IB20

They seem to be selling well, looking forward to some first light reports!

I’m not sure I’ll ever stop purchasing Astro gear as I enjoy trying new and used equipment too much. I’ve wasted money on a lot worse than Astro gear which is a drop in the ocean compared to the money I’ve thrown down a hole on things like rent, cars and petrol etc. Back to window shopping on FLO and the classifieds section… 🤑

That is an incredible image 😮

Ah it was a 1 + 3 lens design VT Ortho, so an abbé design, makes sense now! Thanks for the info, maybe I should’ve asked SGL before I decided to disassemble it!

Yep viewed it last night, only reason I thought to check because it was a similar to the mag of the Gailliean moons but wasn’t on the equatorial plane. Pretty special!

I noticed a large piece of debris on an Ortho last night (first time using it on the moon) and it quickly became apparent that the debris was between lenses, which was incredibly frustrating. Whilst not being a very expensive eyepiece it wasn’t something I was willing to write off or was happy to carelessly damage either, so I decided to try and clean it… Unscrewing the barrel and two retaining rings was very easy but what I wasn’t really prepared for were two lenses and another ring falling out! First lesson, note the orientation of the items that come out of the EP housing. A gentle wipe of both lenses with a micro fibre cloth and then to reassemble. The two lenses were flat on one side and convex on the other and checking lens schematics online didn’t clarify which way round they went; orthos are supposed to have three lenses, nightmare! Reassembling was fairly frustrating and carefully dropping the lenses and diaphragm ring into position usually ended up on their side. Eventually after all being reassembled I checked the EP in my scope and although correctly orientated, I could see fibres trapped in the lenses. 🙄 Lesson two work in a super clean area! Cue about 10 dis/reassemblies later I have finally got it to a place where I’m happy with it and it’s showing nice terrestrial views, there was a point I thought it was cream crackered for good and a time I thought I’d lost a lens - all very stressful. To summarise, I don’t recommend it if you can avoid it especially if it’s an expensive eyepiece, send it to an expert! By all means if you’re interested, take apart one of the cheapo lenses you get included with SW products.

Castor was a first for me recently, a really nice double with textbook diffraction rings - being very similar in mag might have something to do with how it appears. Rigel is a favourite, I really love a faint companion. Can’t beat viewing the double double either. Probably the binary that draws me back at every opportunity is Antares. Such a difficult split due to its low altitude and high mag primary, there have been moments where I have been sure I have viewed the secondary but it’s always very fleeting. Can’t wait for it to come back around next year.

An 80mm. I count regions as bands though, others might count them as 4.

Saturn and a faint whiff of the Cassini division alongside Titan. Jupiter with 6 beautiful coloured bands; the EZ showing some very interesting patternation. The Great Red Spot now just rotating into view. A naked eye moon is also dipping in and out of cloud cover and between rooftops.

There’s a £28 10mm BCO in the classifieds right now. I’ve just been out with mine looking at the Great Red Spot, I can’t praise it highly enough.

https://ensoptical.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=12214 Was e-window shopping and just saw this if you wanted push-to

These look the business. Alas I have just obliterated my Astro budget for a while so I shall have to wait a little before I can get one.

I use the interval box rather than the time and date display, it’s much easier and less likely to fat finger.

My dob hasn’t seen much action recently, mainly due to the weather but when I have used it I’ve noticed some quite bad azimuth stiction. I’ve just been reading on another forum some of the easier ways of alleviating this without having to convert it to a lazy Susan type bearing and one of the really easy methods mentioned was to use soap. I’ve unscrewed the two base plates and rubbed some soap bar on the PTFE pads and ring and reassembled it. Amazingly it has made a real difference and all stiction seems to have vanished, a nice little dob hack.

Some minimal Japanese glass.

No sign of WZ Cass on your list, take a gander next chance. A stunning red/blue double, I stumbled on it by accident. Amazing colours.

Still the only planet I’ve yet to see. Although I still count Pluto as a planet I really don’t think I’ll ever get to see it without the aid of EEVA.

Nipped out about midnight with the 80mm after watching a really bad Bond film. Started at Orion and tried to split Rigel but had no luck, lots of twinkling and turbulence. Then to M42 which took me by surprise with how much dimmer it is compared to the dob. Had a look at the Castor for the first time, a wonderful high mag double, both stars showing perfect airy discs. Tried to find comet 67P which is in Gemini at a supposed mag 9.9 but not enough aperture I suspect. Back to Orion, now with 10 minutes of scope cooling and my improved dark adaption and M42 looked much more defined and impressive, 4 stars in the trapezium looking superb. Finishing off with Rigel and the 5mm BST, which I’m finding is turning into a brilliant double star tool, showing Rigel B due south. Confirmed after dropping the mag with the Orion 7.5mm which showed it that little bit clearer - a great result and one of my favourite doubles. Getting the practise in for splitting Sirius!

I’m not sure you can save the AR once it you have lined up the overlay, I think it reverts back to the compass settings? Perhaps the best way to do it might be to turn the compass off and change the location by a few degrees?

Yep, still out by a bit. Have just found this on the SkySafari website… A note on accuracy: the solid-state compass built into most mobile devices is not very accurate, and easily affected by interference. It can easily be wrong by ten degrees or more. The compass may be useful for locating bright objects in a general part of the sky, but it's certainly not accurate enough to point a telescope.

I’ve just tried this, like you my AR is always slightly off. If you select the AR mode in Pro 7 you can overlay the view in real time which allows you to change the transparency and move the view into the correct position which I’ve just done with Jupiter. Blanket clouds have drifted over now which have stopped me in my tracks!

I personally love orthos and find they give some amazing views for planetary work but they can be hard work to look through. Maybe having a wider field of view in the heritage dob would make life easier too. In my experience, Saturn and Mars eat up magnification a lot better than Jupiter but seeing is ultimately master, so you might end up having more than one planetary EP! I think something around the 100-125x (7.5mm-6mm) range would be a nice all rounder though which would work well in ordinary seeing conditions.

Big fan of the Jupiter transits notification feature, unsure whether this is new or not?

Maybe look at the Baader Morpheus range then. You won’t get better at that price point. Or play the used market for Pentax XWs or Televues.

The 10mm BCO is my most used EP in 800 and 1200 fl scopes.