Ships and Stars

Here's the book on AbeBooks in case you haven't found it elsewhere and wanted it, the seller is in Maryland. Let us know what you find out. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30323045778&searchurl=n%3D200000237%26bi%3D0%26ds%3D30%26bx%3Doff%26sortby%3D17%26tn%3DBINOCULARS%3A%2BFallacy%2Band%2BFact%26recentlyadded%3Dall&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

Here we are: William Cook, author. https://books.google.com/books/about/BINOCULARS_Fallacy_and_Fact.html?id=CHexswEACAAJ

There's a binocular book written called something like 'binocular facts and fallacies'. The author was a US Navy optician on binoculars and then repaired binoculars for twenty odd years. Sorry I can't give a name at the moment, but imagine he'd know a lot about these, or someone who would. As far as restoration goes, I wouldn't touch anything that can't be reversed. Awesome binoculars by the way!!

Crikey, that ought to pull in the views! Around 2700mm focal length? This should be amazing on planetary and also lunar. Very nice scope.

This is as much a plug for the mighty JB Weld as is the filter hack! JB Weld has helped me get my damage deposit back on more than one flat, haha. Half our 30 year old kitchen cupboard handles have been repaired with it. Can't tell and probably stronger now than before. Regarding the binoculars, will try for as many nebulae as possible the rest of this observing season.

Hi all, Some might have seen my earlier post lamenting the lack of filter threads for my Quantum 5.1 observation binoculars, as the Quantum 5.1 20x and 40x EPs don't have any threaded attachment points top or bottom, and these older style bins don't accept standard 1.25" eyepieces. I bought a cheap set of planetary filters, unscrewed the filter retainers, cut the holders down to increase eye relief and used a neat bead of JB Weld to attach filter threads to my 40x eyepieces. These attach now in the same way as the Helios Apollos binoculars to the user side of the eyepiece. I would have attached them to the objective side, but this would not allow the eyepiece to insert fully. After letting the maximum strength JB Weld cure for 24hours, I now have filter threads! By the way, JB Weld is an incredibly strong steel-reinforced epoxy with a tensile strength of over 5,000PSI, I've used it for years on various items with great success. You can sand it to shape or even drill and tap it for threads 👍 The eyecups were missing, but now I think some generic ones will fit will a little trimming. Still have the 20x eyepieces to do, these still have the original eyecups, so those will get trimmed to neatly fit around the exterior of the filter holders. A little touch of black paint over the JB Weld with a super-fine model brush, and all is good.

Sounds excellent Gerry! I'm hoping to nip out tonight before the c.1am moonrise but cloud looks hit and miss. The 15" sounds like a brilliant scope and with the encoders, a real timesaver as well. We are not getting out much, but plenty of places to walk around here so we're lucky as well in the grand scheme of things. I'm hoping to make the most of the remaining darkness for this new moon and the next, then it's going to be quiet here on the DSO front until late August. Cheers!

I managed to see the Rosetta for the first time ever about a month ago. Dark conditions with a decent sized dob. It was right up there with the Veil Nebula in my book. I'm almost certain I was using the oiii filter, as it's the only 2" filter I own and I would have been using my 21E. It's a very large nebula as I recall and just amazing under those conditions. I think I could pick it up fairly easily with my 300p flextube under edge of town LP. It's worth some star atlas research and chasing for sure.

Sounds great! My last lunar session was a good one, I'm really starting to appreciate the lunar stuff more and more one I learn my geography. My most-used dob is non-tracking with a telrad. I love it because it's so simple to set up and lets me start viewing very quickly. If I had to set up the other one, there would have been quite a few excellent nights I would have missed out on. Hope everything passes smoothly there in the non-astronomy department(s)!

Ah yes, the higher the number the darker. It's around 19.5 at home before the moon gets too high, but hoping that breaks 20.00 under a new moon with excellent conditions. I've read a true 'dark site' is above 21.5 and 22.00 is pretty much close to perfect. I'd expect a really bright urban area to have around 16.5-17.5 SQM, but haven't tried that out yet! These units have +/- 0.10 SQM margin of error, so a 21.8 could registers as a 21.7 or 21.9, but probably splitting hairs at this point. The same site can also have different readings depending on atmospheric conditions and of course, any cloud cover will skew readings. Looking forward to find out how dark some of my sites are, I suspect they will be marginally brighter than the LP map suggests, given the relentless march of development and the ubiquity of LED lighting these days, but will post results!

I don't doubt it's brilliant, and truth be told, it won't be a money maker for TV considering the time spent engineering and getting this jewel out there. For most of us commonfolk, photos only. Not very exciting is it? (I've officially reached middle age with a twist of bitter) lol

Yeah, had a pair for my binoviewers. Not enough eye relief for my taste, so chucked them in an empty burger king bag somewhere in the back of my van. I can hear them clink together when sailing over roundabouts, should probably stick them in the glove box instead. Said no one ever...

I was going to say your best bet might be to have one made. Even for the SW mass produced dobs they seem pricey for what they are. It should bump contrast and help the mirrors stay a bit cleaner and fight off any dew, especially for the primary. I still need a secondary dew heater when it's really soupy out.

SQM-L meter arrived this morning from FLO, excellent service as always. Besides aperture fever, I also have SQM fever, so this is long overdue and I can see how dark my 'dark' sites really are on various nights and check it against the LP Map. My bathroom is 21.84 with the door closed, but unfortunately the view of the sky is somewhat restricted. Hoping to try it out at four different sites soon before summer arrives and enter my data on the Globe at Night website.

I haven't done much planetary, but ended up using my ND moon filter last night on Venus simply because it's so bright. Think the ND improved things quite a lot and tamed glare. I think I was viewing at 231x and the mirror was still cooling down, so there was a bit of scintillation and shimmering, but a decent view overall. Without ND filter it's an intense sphere (well, c.50% illuminated last night) of pure white light, obviously a planet, but impossible to tease out much detail due to the brilliance. Maybe give the ND a bash for detail?

3 on 4 off isn't too bad I guess? Bet the 3 on are long days though. Hope you get to see Uranus!

I'd forgotten summertime starts earlier in the states. We change clocks end of month. I figure I'll have one new moon in April to view the faint fuzzies between 11pm and c.2am for a week or so, then I'll be cleaning and storing the big dob for the summer and switching mainly to observation binoculars. Hopefully Uranus before then.

There are two OOUK newts on ABS at the moment, a 1/10 8" for £265 (steal) and a whopping 12" for £600 I think (another potential steal). Doubt either will last long. If I was still looking for a 12", I'd go for the VX12. However one distinct advantage of the SW flextube is that it partially collapses which makes carrying and vehicular loading much easier. Drawback on the SW dobs is the oversized, heavier than necessary base. The 12" base is still easy to carry single handed but only just fits through most doorways with mm to spare. If the 14" base was the same size as the 12", I'd have gone for that, but am quite happy with the 300p.

Sounds too slow to be a satellite if it takes 20 minutes, but I'm not that clued up on those. All the ones I've seen though my scope are usually tanking it across the sky. If I may ask, what time of evening is this? If it's early evening just after dark, could possibly be Venus if you are in a chair and don't move and it transits across a single window pane in 20 minutes? Venus is very bright - the brightest planet in the sky if I recall correctly. Alternatively and perhaps less likely, could be a routine scheduled commercial airline flight from a very great distance with the sun reflecting off the fuselage just after dusk? Do you have binoculars? Or a digital camera with a decent zoom for an ID shot? I'd guess, and it's just a guess, it's most likely Venus. Edit - I like the SkyView app for a quick look at what is in a given area of the sky at a given time. Pretty handy app for such things and shows most satellites, but there are so many these days, it's like a motorway up there at times.

Welcome from NE Scotland Geoff, SGL has been immensely helpful, I've only had my scope for a year end of this month, but have learned so much from everyone here which made my limited time outdoors a lot more productive and fun.

Awesome shot! Seeing conditions were pretty good I think. Was out that night.

I'd like to try imaging 'someday', but after reading posts here, I'm going to wait. My time is limited and I want to observe first, so decided not to delve into AP. Used to do a lot of 'terrestrial' photography in general, was my sole source of income for a while. Weddings are my best point of reference, you have one chance to get it as close to perfect as you can, or else you will have the entire clan chasing after you. Test new gear first before you use it, not on the day of the wedding *cough*. Stuff like that. I had a new external strobe malfunction at a large wedding. 80% of the shots were massively under- or over-exposed and it was too dark in the venue to use the built-in flash, so I had to just keep firing away and hope for accuracy by volume. Not professional, not fun and the newlyweds probably weren't too impressed, but I squeaked by with enough salvageable shots to produce an album. Never again though! Test, test and acquaint first. Anyway, back to the astro. Maybe print a checklist and laminate it? Kind of like a shorthand operations manual or a pre-flight check list? I often get in a hurry, and find it often takes longer to do a job than if I had approached it in a more reserved manner. Easier said than done sometimes. Perhaps this was your 'crux' moment, and from now on, the gear hiccups will diminish? All part of the curve and as others say, you're not alone. PS did you really delete 20k photos? Don't think I've managed to top that. Impressive!

I'm someone with a severe case of permanent 'Dobsonian Aperture Fever' aka 'DAF', so please take my views with a grain of salt. My first scope in March last year was a 20" dob which is frequently mind-blowing under dark skies, and I take it to dark sites every chance I get, but I quickly started looking for something smaller to play with when time was limited or I wanted a quick peek from home. All except one of my scopes (300p flextube) were bought second-hand for what I think were good prices and I didn't lose any money on them, so I view then as investments that might take a little time to sell if I want the money back, kind of like a savings account with rapid withdrawal restrictions in place. When I accumulate enough second-hand scopes and EPs, I can sell the part/whole lot and afford to jump up in aperture (the entire meaning of life for someone afflicted with DAF). I don't know if you want to do imaging, so a lot of this won't apply, but next was a 130PDS on an AZ4, a fine scope, very sharp optically, easy to use, but at the end of the day lacked enough aperture to keep me interested, as my main area of interest are nebulae and galaxies. More for AP in my still-novice opinion, but also still reasonably good for very widefield views under darker conditions. Then I went to a 200p on EQ5, a big step up from the 130p in the aperture department and thought 'now we're back in the game', but didn't get on with the EQ mount at all, and after a while the 8" aperture of the 200p was a bit ho-hum, but still, a leap up from the 130PDS. The 8" will start to show some objects very well like M57 and I even caught a whiff of the Veil Nebula from under moderate LP. So I sold the 130PDS and 200p/EQ5 and went for a 12" 300p flextube, non-GOTO a few months ago for my 'grab and go scope'. I absolutely 100% love it. Fits in a normal car, is light-weight in the grand scheme of things, sets up in literally about 3-4 minutes and will happily go 250-300x magnification when conditions are good. Just set base down, lower tube gently in the cradle and extend flextube, tighten handles, pop on the finderscope/telrad, remove mirror covers, insert eyepiece, aim and start viewing. I 'detected' the Horsehead nebula from a dark site with it quite easily, though of course it didn't compete with the 20", which just shows the HH every time with direct vision. So the 300p passes my 'horsehead test'. Diminishing returns is harder to pin down. I'd put it somewhere around the 12" to 14" mark. The 300p is a big step up in price from a 10" dob (£835 vs £439) which is arguably the standard for most amateur visual astronomers, the perfect point between size, price and aperture. The 14" is another £450 jump on the 300p, and it gets exponentially more expensive from there. So in my opinion, depending on what you can lift comfortably, how much room you have to store it, budget etc, I'd hold out for at least a 200p or better yet, a 10" dob secondhand and just skip the incremental upgrades. A 12" 300p flextube with homemade dobson mount was just online for £350, a bit tatty cosmetically, but the mirrors were reputedly sound. A nice second-hand 10" dob can be easily had for a bit less if you keep your eyes open and are prepared to wait a little bit. A second-hand 350p was just online for £700 and I'm pretty sure it went for closer to £600. That's a scope to last a lifetime. Unless you have DAF of course! PS - I'd imagine even moving up to an 8" from a 114mm reflector will be a wow moment, so you have lots of goods times ahead no matter which way you go. Have fun!

Ah, I bet my friends could see it, but didn't know to look? I'll give them a shout. Think they are around Spring Hill. They went up to Cedar Key one time and said the night skies there were incredible.

Apologies in advance for going way off topic here maw lod qan! Yes, sadly I can't say I'm too keen on the thought of a North Uist spaceport to put it mildly. I don't know exact details, but it's supposed to be going in around the Scolpaig area of 'north' North Uist, which is effectively 100% free of light pollution and quite likely, from my research, the absolute darkest night skies remaining in all of Europe and Scandinavia, full stop. LP Map shows it a perfect Bortle 1, with 22.00 SQM and virtually 0.00 trace artificial light. The closest comparable places I could find were a relatively small area of SE Iceland and Murmansk Oblast, east of Murmansk city in the Russian Arctic. Nothing in Continental Europe or Scandinavia was equal. (A bit of Bortle 1 in central Scandinavia, yes, but still not absolute 22.00 with zero LP). Continental Europe? Forget it, nothing even close until rural Ukraine. I understand the land was supposed to be in some level of conservation zone, but given the limited economic opportunities there, it's been largely welcomed with open arms, which isn't a surprise really. I spent some time on North Uist and can attest at the top end it is incredibly, incredibly dark. On a cloudy night with a new moon where I was staying (remote part of Berneray), my eyes simply could not dark adapt enough to walk outside to my van without having to hold on to walls and railings, and I was in my early 30s at the time. Like being in a cave. Never took my scope however, wasn't into astro then, though I always liked stargazing in general. Anyway, I wonder if many folks there realise exactly how incredibly rare their night skies are? I'm really surprised no one has put it forward as a Dark Sky Sanctuary, couldn't think of a more deserving place. If they build the spaceport, and it looks almost assured, I hope they switch to absolutely minimal lighting when operations aren't ongoing. Ok, sermon over!