Stardaze

2 minutes ago, johninderby said:

The Rowan AZ75 looks interesting and sure it will be on sale soon.

 

Thanks John. I had seen this, looks lovely, though still, it’s double sided, which I’m not sure I’ll use. Or am I missing something there? 

I’ve been using a barlowed laser of late but the it’s still slightly out against the Cheshire. Very marginal though. 

I'm definitely going to purchase one of the Starfield, TS, Altair, Tecnosky 102 options next year but I'm really divided on which mount to pair it with. There's not a great lot of choice in the alt/az mid-priced range, is everything geared towards EQ mounts? The obvious option is a Skytee 2, but I don't think I'm going to need a dual mount, so is there something better suited? Most models I've read about seem to have minor niggles, it's tricky to see an obvious option. 

Great combination there, look forward to hearing a few more reports.

A couple of drops of washing up liquid is the most common advice. Thats what I used recently. 

9 hours ago, John said:

I think it's the 3rd time in the 8 1/2 years that I've owned the scope.

 

I think one day I’ll have a VX12 with a premium mirror, probably my realistic dob goal. A 102 frac is going to be next years present. 

That’s impressive seeing those John. Is that the first time you’ve washed the mirror in your dob? 

1 hour ago, badhex said:

A few goodies today! 

TS-Optics mount bag for my skytee. I'll need to purchase some additional foam to make some custom inserts from but a big improvement on the polystyrene box it came in, especially now I've added two PrimaLuce saddles. 

 

I've also given in to the demons of temptation and picked up the the TS-Optics version of the Starfield F7. Actually, this is the second attempt - first one was slightly damaged by the delivery service but TS sent a replacement immediately - along with more packing chips than I've ever seen! 

Ah nice. I think that’s the setup I fancy adding next year. Let us know how you get on, if ever this weather improves 

I’m not too bothered with the 3.5 at the moment, I don’t think it will get used much. 

2 minutes ago, badhex said:

You might want to rethink that, the "Pentax Fever" 20% off sale at @FLO ends Monday! 🙂

Nooooooo..... must be strong... must be strong... 😆

20 minutes ago, AstroKeith said:

I use Festool Systainer for all my astro gear. They are meant for tools & accessories but I find them very convenient. They stack and lock together.

My EP case, includes a heater mat and red LED illumination. It is designed such that the EP ends are both covered so I dont need to use caps.

Looks great that Keith 👍

I still keep looking at the 3.5mm Pentax, to complete my high power set of 5 & 7. Spent a bit lately on non-astro gear so think I'm going to sit on my hands. Plus there's not really room in my bag.

1 hour ago, johninderby said:

Nice 👍🏻

Are ypu going to pad the seat?

Yes John, not sure whether I'll do such a great job as yourself though. 🤔

Happy birthday to me today. She’s a good girl, knows what I’d like 😆

1 hour ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

I take it this will be for intermittent use ? but even so the drain on the battery of the combined heating element and fan motor can be quite high....  Is it just to quickly clean up condensation ?  do you acclimatise the gear before use ? 

Yes, it would be intermittent. Whilst the dew bands look after most elements I have been caught out needing a quick blast on occasion. It’s not so bad at home as I can run an extension cable out, but I really don’t want to make the effort of heading out to a dark site and being caught out. I do acclimatise at home.

A separate issue was that I had two instances at home where I wheeled the dob into the shed with a slight layer of frost on it. By morning the primary had dewed up. It was advised that it’s best to use the hairdryer to dry off before packing away. That would of course need more power. 

I use a 12v SLA battery plugged into my dew controller for dew bands but want to add something (all encompassing maybe) that I can plug a hairdryer into too. Was thinking of the basic Celestron 7ah pack but might stretch to a lithium option. The Celestron has the lighter socket so is good to go but lithium options seem to mostly be usb? Has anyone a recommendation. Haven’t a hairdryer at the moment either.

Sounds a great evening. I must make more of an effort around Cassiopeia really. 

Two nights out this week with customers is far more than I’m good with, so nodding off before 10 was sadly in order. I opened the front door on the way up, to see Orion partly clouded over, though M42 was prominent. It crossed my mind briefly, but really needed to sleep 😔

Very late to this one but as a lighting engineer by profession, all that they are achieving from that height is illuminating the top of the conservatory. The problem with domestic cheap floods are that there’s no optical control, you do need to spend a lot to have tighter beam angles and that’s just not something that anyone outside of the industry would do. The light-spill is clearly over both sides, they act as more deterrent than functional in my opinion.

I do have a 30w LED flood on the back of my similar-sized property, just in line with the sill of the top windows, but… it’s on a sensor and separately switched, though centrally mounted which illuminates perfectly with no spill over the fence line. I only ever turn it on a couple of times a year for get-togethers etc favouring low output, sensored small bulkheads around the property. These I turn off too for Astro nights.

The question is: do they wish to illuminate the garden better? More localised lighting would be better given the cut-off from the conservatories. From a security point, a smaller 10W, below the top sill would be enough. I’d bet that they are 30W, which is massively over-kill. You can control the spread of light through the mounting height and tilt but most electricians will throw them up in the day, point them in a direction and leave. You could also add a spill shield to act as a light blocker, but nobody would do that domestically. It’s a regular ‘fix’ for Council complaints. 

I only had the bins out early on and it seemed ok here in the midlands. Works night the night before put paid to any late night, but the clouds had rolled in by 10 anyway. Shame though as forecast poor all week again. 

16 hours ago, Zermelo said:

I bought some gloves that have those type of fingertips, for the same reason as you, but I don't get on very well with them.

I'd be interested to hear how you find yours.

They work well enough indoors in the warm but yet to see how they perform in the field.  They’re relatively lightweight, so probably not great for extreme cold.

I got a couple of winter essentials today, nothing too special but the etips will be a boon for me, so that I haven’t got to take a glove off to use SkySafari. 

3 hours ago, Ricochet said:

I was just able to have a quick look at Jupiter through gaps in the cloud. There is no bloat as far as I can see, but I may have overstated the visible detail as I couldn't see any banding tonight, just a bright disk and four moons. 

But a perfect sphere, no less? I don’t get that with the Stellars. 

Cool capture. What lenses did you use?

1 hour ago, F15Rules said:

I bought a pair of Bino Bandits back in February for use with my Orion Mini Giant 9x63s on a Ravelli (Amazon) tripod with centre column. A great combination for me with a nicely corrected 5 degree field, excellent Japanese optics (very little CA at all) and solid centre focusing. They are still available, still MIJ, and also available as a 15x63 version (full aperture, no stopping down).

I read Steve Tonkins' mini review of the Bino Bandits, and the only real negative he mentioned was a slight tendency to fog up on very cold nights. I agree with Steve on this point: I find wearing a Covid type mask useful, as it is the exhalation of warm air onto the vicinity of the eyepieces' that I think causes the fogging up.

The gain in contrast and general elimination of stray light is remarkable when you see it for the first time. I think they would work well on binoviewers too, I intend to try this soon on mine.

My bins don't have Independent Focusing, but your problem does sound as if your focusers are too loose..I had a pair of Kunming BA8 10.5x50s several years back which had IF, but they did not move at all between sessions.. I didn't have the Binobandits at that time though, so couldn't say for sure that they wouldn't move the IF focusing point a little..but I doubt it.

I almost always use my bins with the tripod, the combination is so light and easy to use, and the centre column/adjustable legs  combination allows a great range of height adjustment, whether seated or standing.

IMHO any pair of high quality Kunming BA8 type bins are so heavy that they need a tripod to really get the best from them. The combination of tripod and Binobandits has transformed my enjoyment of using binoculars for astro use👍.

Dave

I do use my tripod for times when I want to view something for a good amount of time or when sharing with others, I guess the monopod is used for evenings where I tend to pan around a lot, both work well. I will say that finding the critical focus isn't so easy with the Stellar's. That could be down to me (most likely) or some of the imperfections in sharpness, they never really provide a perfectly sharp star as far as I can tell. Are there masks available for bins? 

I found that by pushing the bandit to the bottom of the EP's helped eliminate the fogging up, but, they're just not as effective at all so it largely defeats the purpose. They still remain effective from the side but I found too much stray light coming in from below. I'm guessing you don't clip your bandit up Dave, yours looks brand new there. Mine haven't kept their shape that well.

29 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

I don't recall any but at only 16x they're not particularly suited for the task and so I don't tend to use them for it. Jupiter shows a couple of bands and moons, Saturn shows a disk and "single" ring if I recall correctly. If I remember I'll have a look with them the next time it is clear and get back to you. 

Personally, if I was to buy a bigger binocular it would be one with interchangeable 90° angled eyepieces. It's a lot more money to do that though. 70mm is as big as I'd like to go on a monopod so anything bigger would need an more substantial mount, which takes more time to set up and warrants a longer session than I tend to use the HRs for. 

That's a fair comment regarding going bigger. I think the 15x70 size is probably the sensible, workable size. I don't get that kind of detail from the Stellar's, I can just about make out Saturns ring but there's no definition with some bloating. By that I mean that even Jupiter isn't completely round, there's almost a disc running through it. I've focussed on the tripod but can't eliminate it, just assume that the next grade would do better in this regard.