Mr Spock

The only issue with putting scopes on building surfaces is rising heat will destroy your seeing.

Mine wasn't that bad and was able to sort it. A bit Heath Robinson but it works.

Next door neighbour to the left has an insecurity light which comes on at all hours (plus annoying barking dog), but thankfully their house is a couple of feet lower than mine and so it is below the fence line.

There's the BST Starguider 25mm at £55, which has 60°. That's your only choice at that sort of price unfortunately, though they do have a very good reputation.

Stepping up to 65° comes at a price - the 24mm StellaLyra UFF is £139... But it is excellent quality.

It's still very clear with great seeing. Called it a night though as my back is aching quite a bit and I don't want to upset it 

Just been looking at ζ Her with the FC-100. Using a 4mm Nirvana for x185 I was glimpsing the secondary. I put the x2.5 Powermate in for x463 and the secondary became really clear and well separated.

Clear sky, going for some doubles later. Both Taks are out. The finder and FS-60CB are the same size, almost same magnification - but amazing how much brighter the stars are in the FS-60CB.

The Taks are out, just now. Look closely you can see a few stars already.

Mini Porta for grab and go.

Please excuse the sceptic green 

Found a replacement slow motion cable lying around, but, need to solve this problem!

15 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Interesting! I was under the impression it takes a body much larger than earth to ignite fusion, I will have a look into it.

It's a white dwarf. Previously it was a red giant which has collapsed and shed its outer layer, leaving a condensed interior.

2 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Thanks! is this an app? or a program for computers, I will have a look.

Computer https://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/start

Cartes du Ciel has everything you could ever want. You can add loads of catalogues to it.

There's absolutely no CA with my FC-100. Impossible to provoke no matter what.

7 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

Ultimately I'm desperately hoping that @Mr Spock gets a lottery win tonight and drunkenly orders one and shares his opinion.

It will be a sober decision  It will also be a lottery win - my pension doesn't quite cover extravagant astro purchases 

I'd prefer to see a picture of the moon or Jupiter to make an assessment. Terrestrial images just aren't any good.

1 minute ago, Don Pensack said:

Take a look at his pictures.  They reveal the Delite was sharper and with better contrast.

I think you are looking at the wrong picture.

35 minutes ago, Don Pensack said:

His pictures reveal exactly why I've never liked zooms: contrast, color accuracy, and image sharpness are poorer than the fixed focal length eyepiece.

He said the exact opposite! The sharpness compared to the Delite was the same and the contrast better. Colour is a matter of opinion and to me the Svbony is more saturated.

Very impressive for a phone.

First suggestion would be the StellaLyra 30mm UFF. There's none better.

At a very reasonable cost the 13mm Nirvana is excellent, so are the others, 10, 7, 4 - except the 16mm - avoid that as it has field curvature. The 82° they have is very usable.

The best view I had with a 16" (not mine) was in Bortle 4 skies and 31mm Nagler with OIII filter. The Witches' Broom was etched in fine detail. Something I'll never forget.

I have found with my 12" the 30mm and 13mm are the most used. CO says I'm Bortle 6, but I feel it's worse than that. 30mm has a bright background, but 13mm darkens it quite a bit. I have in between options but they aren't needed. I have found at f5 it doesn't need a coma corrector, probably f4.5 does.

2" is much better than 1.25" for 120mm scopes. 1.25" isn't recommended for that size, though in the UK it's just passable.

My Baader Coolwedge II is brilliant. Highly recommended. With the Continuum my 120mm is bitingly sharp and detailed.

We have snails here too. Big ones. They are very slow though.

I took the shell off one of them to see if it would go faster. If anything it was more sluggish...

1 minute ago, John said:

Maybe a GOTO 10 inch dobsonian ?

I was thinking the same. 

You know it's going to flare when CrB is out of sight. That would be typical.

Hi, welcome to SGL 

Heritage 130 would be perfect. No complexity to it at all. I hear the optics are pretty good. Table top though, so something needed to stand it on. Also supplied eyepieces only get up to x65, so maybe a Barlow or short focal length eyepiece needed.

I wish stuff like that had been available when I first started 

Looks like it's coming along nicely 👍Great project.

As for my Mini Porta, I stumbled across a slow motion cable in an old bag of oddments a couple of days ago. Although not a cosmetic match, it replaces the broken one perfectly.