Zermelo

Those higher mag Barlow tend to be used for imaging rather than visual. One rule of thumb is that the maximum magnification in ideal conditions is around twice the scope aperture in millimeters, so ~x300 for your scope. But, in the UK at least, the usable magnification is often less than this due to seeing conditions. I would save your money for something else.

Get thee behind me, Satan (other malevolent deities are available)

Is that a fancy name for one of these?

Yes, perhaps I should have said "settle up" rather than "settle down".

I've seen wildly varying prices on different sites. I'm assuming it will settle down with time.

Excellent. Many people use a combination of red dot and optical finder. With Goto, I tend to use just the optical finder.

The only filter I've found to help with planets was the cheapest one I possess: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404621900566?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=oz251vuyrrs&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=IL6Mz5D7S4O&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY though I've not yet tried it on Venus. FLO says: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/flo-guides-colour-filters-to-improve-lunar-and-planetary-visual-observing.html Agena says: https://agenaastro.com/articles/choosing-a-color-planetary-filter.html Also this thread:

Yes, a combination of horizontal and vertical flips is the same as a rotation of 180 degrees. I think the SW 25mm in the Heritage 130 should give you a true field of view of around 1.9 degrees. That's not bad, but my 9x50 optical finder has a TFOV of around 5.5 degrees. So you'll need to work a bit harder with a red dot and wide field eyepiece. I was using a Skymax 127, so slightly less aperture than yours, but a much longer focal length, and so I get higher magnifications. 65 Psc is 4.3", and the components are fairly equal at +5.55 and +6.33, so even with the indifferent seeing it was quite an easy split at 9mm (x167), in both a Morpheus and Svbony 9-27mm zoom. Finding it with goto was easy, it put me within 0.25 degrees. I think doubles are great targets, especially in lighter skies.

I also observed 65 Psc on Friday. Yes, Pisces is a bit devoid of waypoints if you're star-hopping, especially in brighter skies. What scope are you using, and what finder(s) do you have? I have a goto mount and RACI finder, and it's usually quite simple to match the starfield in the finder to a chart, unless I'm close to a bright moon. I'm not familiar with the app incarnation of Stellarium, but in SkySafari you can flip the chart E-W and N-S to match the view in your optical finder or scope. If I had to star-hop then, yes, Delta Andromeda and straight down to the horizon, a little more than my finder's FOV.

As no-one has mentioned it yet in this thread, I'll link to this perennial favourite (see the chart at bottom), with the caveat that "difficulty" is, of course, a subtle and multi-faceted attribute; ymmv.

In order of R.A. : 79, 68, 83, 6, 7, 69, 70, 54, 55 I need another visit to a site with a good southern horizon, or to move house, whichever comes first.

Good luck, in B6/7 you will need a bit. But bagging M1 is a good omen. I have 9 left to find, all of them southerly, a problem with my home observing spot. You will be able to re-use that description for quite a few 😊

The discussion in here, and linked threads, might be useful

Very interesting, thanks for posting. It looks like we need to extend the list of "things that needed to be right, in order for us to be here".

Yes, the Crab seems to be much easier from darker locations. I'm mid B4, and had no trouble finding it first time.

Just clouded right over. I'll give it half an hour.

It's clear here, but the seeing is iffy. I've set up the Mak. So far, I've seen three doubles, Neptune and Saturn, and just come in for tea. About to continue.

I could restrict myself to a single scope, so long as I could have 500 eyepieces to go with it.

Nice report, thanks for posting. I've added a couple of those doubles to my next list. For anyone using SkySafari, note that it doesn't list STF 2570 under that designation, but it can be found as SAO 105207.

If you down a few of those Piraats, you may struggle to sketch anything.

If you're on a budget, a zoom makes sense, and if you're on a budget, a Svbony zoom makes even better sense. This recent thread has some discussion:

Here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ but have a read of the warnings here first: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-older-version-firefox I prefer Firefox to the others anyway.

It is designed to allow for this kind of operation. It was discussed in this recent thread about something else:

I was too slow out of the traps this evening, only getting an hour in before the cloud came, and some light rain forced me in just after 9. The sky looked very dark and transparent at first, but the seeing here was very average, and there was a light breeze. Most of the time I spent looking at Jupiter, over in the East. It was best at around x170, which is 9mm in the Mak. Any more, and it turned mushy. The NEB and SEB showed some detail at their edges, and one further band in each hemisphere was visible. The GRS should have been close to transit, but I couldn't see it. All four Galileans were out. Once again, my cheap Svbony 9-27mm was as good as the 9mm Morpheus. Uranus was close by, distinctly greenish in the Morpheus, slightly less so in the Svbony. A few attempts at tight doubles failed with the seeing, though HD9454 (0.9") was definitely elongated at x500 (but very wobbly) in the Svbony 3-8mm.

It may never happen : Saturn's rings will DISAPPEAR in 2025, NASA confirms https://mol.im/a/12714869