Pixies
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Posts posted by Pixies
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I bought a job-lot of eyepieces which excitingly included a 12mm Delos! Around 70°-80° FOV is my sweet-spot, so I was really looking forward to using it. I've used it for several sessions now, and wanted to love it - but I don't!
I can't say what it is - it's comfortable enough and I have no real difficulty getting my eye position correct. Perhaps it's just the faff of the adjustable body, but it doesn't really 'disappear' in use.
So - now having tried a Delos and an Ethos (too wide for me) - should I just bite the bullet and get a 13mm Nagler? Anyone here have experience with the 12mm Delos and 13mm Nagler (T6)? How do they compare in use?
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No Cloud
No Wind
No Moon
Pick 2
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First 'spring' fuzzy session tonight with the dob. managed some old favourites, starting in Leo
2/3 of the Leo Triplet - M65 and M66 easy with direct vision but NGC 3628(Hamburger) is rarely seen from my back garden. I should try earlier in the evening, as there's some murk low down to the SSW
2/3 of the other Leo triple. M105 and NGC 3384 were faint but just visible with direct vision. NGC 3389 was not.
Part of the same group: M96 was just barely visible but I couldn't find M95 - just too far down in the murk.
I shifted east and up, to get to darker sky - Canes Venatici:
M51 - both lobes visible but no structure
M63 (Sunflower) - bright centre with direct vision. Using AV, I could make our much more width, all the way out to the nearby star HD115270
M94 - nice and bright, even visible in the finder
NGC 4490 (Cocoon) - main part visible with DV.
By now it was -2°C and with no gloves on (duh) it was getting too cold to carry on.
Nice to start seeing the old faves again. I need to hit a dark site soon.
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On 11/03/2023 at 09:37, Marc1964 said:
Just taken a look and yes would be quite high. I will lurk on this site for a bit and see what comes up in the future. Thanks for the guidance!
It's very good for eyepieces and smaller items. Pretty much all my LVWs and SLVs have come from here - at around £50-£80 each.
Be aware, if a 17mm LVW ever comes up on it, I will be bidding!
Note though. If you buy from a retailer on the site, or the value is significant (over £100 say) you are much more likely to end up paying import duties / VAT. I'd estimate I've been landed an extra bill from DHL about 20% of the time. If you are getting a few things and accept their offer to combine into one single parcel, it always seems to get caught.
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Your scope suffered from Nocturnal Thermal Cooling!
That's how a dew shield works - it shields the optics from direct view of the clear sky. Even a dew shield won't help when pointing straight up for too long.
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Aligning the finder during the day is much easier but as you get to know your scope, you'll know whether you need to fine-tune the finder alignment each night. If that's the case, hopefully it'll only ever be a little bit off, so you can align just using a bright star.
With a few nights' experience, you'll know what you need to do. It will depend on how you store the scope, whether you remove the finder each time, etc.
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I must admit that I have benefitted from some of Tim's cast-offs!
Was watching an apparently rare Vixen 120S on a Japanese auction site last week - but thought better of risking trying to get it delivered to the UK!
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A package from Japan, for me.
Missing the flexi slo-mo controls. So if anyone has any spare?
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16 minutes ago, Ratlet said:
That being said, I'm not sure what's going on, but desperately hoping the delivery date is correct and so is the clear outside app lol.
Full moon though!
And a wee bit chilly!
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35 minutes ago, Nyctimene said:
Was not able to find the comet listed in my SkySafari Pro 6.0 -?
Stephan
It was in v7 - pro.
However, I just checked v6 (plus) and it's there. I did a search for "C/2023":
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Early days - but predictions are for 0 magnitude in October 2024
It's already listed in Sky Safari Pro
http://astro.vanbuitenen.nl/comet/2023A3
https://universemagazine.com/en/main-comet-of-2024-gets-the-name/
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It was around 21:00-22:00. The peak was about 21:30
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Cloudy here now!
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Here's a few I got earlier. Please bear mind my DSLR is about 18 years old and not very good in poor light! My daughter's is much nicer, but it was out of charge!
My neighbour's mobile phone was getting better pictures! I need to get a new phone....
But even with the naked eye, you could see the green - and the skies here are hardly dark. It was great to see the columns suddenly reach up into the sky!
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Very bright aurora off Portobello beach. Photos to come
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Having trouble polar aligning, too! Clouds though!
I'm next to the (north facing) coast. There's a strong northerly breeze but a high wall shelters the garden from the wind. I could see up to about 40 degrees so Polaris was hidden. I was waiting for the clouds to quickly blow over, as they are moving pretty fast. But even after 10 minutes, Polaris was still hidden!
The low clouds are forming as the air hits the land. So it's like a never-ending roll of clouds. I've never noticed that before!
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32 minutes ago, Ratlet said:
How on earth did you take those?! They're fantastic. Are they images?
Oh no! I didn't mean to give the impression they were mine! They are @orion25's. See the post I linked to.
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Had a quick pootle around Cancer last night. the first clear night here for ages, it seemed. Seeing was average but transparency was pretty poor; the sky looking pale and washed out.
Still - haven't had the dob out for a while and had some new (to me) eyepieces to try out.
Σ 1245 - easy split at x40 - both yellow but one much brighter.
Tegmine (Zeta Cnc) - the tighter pair were elongated at x150 but at x240 were occasionally notched but the seeing wasn't good enough for anything better.
Σ 1291 (57 Cnc) - Obviously notched at x240, but seeing too poor to split
Σ 1298 (66 Cnc) - Nice easy split. Quite a difference in brightness but nothing too tricky.
M67 - Used this to compare the new Delos 12mm to my old Vixen LVW 13mm. The former framed it better and gave a more immersive view, but the LVW was so much more comfortable to use!
Also - Iota Cnc - Very easy split with lovely looking larger gold and smaller cool blue. One of these 4 - see this really nice image and past post by @orion25:
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this is from Televue:
Exit pupil = eyepiece FL / scope focal ratio (which is 5 in your 150p)
So you might suffer visible astigmatism in your 1 dioptre eye with an exit pupil of 2mm or above. With your F5 scope, that'll be with 10mm eyepieces and above. With your 0.75 eye, it'll be a 3mm exit pupil - and therefore 15mm eyepieces and above.
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Just noticed that the DarkSky API support is now ending 31 March 2023. Does @FLO have any plans for alternative forecast data?
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What happens if you don't extend the scope to it's full length?
Perhaps when you were getting focus, it's wasn't fully extended?
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Spending a few days away in a (posh) cabin in North Yorks with the family. Of course I brought some gear, although the forecast was poor. ST80, AZgti, zoom and binos
Last night was good, so I did a quick tour of some highlights for my brother. There was a little high cloud, so had to dodge around a little . The sky was dark enough to see Andromeda naked-eye earlier, but it was behind the trees by the time we were out. Ticked-off:
Double cluster
Pleiades
Beehive
E3(ZTF) comet
M81/82
Leo Triplet
M51 Whirlpool
M35/36/37
But to be honest, he was most impressed just using the binos!
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51 minutes ago, cajen2 said:
More, Neil???😉
The chap selling was down the road from my brother, so couldn't resist. I won't be keeping most of them, but will be trying them all out, first.
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A little secondhand haul:
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Zoom eyepiece comparisons.
in Discussions - Eyepieces
Posted
The Baader zoom works with the Regal spotting scopes:
https://www.birdforum.net/threads/celestron-regal-m2-65-and-baader-hyperion-zoom-mark-iv.356352/