone option, which is a shame as I bet they'd sell thousands of them.

Whatever Starsense does can easily be accomplished by RPi4 + Pi HQ camera + a cheap 50mm finder + INDI + some python scripts + Sky Safari (works out a lot cheaper than Starsense). For the INDI + python part, using astroberry can save a lot of work on scripting (only a couple of more additional scripts will be enough. This is what I've got for myself).

The stargazing community is small and the majority of us won't spend more than £400 - 500 total on the gears. Starsense alone can easily account for more than half of this budget, so it's unlikely to sell thousands of them. It's actually a better strategy for Celestron to use it to promote their own products (Same strategy used by ZWO with their ASIAIR).

Doubt it.

My house is on the edge of a small estate in a semi-rural area. The skies towards the west and north west are decently dark (farmlands), but in the south it's a completely different condition. I've been seeing increasing white glow in the sky. To make matter worse, one of the neighbours moved in recently installed an upward facing overpowered floodlight that points at his house and is on all night. The direct beam is blocked by another neighbour's garage from where I am but the reflections off the nearby houses are horrendous.

43 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Strehl is often quoted as the single measure of lens performance these days and unfortunately it's not the case. In fact in the case of imaging pit to valley is the more important reading alongside polychromatic strehl. It is very possible to have a 0.95 strehl lens that has greater than a 1/4 wave PTV and hence doesn't meet the strictest definition of detraction limited performance. 

Adam

Well the reason I mentioned the strehl on astrograph website was to say that Rupert is a very reliable person to deal with. I didn't mean to use strehl (most likely measured in either R or G only) as the only metric to say that tenosky scopes are superior compared to the others.

17 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Balls. Missed that. That gets it too close in price to the gt81 

Rupert at astrograph is very trustworthy. When it says 0.95 strehl guaranteed on his website, he means it. WO just like many other rebranders source their scopes from those same manufacturers, but they tend to charge more for the same model. The tecnosky 80 f/6 even with VAT included is still more than £200 cheaper than the GT81 (£950 vs £1,179)

Another alternative here:

https://astrograph.net/epages/www_astrograph_net.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/www_astrograph_net/Products/AGTEC80OWL

For imaging it's evenly split between my 80 and 115 triplets depending on the targets. But for visual I've found myself using the 107 frac much more often than the 200 dob these days. I suppose the top reason is that I'm lazy. GOTO with the help of my self-made plate-solving finder makes locating the targets so much easier especially when searching for double/multi stars. Also tracking for me is a must have when observing the moon and planets at high powers.

The 80mm f/6 fpl53 triplet used to hover around the £1k mark. If this is true, it's going to be a bargain (even cheaper than the FCD100 version that I have which I paid 750 for).

ASIAIR is essentially a RPi4 with additional psu and custom software. The USB ports on the RPi4 have a cap on the total current draw. The WiFi extender must be drawing too much current causing the other USB powered devices (both your main and guide cams) to temporarily lose power hence the disconnection. 

BYEOS supports platesolving via ASTAP + a planetarium program for providing the RA/DEC coordinates (e.g. Cartes du Ciel). This was the software combo I used myself when I had my 600D before switching to NINA then later on Kstar/Ekos when I upgraded to a cooled OSC.

I did the upgrade myself also when I had my HEQ5. It took me a whole afternoon (4 - 5 hours). While all the points raised above are valid, I'd also like to say that pinion gear removal was not as easy as the instructions might suggest even with the original pinion extraction toolkit.

The mount is indeed quite sensitive to balance. I often limit myself to use only the ES68 20mm, N9T6 and Morpheus 6.5 along with the Q-Barlow when using my 80 f/6 + zero portable setup because these 3 eyepieces weigh similarly (Morpheus is slightly heavier but ok). The Delos and XW are simply too much heavier. When I do put the ES68 34mm in for ultra widefield, I'll have to rebalance.

I've also adjusted the worm tension so the stiffness of the slow-mo is as close to the other AZ mounts I owned before (AZ5 and AZ Pronto) as possible.

To preserve full quality when sharing online I'm afraid you'll have to use those paid media sharing sites.

I personally use pbase.com to share all my images (not just astro, but also landscape, birds, etc.). It costs me $20 a year and allows full resolution original images.

It's one of those latest new APO models, so no reviews online yet. But judging by the specs, this pretty fast f/6 FDC1 doublet (assuming it's a typo and is in fact FCD1 which is very similar to FPL51) should perform decently but not in the same league as the other f/7 or f/8 FPL53/CaF2 doublets.

I've used my mount zero only with my 80mm triplet as a portable, quick to deploy setup. I have it on an ES ST-1 tripod (1.25" steel leg) with a M10 to 3/8 adapter rather than a heavy duty tripod in order to keep the overall weight down. I could imagine if I tried my 107 triplet on it, it would become unstable.

I had the same issue with the standard skywatcher slow-mo cables. Got fed up and replaced them with a pair of ADM knobs. No falling-off in middle of use anymore.

I tighten the tension knobs to a point slightly over where they natually stop (difficult to describe). This allows both push-to and slow-mo to work at the same time.

I used a tablet screen before switching to this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08K4MVK1B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

On the tablet I simply painted a pure white image, set the screen brightness to match my desktop monitor (about 110 cd/m^2), disabled sleep timer and used the Ekos auto flats exposure (only for the 1st shot, then manually set the exposure to match it for the rest).