PeterW

Have to take a pic of mine… lots of ipa wipes and elbow grease… cleaned most the coating off. I do wonder if I should “reclothe” it, but not got round to it yetZ Peter

I think there is still availability and yea they were a challenge to the engineers for optical perfection at all costs for Nikons 100th anniversary. you can find some good reviews https://binocularsky.com/binoc_reviews.php https://neilenglish.net/category/binoculars/ £200 should get a nice solid pair of 10x50 than should keep going for longer than you will. Peter

Yep, I know a birding chap whose brother has a pair, used for long distance peregrine spotting. Tripod mounted, individual eye focus and with nasty eyecups. spent an afternoon at the London wetland centre with them looking out of their observatory once. The view is perfect and probably too wide… you can peek round the corner to find the real field stop, not the edge you think is the edge when you look through them. As expected it’s sharp to the absolute edge. The original tripod mount was pants, I believe they’ve released a more rigid one. certainly not for handholding unless you’ve been at the gym for years. Of course it’s only 10x, there are other (much cheaper) options for when you need a bit more power as @Captain Scarlet can attest… Picture attached, as someone will ask for proof! Peter

Not scopes do collect more light but spread it out more as they operate at higher powers. The f-ratio attects the brightness of the image (other things being equal. Reflectors tend to have a higher noise floor due to dust on the mirrors, one reason the camera lens powered Dragonfly telescope array is unique in detecting ultra faint structures round galaxies. The ability to produce acceptable images of a range of objects in a reasonable time under light pollution (do lens shields and filters help) is key to outreach, so people don’t get bored. No point in Hubble quality if you have to wait a hour, won’t get to see many objects. This affects all EEA scopes. Peter

You come up with lens hoods, plastic to do flat frames and other bits and pieces for it. Would be good to see how it handles filters, especially narrower band ones. Maybe that pixel binning could help avoid wierd colour issues. They need to improve the object finding and maybe add the ability to provide coordinates or links to other planetarium programmes. The existing products seem well received, though costly, this could provide an alternative. Peter

Another under sky review, looking interesting, especially if the company keep listening and adding features to make it more out the box impressive for newbies and with enough pro features to satisfy the EEA community. Low cost and satisfying the newbie and pro community would be good. Could also be very good for outreach events too?! Plenty of improvements and good suggestions going in. Not sure there is an iOS version yet 😞 Peter

APM and Oberwerk are your friends if you fancy a slightly smaller pair that can have angled and changeable eyepieces… though you’ll have to supply your own mount. Peter

Can’t see the BIPM wanting to change from the kg…. and it’s the only SI unit that has a prefix in the name… For SI fans we are going to get some new prefixes in a few weeks for very BIG and very small things, though this chap is wrong…. https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2022/06/30/si-prefixes/ Most of my book storage is in “jam it in wherever and an whatever angle you can” mode… adding another large block is going to require some “creativity” 😉 Given the “shelf-meters” it takes up, should help fill all those cloudy/rainy nights we get for a good while! Peter

Just found the news article on posting dodgy meteor videos on Twitter…. AI.. more like Artificial Stupidity… going to be a long while before such systems should ever be trusted, having a human in the loop would seem sensible. Great to hear that the outcome is happy, though it doesn’t bode well for Twitter. (Never seen the attraction of “tweeting”), certainly not worth $8/month. Peter

Stop it, I’d have trouble finding it shelf space! Maybe one for the Xmas list… Peter

Sounds good, tell us how you get on. peter

Smaller exit pupil and I agree that without a good lot of reviews behind it I would be cautious. I know a number of companies have released IS models recently and some are not well thought of. see how many more reviews/forum posts you can find so you can be as informed as you can be. The canon are a very well known quantity, so you know what you’re getting.

The 12x can be used one hand (I troll birders this way… I have the steadier views)! The higher mag ones get heavy, once found someone with some 18x and they we’re a real brick. My 12x are at least 15yrs and the coating has got sticky, tried baby powder, but the solution was a small pile of isopropyl wipes and a bucket of elbow grease… just clean/scrub/wipe off as much of the rubber as you can. I haven’t decided if I’ll try to find some replacement or just leave them as they are. Make sure you have some spare (lithium) batteries…. The batteries don’t run out often, but you’ll think they’re broken when the power gets low… just replace the batteries and normal service returns! I like looking at the full moon with mine… when not on birding duty. Peter

Secondhand gen3 are an option, you may not get gain control and the sensitivity will be lower, but they’ll still take filtration for nebulae and show a lot. You’ll get loads of stars with a long pass filter from under light pollution as well. Peter

Best start when it’s in a very favourable elongation and when the moon is close, so you can focus your eyes properly and know the direction. I’ve seen it a number of times from urban locations, so it’s possible, but never for very long, you need to be aware. December is the next opportunity, but it’ll be low as the ecliptic is not tilted far from the horizon. peter

It was obvious with a 5” (or so) frac at a dark starparty once, I wasn’t told before what I was looking. Good transparent skies are likely most needed. Peter

Decent fancy lasers are a £10s k usually, this one is just a couple of fancy components and a solid mounting, it’s nice and compact too, with W level power needs, always appreciated for satellites. The GHz rate means the frequency combs will be more spaced out. Peter

“Three-element, self-starting Kerr-lens-modelocked 1-GHz Ti:sapphire oscillator pumped by a single laser diode”, as I suspected, open access so you can read and make your own.. 😉 https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-30-22-39624&id=509839 Peter … “attractive as a candidate for integration as a module into larger systems, for example multi-photon microscopes, quantum-timing systems or quantum optics experiments”, doesn’t push the space application and doesn’t mention frequency combs either… as that’s something you could use this type of laser to generate.

No details though…. Sounds like a diode pumped ti:sapphire with some sort of nonlinear element to get thecomb… GHz pulses implies a very small cavity… no references given 😞 Peter

The synta finders have a threaded objective cell you can screw in and then lock with a second threaded ring to set focus. Not removing a locking screw is something I “discovered” when repairing some old binoculars, thankfully I did t do too much damage and they went together again. Peter

Cloudy down here, also I don’t see anything so obvious on other sites… we will see. peter

Used to have a cat who hid in the flowerbed and everyone and then ran in and whacked my ankles and ran off again… no photos would have been possible. Peter

Anodising fades quickly, takes decent black paint to stay black when heated up and abused. Peter

Stuff on the ceramic could smoke, but the ceramic is probably good to >1000C, would take a big scope to do that. PEter

Did wonder if you were out when I popped my head out, looked quite stable and dark. You have seen the ET before, think I did it up from the Rec? What eyepiece were you using for the clusters, lower power might give even more stars. M33, now we’re really talking… I’ve only managed that from very dark skies once; never risked it round here, just goes to show what good transparency can do, pity you didn’t pop the nebula filter in and try for the veil or pacman I can’t understand how you can get such deep and steady shots through the eyepiece, never works for me! Amazing result! Peter