josefk

Thank you Wes. I expect quite a few Dave Bowman moments tbh - i'm happy enough to talk to myself while out observing and the "my god it's full of stars" line gets trotted out pretty regularly 🙂

Thanks. “Utter hedonist” absolutely! while I can lift it! I reckon it’s got 15 years (max 20) to pay me back till that is no longer possible. 😬

Yes it seemed to be - definitely jars with my OCD to bruise EP barrels though. TBH I find clicklock is fool proof at night and the one fastening I don’t feel the need to continually check is done up properly. 👍🏼

Absolutely Malcolm. Tick tick tick already. Now for a clear night for the most important tick of all!

All helpful advice appreciated but I’ll be honest - the ‘options’ will need to be cheap for a bit (or at least deliverable in small packages). 😇

Yes that’s exactly the plan. I do really like my cassegrain but as soon as I looked at Mars back in August (I think it was August) I could feel the inevitable. Hopefully at some point in the next ten days there will be windows of opportunity for Mars especially but Jupiter too. Tak abbé ortho EPs back in stock as well at at least one retailer. In pairs!

Thank you. I’m not an impressionable chap I don’t think but there are a few bad influences on here if I were. 🤣

...and even more essential handle added. I've been positively surprised at the nice handling of the OTA today while tinkering - i had been dreading it. However i know there is a world of difference between mounting it and demounting it in the comfort of my own home - nice and warm and dry - versus demounting it in the early hours of the morning with plunging blood sugar, fuddled brain, cold hands and everything covered in dew.

Baader clicklock added - i'm not sure why Tak still use naked screws to clamp diagonals and EPs rather than compression clamps...

i'm afraid i live in an apartment @mikeDnight at least for now. It does mean that (other than short GnG) as its a bit of an expedition to get out and i use the car its not soooo bad to have heavy kit. The moon may feature a bit the next few weeks in any event because we'll surprise our young nephew with a scope for xmas and that's where we'll start the budding astronomer off. i may get the bug too 😄.

>>> over here >>>

i have a significant birthday next year and it has triggered me to realise life is too short and clear nights too few to mess about (something i wished i had realised while my eyesight was in better nick!). Also; while loving it immensely i find astronomy to be quite a frustrating and inconvenient hobby at times so in the spirit of “control what you can control and maximise what you can maximise” for those nights when the season, the weather, the atmosphere, and life all perfectly align I’ve taken receipt today of the (hopefully) fabulous Takahashi TOA-130NS. I can’t realistically carry or mount a bigger refractor than the meter long, 14.0kg fully dressed, TOA-130 so the Tak selected itself from a very short list (TSA-120, NP101 and NP127 FWIW) to be my "no doubts/no second thoughts" refractor. i’m a visual only observer - why on earth have i bought a practically perfect “astrophotography scope” weighing more than 10kg OTA only and realistically almost indistinguishable for visual from scopes much lighter and more convenient to store, mount and cart about and so consequently scopes that would get used more often? As a visual observer most interested in deep sky (and who never observes the moon) why on earth have i invested into “only” 130mm of aperture perfectly focussed for planets and lunar? If i really knew the answer to those questions I’d be a wealthier man but maybe not happier. I’m super excited and can’t wait to get out overnight with this new tool during the xmas break.

♫♫ ...happy birthday to me ...happy birthday to me ...even though its only xmas ...and my birthday's next year...♫♫ - you'll have to forgive the silliness. I'm a bit excited. Thanks @FLO for the hustle this week once it had landed with you and to get this to me before the xmas break. 👍🏼

Ouch! Sounds like you’ve been lucky though ultimately.

Very nice @ukskies I think a delivery from Japan must have arrived at FLO HQ this week!

Merry Xmas @powerlord. That's some list!

Sounds like a great double header. Sky Safari is just brilliant for navigation isn't it - i use it with a correct image view for GnG and it feels like cheating :-).

i like the way you have captured that as a time series. Super.

I'm a bit jealous of your having the chance to look through them @PeterW. I understand from reading about them that they are as much a demonstration of engineering and optical engineering prowess by Nikon as they are a serious commercial product offering. They were seriously limited in numbers made weren't they? Sorry to the OP for chatting off topic now.

My facetious reply would be if that had been my experience last night it would have been because i had frozen a hand to a tripod leg and was shaking the scope with my shivering. 😄

Well last night i manage to re-prove the old adage "there's no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing". I dressed for grab 'n' go rather than extensive "camping out" and the cold was brutal; it beat me just after the hour mark. But what an hour. Had three lovely surprises at the eyepiece: I was hopping around open clusters in Auriga with the small spotting scope (after starting a bit unsatisfactorily with Mars to the West) and settled on NGC 1931. I was really taken aback to not just observe the cluster but also see nebulosity here. It wasn't extensive or dramatic but it was definite and clearly not the atmosphere or glare or a scope aberration. I was super impressed. While making excited notes on NGC 1931 i was turned away from the scope - when i turned back to the eyepiece - M36 The Pinwheel Cluster had almost perfectly rotated into view. It was a fantastic unlooked for surprise at the eyepiece (and looked great in any event). It means it took just less than 5-minutes to "write up" NGC 1931. Pleased me no end. The third little surprise was another open cluster - NGC 1907. I'd looked for this before on a less nice night and hadn't been convinced i'd found it. Last night it was clear and it is superb. I would find this one very easy to mistakenly ID as the foreground group of stars if the transparency wasn't good (that was probably what i had been doing previously). Last night transparency was better in the scope than i would have thought from just eyeballing the sky and "the real" NGC 1907 was "obvious". It is a fine castor sugar and misty filigree group in the background and was a very very nice and satisfying observation indeed. i recommend it. Keep warm.

Thankyou - full disclosure - its not the EP version. The one at the EP version is a scruffy mess with multiple thumbnail sketches and text and arrows etc. So it's "honest" but done in the daylight :-). Cheers

Not last night but the night before. A view through binoviewers at 152x. i think the smudges are Valles Marineris (bigger smudge) and Acidalia Planitia (smaller smudge). The bright ring was as observed not a sketch artefact. Last night Mars wasn't working for some reason so took advantage of the pre moon hours to observe M74. VERY difficult. And Mirach's Ghost. Very cool! ...and cold. Cheers

Congratulations @HollyHound. All best wishes!