DaveL59

under astronomy tools at the top of the SGL page there's a calculator which should help

down to what you can afford in your budget, what you can manage in terms of lugging it out and space to store it really. For a reflector if you look in the 6 to 8 inch range (150-200mm) you'd get good views I expect, for a refractor 4-inch (100mm) would be the low limit ideally and they get heavy above that requiring more expensive mounts. Magnification will depend on how good the seeing is (clear sky etc) but 150-200x for planets is reasonable on good nights. You'll likely need to budget for better eyepieces in the long run as the supplied ones with most scopes are ok but not fantastic. Say £50 each for BST Starguider which are well regarded as an upgrade option. Which would depend on the scope you decide on but first get used to the scope as shipped before sinking more into the hobby you're just starting out on.

for me it's houses and trees but luckily it appeared between the neighbour's and the block backing onto the gardens from the parallel road. Luckily we're near the top of the hill so the obstructions diminish downwards 🙂 Was lucky enough to see Hale-bop back then too, from blackheath common if I recall. Looks tonight tho it's totally clouded up in the NW-N area for me

saw it for the first time last night 11PM in the binos, was hoping for another look tonight but is looking like cloud will cover the area it'd show in. Same for the SE where I was hoping for another look at Jupiter and Saturn. C'est la vie...

won't stop the small birdies from inspecting and maybe leaving small corrosive deposits tho 🙂

I find I only get notifications if someone quotes me or likes a post, otherwise I don't see any alerts that someone posted to one of my threads, so can be a while before I pick up unless it's one I'm actively updating.

Gave the leather a clean and feed and added some felt under those metal capping plates so they don't do any damage. The wood base has raw leather in the tube cut-outs which seems to work ok but now the scope turns more easily. Refitted the ancient Prinz finder scope and just been out and aligned it. It ain't great but at least it's something till I sort an alternate. With the damaged objective lens section blacked out the image is very good, you'd never know through the eyepiece Of course now it's out and ready to play the southern horizon is all clouds where the planets would rise (red squiggle) and traverse before I lose them to the oak tree in the south, that dreaded cloud god must've heard me saying earlier that I'd test this one out again tonight 🙄 NNW was heavy cloud earlier but seems to be moving so just might get lucky on Neowise again, time will tell...

So from the story so far... It seems that while the lens fail was a disaster and I felt totally gutted at the time, it wasn't a complete disaster and the scope is in fact still quite usable. I do hope to source a replacement lens at some stage but it seems an 80mm will be too large and mean some mods that could change the look of the scope quite a bit. A 75mm would likely drop out or down the OTA unless I find a way to add to the lens retaining lip. The ideal/easy solution would perhaps be to scavenge a battered Prinz 660 for the objective as that's a 76mm if I recall correctly... So I'll be keeping my out for one if I can find one at a reasonable price. Anyone got one they'd part with to be broken up I wonder? Meantime, back to thinking about restoration options on this lovely old scope 🙂

Cleaned off the old glue and the to parts are still a very snug fit tho do come apart slightly easier now. Looking into the cell fully assembled, the lip that holds the lens in place is very narrow. Maximising the aperture I expect From the OTA end and the dew shield end At least I can reassemble as-is and be comfortable that it won't suddenly come apart unless I'm yanking on the dew shield while I decide on which way to secure the parts in the future. A small m2 brass countersunk I think would work well and should eventually age to blend into the aged brass.

I was working the lens cell to separate the inner tube and the lens became loose. Unfortunately it tilted as I turned the tube to try tease it further and the edge of the lens against the tube wall was likely too much and a chunk pinged away. Of course while rocking the outer tube side to side tiny amounts likely helped that as well. About to post pics of the cell tubes, the lens may well have found the lip which would have given it space to tilt. edit: in fact the edge is visible in the pics above. The wide silver raised ring is where the lens sits and the inner tube presses home up to that point to hold it in place.

so some success, in the fridge for a good while, nice and cold. Refit into the OTA so I could use the securing screw to hold it. Was still tight going into the OTA tho even with that at room temps. Still quite tight but gentle rocking the shield and it edged it's way to freedom. 20 mins later and... Seems the lower inner tube section was glued into place so something I may have to consider when I refit, or tap a small hole and use a screw instead, likely the latter to make future maintenance a bit easier is my thinking. Explains why it was so stubborn to remove even tho the glue wasn't bonding to both parts any more. The mist on the lens is just condensation after around 1.5 hours in the fridge then going into a warm room with the humidity we have today. So the lens, seems it is 76.8mm diameter and 13.3 thick at the edge, cemented doublet. As you can see it is edge blackened as well tho doesn't appear to be coated, probably the norm back when this was made. Took the opportunity to black out the spall using a carbon black paint pen, should improve contrast till a replacement is found. Will now clean off the old glue and see how well the tubes then fit and put it all back together again. Once the paint has fully dried so I can clean the lens I may give it a quick test in the garden and another run at the planets tonight

overtightened locking screws perhaps, deforming the threads slightly? or a touch of corrosion which can be cleaned up if you've a tap and die of the correct size.

or even "Which?" magazine... 😄 I'll get me coat now... bye 😉

If I remember I might even give these a try tonight, assuming clear skies of course

pretty much any would show it, I was using an old Swift Audubon HR/5 last night which are 8.5x44 and it was nice and clear. Perhaps I'd have seen it closer in the 10x50's but then you have to be able to hold them steady. So any 8x40/42 or up should do, depends on how compact and lightweight you need them to be for other use and budget of course. Just don't go for any zoom types, they're generally not very good.

thinking more on the lens cell in this scope. Outer is brass with an inner ally (probably) front ring that are somehow secured together. Then the lens goes in and another ally tube inserted forms the rear lens ring. Now it's a tight fit into the brass and purely held by friction since it moves with some efforts twisting and pulling but doesn't come away easy. On thermal coefficients I wonder if cooling the cell might encourage the ally to shrink a touch more than the brass and perhaps allow easier separation of the parts. Aluminum 21 - 24 Brass 18 - 19 Just might work, maybe. Will pop it into the fridge for an hour or so later on and see if it makes a difference - if I can make room for it of course

ooh, just bought an old Vivitar metal lens cap, 85mm ID which should do nicely for the existing brass shield and help protect the lens (or the conservatory from catching fire with the sun glinting down the scope!). ahhh the slippery slope beckons once more... 😄

Hi Alan Hikvision here too, but I set my router up as a VPN end-point so I can tunnel in from the phone and fire up the Hik viewer and check on the house/kitties. No open ports to be vulnerable that way, plus the CCTV is on it's own network segregated from my PC gear. Does your camera have the sort of remote server setup like the cheaper XMeye ones, in which case you could view it that way. The issue for most is the router, ISP ones rarely have the features that business routers have, but worth looking to see if it will support VPN tunnelling into it. That'd be the more secure way to go really. Your work however may block you from being able to connect over vpn into your home network.

Had thought that's a possible option, tho it's 2-layer, outer is brass and the inner white non-ferrous likely ally and that inner forms the front part of the lens ring. A matching ally tube fits into the brass very tight, forming the lower lens ring. I am thinking though it it comes to it to buy a sheet of brass and try making a replacement shield to suit a replacement lens cell. The inner would be flocked anyway after all, but how well I could roll sheet metal by hand is another matter of course, bound to look well amateur I expect but you never know 😄 I might have another look at separating the lens holder/shroud in the next couple days now it's had it's first light outing with me last night then I can have a closer look at the lens. After that it'll be a while before I can try owing to the amount of effort needed to turn/move the parts. Kinda nervous to dig this hole any deeper at the moment though, given it's quite usable as-is do I risk rendering it scrap until I have a lens I can replace it with...

hi Adam the DDNS is a handy way to be able to just use a web location name instead of finding your external IP every time, much as you'd type in stargazerslounge.co.uk which is very useful when trying to reach your home router from outside, when you won't be able to go find your new IP if it changed. There's a number of providers for this where you register, pick a name you'd like to use and have something on your home network send the external IP to the DDNS provider to keep it mapped if things change. So if you registered myskycam.dyndns.net for example your web page would then use that name to pick up the camera, tho more likely it'd need somethings like myskycam.ddns.net:9001 or whatever port you open for it. As I said tho, opening ports is a risk, as the firmware on these cameras is not bulletproof and soon stops getting updates. Your router will then also appear on web address probes as it would respond on the open port so an attacker could potentially identify what is responding and how to hit it. One option might be to place the camera in the DMZ (demilitarized zone) on your router, in which case that should be as far as someone can get and not be able to then jump across to your internal network... sorry more techy speak

Been thinking that same thing Geoff, I've some water based matt enamel and also some paint pens so I could carefully paint that section at some stage. Was very impressed with the view it gave though and it didn't affect the views of the planets or stars at all even panning across the affected area. Considering the age of it I can imagine the previous owner spent many a happy hour viewing the heavens above with this scope On reflection am also thinking along the lines of working some brass strip or half a brass munsen ring fitted to the wood carrier to tidy the overall look. Keep as much of the original as I can, as it were.

Hi Adam I can't help on the webpage but for the browser display, does the camera install an active-X module in order for you to connect to it and control it? Not sure which model you have but that's how mine operate. Unfortunately that limits what browser you (I) can use to configure them unless going via the NVR. Are you hoping to have effectively a live stream from camera to web page? Or a periodic refresh? Reason I ask is that for the web page to connect to the camera you'd need to open ports on your router and if you do have to you become open to probes and attacks from the web side of the router. For periodic updates you may be able to get the camera to send out an image via ftp, say every few minutes and then not need to open your router to the outside world. Downside is some website providers don't like a high rate of file drops and may block the activity. Another question - you say you have the camera's IP, is that the IP on your home network? To reliably connect from the outside world you would need the external IP of your router which may change unless you are paying for a fixed IP. You can work around this using a dynamic DNS provider to refresh the router IP address against a name you choose to assign, then have the web page connect via the ddns name that you set up. I use DDNS so that I can remote connect back to my home network when out and about but my router does support auto-refresh to the DDNS provider, not sure that most of the ISP provided ones will, probably not so you'd need a PC on your network to do that part. Hope that helps a little

as Moonshine has said, take a read of this post which will give you an idea of how things will look in a telescope It'll save disappointment when you do buy one and the planets are tiny rather than popping out of the eyepiece Even small they are an amazing sight, very much a wow moment when you see Jupiter and Saturn any time you see them not just the first.

Collimation checking against the stars looks good, scanned across to Jupiter and Saturn and finally found Neowise in the sky from the back garden, between houses, my first sighting of it and with these HR/5's no less. Very nice view comet and tail and nice and clear so I'm very pleased with the results of the repair, a real bargain pair of binos they've turned out to be 😄

so success on Jupiter and Saturn with the vintage 3-incher, very nice views in fact And to cap that I finally got to see Neowise from the back garden in the repaired HR/5 bino's too, so a good evening from my point of view. Couldn't locate Neowise in the old scope tho as I was aiming along the tube having taken the finder apart yesterday, that would've been great for the old lens, it may have seen Hale-Bop under its previous owner but that's ok, I'm sure it won't mind too much 😄 managed to take a pic with the bridge camera, had to up the ISO to get it and handheld propped against a fence panel hence very bright foreground