Franklin

GRS transits again at 2.30am.

I set the 115 up at around 5.00, Saturn was ok in the dusk sky. Hour later gave Moon and Jupiter a go and the seeing was pants, put the HR's away and the 115 and took the 81 out for a couple of hours. 6mm SLV for 104x was max mag but the Moon was looking good around Aristarchus and Herodotus, Schroters Valley shadows just showing around the cobra head. Central peaks of Gassendi in nice shadow and Schiller looking very narrow. Jupiter was showing it's belts but I needed to put the neodymium in to get a hint of the GRS. Be back out around midnight to bag some doubles in and around the Hunter.

Had the ED70 and Quark out today and there has been incredible detail on show, the seeing has degraded this afternoon. Tried to get an image but I'm no photographer!

Just been out looking at the morning Sun with my Quark in the ED70, plenty of activity on show. So I thought I'd stick my Altair183C in there and see what happens. I haven't got a clue what I'm doing but managed to capture this image of a really long filament shooting out of the Sun. No tracking, no stacking, no calibration frames, just a quick snap as that's all I know what to do.

Yes, the longer focal length NPL's have nice optics but the extending eyecup is a budget design, it's either up or down, it won't stay in the middle unless you adapt with a rubber band or similar. I only have the NPL30 and use it as a finder eyepiece or a lightweight low power in the smaller scopes and use it with the eye guard fully extended which is very comfortable.

Regards the BST's and wearing glasses, I think you can squeeze a bit more eye-relief out of them by de-cloaking ie. removing the twist-up eye-guard?

Clear here earlier but the seeing was all over the place, had 1/2hr on Luna and Jove, blowing a freezing cold gale, not the best of conditions really.

Takahashi FC-100 is the best and the lightest top-notch 4" refractor available off the shelves. Some say they are expensive but you have to pay for quality just like everything else in life and they are a good deal cheaper than getting on the AP waiting list.

Or go for a good old 32mm Plossl, cheap as chips but good as a really low power, finder-eyepiece? Only 52deg field but a whopping 6.5mm exit pupil in your scope which would really help when looking for those faint fuzzies! Especially for your daughter with her younger eyes.

BST Starguiders have 60deg field, good eye-relief, which would help for your daughter and are on budget. 25mm, 12mm, 8mm and 5mm would make a good set. No need for a zoom or barlow with those. Have a play on the FOV calculator above in resources- astronomy tools.

Yeah, get the Messier Album and try to copy the sketches by John Mallas.

I hope there aren't any toast crumbs from breakfast on that table-cloth!

Your Parka looks very stylish! We all got sent to school during Winter in the 1970's wearing this hideous outfit and bright orange on the inside!

I think if you want a big newt or cat or frac for that matter you need to get a big mount to carry it. Having nice, big optics is great but without the proper mount they're all useless. An EQ5 is a small German equatorial mount for small telescopes. I don't know why the likes of Skywatcher et al make EQ1, EQ2, EQ3mounts, the EQ5 should be called EQ1, the HEQ5 should be called EQ2, the EQ6 should be called EQ3 and the EQ8 should be called EQ4 and all those smaller mounts should be discontinued as they are invariably bought by newbies and for young beginners and I don't think their performance will give anyone the correct impression of how a telescope should be used.

There use to be a guy on Ebay that 3D printed a DEC cover for the EQ5 and polarscope cover.

The white one which I now have was meant to have a standard Borg mounting block but it didn't come with one and unfortunately they are no longer in production. I contacted Astro Hutech in the US and Ted Ishikawa said that now they only produce an Arca Swiss clamp that will fit the mount. I've ordered one and am waiting for it to arrive but meanwhile I found that a MoreBlue finder foot fits nicely into the Borg mini-mounts clamp and have just attached an Arca Swiss saddle to it for now. I have a Vixen Arca Swiss L-bracket that takes the scope.

There is a cold spell coming that should bring some clear skies by the weekend🤞.

Buyee Japan auctions.

It's a similar design but the differences are, there is no option to cantilever the arm over, it does not have a standard "Vixen" size saddle (it is a tiny Borg saddle which only accepts the Borg mounting block and that then has an Arca Swiss size grip), it is also much smaller and fits in the palm of my hand. I think I read it's rated capacity to be 2.5kg but the little Borg 60ED weighs nowhere near that. This is such a light setup I can stick the whole mount and scope onto my Polarie tracker on a wedge and have a miniature EQ setup with tracking but the little scope will be sticking to 100x max I guess so I'll just keep it as a simple AZ.

Is that an amici prism in there? Does it vignette at all with longer focal length eyepieces?

Nice setup Michael, I see you've got rid of the pond ok😁.

London "smog" will be choking this little scope no more, I'll be taking it up the hills in the Peak District. Just hope I can get back down in the dark😁.

I've been trying to put together a high quality, ultra-light and ultra-portable travel setup for some time now and I managed to find a used Borg Oasis single fork arm AZ mount which is super tiny but strong and has nice slow motion controls, it sits on my Polarie lightweight tripod via a 1/4" screw. So I was on the look out for a Mini-Borg 50 Achro ota when @The60mmKid put his Borg 60ED up for sale. The optics are very nice and the quality is typical of Japanese made kit, the whole setup with mount, tripod, ota, diagonal and LV zoom eyepiece weighs in at 3.3kg. I honestly don't think they come any dinkier than this and can't wait to get it out under a dark sky.

And they still don't but it's quite safe to unscrew the cell from the tube to slip these rings on/off rather than undo the three focuser fixing bolts. A few years after the production of your ED102S Vixen began using thread-on focusers.

Technically they were known as Sun Diagonals and not Herschel wedges and they also produced two Sun filters, one labelled "Sun Filter" and another labelled "Sun Filter for use with Sun Diagonal". I've never seen instructions but maybe the latter was intended to be used before the diagonal and the former on the eyepiece?