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Dippy

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Everything posted by Dippy

  1. I wonder why John was not sent a set of this new mount to test. He is my favourite reviewer and I know he only uses Alt Azimuth mounts. John is also a pleasant reviewer whom I trust on his healthy, balanced judgement. I have based my eyepiece and mount purchases based on what he uses for his own observations. I have read many times his suggestion to manufacturers to come up with a mid range altazimuth mount to sit between Skytee 2 and more expensive ones. I think Rowan brothers have missed an opportunity here to communicate properly with potential customers of their new product. That is just my opinion and I hope their new mount sells well.
  2. Because the Dobsonian is non tracking, you need an eyepiece which keeps the target longest in the field of view. That means going for the widest possible field of view, ie 100 degrees. Ruling out the expensive Televue Ethos, your next best choices are APM HDC or Skywatcher/OVL Myriads. I have all three kinds. For widest possible field of view you can get the APM HDC 20 and 13mm which has provided me with incredible 3D Spacewalk experiences. Unfortunately the Skywatcher 20 and 9mm are out of stock since 2018. So your best luck for planetary (short focal length) eyepieces are Pentax XW 3.5, 5mm or 7mm, TeleVue Delos And Baader Morpheus 6.5mm. I use the Skywatcher/ OVL Myriad 3.5mm successfully on Mars these days on a refractor, but I have not used it on my Dobsonian. You can also use TeleVue Nagler 31mm type 5 for your wide angle views, but the price is twice of the APM, even second hand ones.
  3. I originally bought one bottle of Baader solution and have yet kept the bottle, then I found these pack of 4 spray bottles on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184364921926 I fill them with Isopropyl alcohol, one spray bottle for myself in the pocket to use as disinfectant when outside during Covid-19, one for my wife in her bag for the same purpose, and two in my lens cleaning kit sets, for use on eyepieces if they get dirty by oils from eyelashes or accidental fingerprints. I use the Baader bottle filled with Isopropyl alcohol too. I bought one bottle of 1 litre Isopropyl alcohol one year ago for £5 and it was a great help during the pandemic. It is now one third of its original volume, and probably the best purchase I ever made. My TeleVue, Pentax eyepieces (which I purchased on the example of John Huntley, from Cloudynights forum) and other optical surfaces are pristine as new, despite that these eyepieces are always on use.
  4. Baader optical wonder solution is practically Isopropyl alcohol. Instead of £12 for a 70mL of it, buy a 1000 mL of Isopropyl alcohol for £22 (before pandemic it was only £5). They have also smaller bottles which will be cheaper of course. The Baader solution and Isopropyl alcohol don’t remove the toughest of fungi on optics, only a few of the less deep set ones can be treated with them. I have used both for cleaning eyepieces and on certain stage of cleaning several 8 to 12 inch mirrors. They both worked identical. When applied through an optical cleaning fabric, they remove ( dissolve) fatty oils and fingerprints on optical surfaces. I had cleaned a 12 inch mirror once which for some unknown reason had ice cream stain on it (cleaning followed standard operation procedure for cleaning coated aluminised mirrors).
  5. Baader optical wonder solution is practically Isopropyl alcohol. Instead of £12 for a 70mL of it, buy a 1000 mL of Isopropyl alcohol for £22 (before pandemic it was only £5). They have also smaller bottles which will be cheaper of course. The Baader solution and Isopropyl alcohol don’t remove the toughest of fungi on optics, only a few of the less deep set ones can be treated with them.
  6. I tried my Skywatcher Myriad 3.5mm 110 degrees eyepiece on the Mars early morning with a thin layer of cloud and Moon nearby. It was sharp to the edge and I could hold my head at an angle and yet see the Mars gibbous phase without nudging the telescope tube. Mars was showing clear steady sharp image. Two parallel green-grey areas of Tyrrhena and Hesperia along one polar cap were visible, and also Syrtis Major at the limb. The giant Hellas crater was brightly in contrast with the rest. This eyepiece combination with Skywatcher DS Pro ED120 works very fine. As the sky became brighter ahead of the rising Sun, the details on Mars were more clear and contrasty. It was really stunning experience. I wonder why Mars is said to be difficult object to observe as it is quite large and shows more detail than the Saturn. The details I was seeing in Myriad 3.5 were missing in Vixen SLV and it makes me think, it is the eyepiece which cause the problem for some.
  7. I have just made it brighter for you and you can already see a lot of nebulosity. The telescope has given you some nice round stars at trapezium. May be by further processing you can bring out more stars in the trapezium.
  8. I have the Lyra 102 f/11 which is this one: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p1958_TS-Optics-102-mm-f-11-Fraunhofer-Refractor---Optical-Tube-Assembly.html Since have bought it, I have stopped using my 8 inch Meade LX200 . The Lyra is such a quality equipment, optically and mechanically. It is a Fraunhofer achromatic which means practically it has not much chromatic aberration. The focuser and tube rings are superb, the best I have seen.
  9. I like comfort more than anything else because it helps to concentrate and actually see more. I place my observing equipment on a table near the window, the telescope tube sticking out towards the south with me sitting comfy on a chair inside the room. Everything I need is easy to reach and I can take breaks as I wish during observation without leaving my equipment exposed to outside environment. I sometimes put my feet up on a small stool, pulling the giant tube of the Skywatcher 150 refractor coupled with a binoviewer towards my eye , resting my head on a headrest and observe the Moon or Jupiter. I feel probably I am the most relaxed observer of the night sky (until I see someone more comfortable). Sometimes I even don’t bother to open the window and observe through the double glaze, mostly during winter months. I also use different equipment for different moods. For quick look during breaks in clouds even a ready to use Skywatcher Infinity 76 blue penguins telescope is a joy to use.
  10. Unfortunately not. I bought the Skywatcher Flextube 130 second hand from Ebay and I use its mount for my observing sessions indoors. I wish they would sell it separately and have written to OVL in UK about it (OVL is the distributor of the Skywatcher telescopes). For my smaller refractors I use the similar but smaller mount of a second hand Skywatcher Heritage 100. I use my Skywatcher Maksutov 150 on the same mount, but I don’t recommend them because refractors are more versatile for both wide angle and planetary observation. Maksutov telescopes have narrow field of view and are excellent for planetary observation but finding the target and keeping it on track is a challenge if you don’t have a tracking mount. I also use cheap but optically excellent and very light weight SVBONY Aspheric eyepieces on a Skywatcher binoviewer with these, although I have more upmarket eyepieces, but they are heavy for binoviewing.
  11. I observe in a similar situation ( but through a window). I find using a Newtonian telescope, even an Astroscan is difficult in that way. I prefer my refractors , Skywatchers up to 150mm, on the Dobsonian mount of a Skywatcher Flextube 130, on a table near the window, the tube sticking out towards the south and me sitting comfy on a chair inside the room. Everything I need is easy to reach and I can take breaks as I wish during observation without leaving my equipment exposed to outside environment. I sometimes put my feet up on a small stool, pulling the giant tube of the Skywatcher 150 refractor coupled with a binoviewer towards my eye , resting my head on a headrest and observe the Moon or Jupiter. I feel probably I am the most relaxed observer of the night sky (until I see someone more comfortable). Sometimes I even don’t bother to open the window and observe through the double glaze, mostly during winter months.
  12. It is much better priced than my second hand skywatcher chair and looks more attractive. I feel the need for a kind of “double deck” arm rest with holes to place the eyepieces too! I always find it more comfy to have eyepieces out of the way of my hand and safely secured. It is especially a problem with my Delos and Pentax eyepieces which have quite narrow bases and wide tops, ready to fall on slightest movement of my arm.
  13. That is cheaper than the Skywatcher one I bought used! It is also more elegant and probably not as out of place when in a corner of living room.
  14. John, That observer chair has a design new to me. How do you change the height?
  15. I have several expensive planetary (high power) eyepieces, but value for my money I have not seen anything better than TMB Planetary II eyepieces from China. They cost about £23 and have focal lengths from 9mm to 2.5mm. I have the Vixen HR 2.4mm and Pentax XW 3.5mm and my TMB 2.5mm (to my eye ) looks equal to them in sharpness and image quality. I kind of regret buying Vixen HR 2.4mm because it cost me ten times more than the TMB 2.5mm. I think a 6mm or 7mm will be enough for your needs, and you can always Barlow them for higher magnification.
  16. My experience with HP laptop: just before Christmas they sent me a compulsory update which disabled their laptop’s sound card and network card. So learned a hard lesson during holidays: don’t buy HP hardware and if you bought, don’t update them to avoid their planned obsoletism, otherwise they grab you and mug you. Am I the only one who thinks this is the reality of 21st century USA?
  17. I had similar experience. Over the past five months I ordered several high value items from First Light Optics, which they did not have them in stock but their web site was not telling it and their emails were asking me to wait indefinitely. So I had to ask them to cancel and refund as it was just a waste of time. I ordered the same items from Rother Valley Optics and they always first checked their stock before taking my money and then delivered the items next day or two (if it was weekend). I yet don’t comprehend why there was such a difference as both are in England and use the same UK importers/distributors like OVL, David Hinds, etc.
  18. It depends on the target you wish to observe, planetary or wide angle. Let assume the wide angle low magnification eyepiece. With a non-tracking Dobsonian you need to nudge the telescope more to keep the target in view if you go for narrower field. I would recommend a 100 degree eyepiece like APM HDC 20mm which almost cost the same as a Pentax XW. You can keep the target in view for about 2 minutes with this. Or if you don’t want that much field of view, probably a Baader Morpheus 17.5mm 76 degrees is nice which would be about £60 cheaper and has excellent optics. Although it is very light weight which is essential for a Dobsonian to balance, it is weather sealed with neutral gas and can be used with a binoviewer due to its light weight. A Televue Delos is more than £300 new and has 72 degrees field of view. I have heard TeleVue Ethos 21mm on some targets gives almost a three dimensional effect, thanks to its exotic glass material and coating, although I have not tested it yet myself. It will cost you about 2 Morpheus eyepieces plus a Maxbright II binoviewer.
  19. This might not be related to the issue here, but good to mention that summer dust storms are starting ahead of the Mars Opposition.
  20. John, would you mind if I ask what eyepieces they were?
  21. I think your astrophoto of M31 is not bad at all. It is very wide angle view first of all. Then I can see you have managed to capture the shape of M31 itself, even showing hints of spiral arms. Beside that I can see in the lower part you have imaged the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). That is great! For comparison I attach below a chart of that region of sky( ignore the bright dot beside the star Mirach, it was a satellite passing that region of sky):
  22. From what I have read from John here in SGL and elsewhere since 2006, he is neither rich nor has deep pockets. To my observation, John has what he has through a steep learning curve, starting with some mundane eyepieces and gradually over decades of learning and selling or exchanging his eyepieces he has came to a core selection of Pentax XW, Delos and Ethos eyepieces, plus a Panoptic 24 and Nagler 31 Type 5. He just saves his money, sells what he has or exchange them and gets what is the best. I know this because once he kindly contacted me for selling one of his eyepieces to fund buying another one. John has shared his knowledge generously with everybody including myself and helped me make my mind about what worth saving for.
  23. A silk or polyester shower cap works also well and the elastic band of it leaves a bit of play for different aperture size. You can buy several of them very cheap through AliExpress directly from China.
  24. Thank you John for your thoughts on this. My reference to this is from TeleVue’s website which clearly says that it is illegal to ship, export, look through or read the manual ( even inside US soil) of the US made night vision equipment. There are known cases of covert sting operations by American agents that people have been arrested, extradited and charged from abroad for trying to buy or export such equipment, based on the US law. With UK as a junior partner, not being able to even extradite the murderer of Harry Dunn from US, I would recommend any UK citizen think twice before buying American made night vision equipment as UK government is unable to support its citizens. TeleVue website is clear on that ( screenshot attached). There are better Russian and Chinese equipment available but it seems there are left unknown. I have worked with and repaired the old Russian night vision military grade equipment and they were superior to modern US ones that I have watched video of them used on astronomical telescopes in YouTube.
  25. American night vision viewers are banned for non US citizens, even to look through, so forget about them. They are not that great anyway since many decades ago I had several of the Russian night vision viewers for repair and what I could see with them was superior to what you can see in YouTube videos of today’s US night vision viewers. The slightest point of light would have been blinding with Russian night vision gear, and a single match stick 20m away would have shined like the Sun. The details I could see in the night sky were out of this world. That was the Russian technology of 1970s and I am sure they have made more advanced versions now. I see sometimes some old Russian night vision cameras on sale in auction sites.
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