globular

I like the look of them - and I have a use for some too. What are they / where can I get them? (Do you have a link maybe?)

Maybe the word 'thru' rather than "through" threw it, though I would have thought it can see through these colloquial vocabulary shortcuts. Perhaps retry with something like: **an image of the Earth as observed from the surface of the Mars using an 8" newtonian telescope with a 5mm eyepiece**

Looks like you might have the jetstream on your side tonight...nice and blue near Angus...

I recommend this thread. Even through these are images and so not exactly what you'll see through a eyepiece, @astrolulu takes great care to represent colour sympathetically; and remind me very much of what I see when observing visually.

No problem. I quickly developed a thick skin while browsing the forum - there does seem to be a lot of people doing a lot of 'looking down noses' at SCTs. I accept that there does seem to be a large number of poor quality SCTs in existence (or a lot of people using them sub-optimally perhaps?) but I don't really understand why that means the SCT as a telescope design gets so devalued. They have their pros and cons - like all scope do. Normally I just read the comments, allow myself a knowing smile and move on. I replied this time because I hoped it would add something to your thread - not because I felt disrespected.

I suspect another overlooked, and perhaps with the biggest impact too, thing when using SCT is focussing. People seems to think that because the focuser will let you move the mirror a long way to bring things to focus, that it's fine if they do this - and so they don't think about the optimal position of their mirror and just focus as much as needed. In my SCT an addition of 10mm to the focal length introduces 0.25 wave aberration. And 10mm to the focal length is achieved when the focal plane is only 3.5mm away from optimal. Not many turns of the focus knob at all. I have parfocalised all my eyepieces and have a number of diagonals and adapters pre-configured so that all my viewing, whether cyclops or in a binoviewer, with or without and ADC, with or without filters, all take place with my mirror in it's optimal position. I am still impacted by seeing, like everyone else, but I do not consider that my SCT is significantly more susceptible to bad seeing than other telescope designs. YMMV

Great comparison - thanks for posting. I note that you were observing in a bortle 6 location with the moon up. Do you think these conditions might be a bit of a leveller - and perhaps more differences might be noticed in darker conditions? [Genuine question / no axe to grind. My only similar experience is when I was comparing different EPs - and sometimes only really noticed differences in the darkest and best conditions.]

You have a lovely spot and some lovely kit. But sitting and sharing with your grand daughters must be the cherry on the cake. I used to love snoopy as a kid.... not seen the peanuts gang in years.

You can go back and make them smaller yourself. Edit the post (by clicking the three dots top right on the post) and then doing the same ctrl right click process as above on each of the images.

Yes. You can untick it and then change them independently to stretch and distort the image.

Amazing images. Please share as many as you have... now you can fit them all in, haha.

No problem. It's not the most obvious set of steps. Asking is a strength

Insert an image in your post and you'll have something like this: Press CTRL and right click on the image in the post.... and you'll get this: Click on 'Edit Image' and you'll get this window: Make sure 'Keep original aspect ratio' is ticked. Then, if you want to halve the size of the image, halve the number in the width box. In this case change the 282 into 140 or so. Cluck update and you get this: ... and snoopy is about half the size.

On a PC: insert the image, ctrl and right click on the image, select 'edit image', make sure 'keep aspect ratio' is ticked, reduce pixel size, click update

Hi John, I have the 16.5mm. Unfortunately I haven't had enough quality time with it to post a review yet (and in my F/10.5 you might not be that interested in my findings anyway). But I would say after the brief testing I've done that I love it. Everything is sharp across the FOV with nice even illumination and no obvious distortions as things drift from one edge to the other. It sits lovely with my other XWs, N22T4 and ES92/12. Hi Alan, My wife and I share our EPs... she wears glasses and I don't. With our XW7,10 & 40 I wind the eyecup nearly fully out and she uses them fully in. Doing the same with the 16.5 we can both see the full FOV. Everyone's face shape and glasses distances are different - but you might want to try one yourself before giving up on them for eye relief reasons. I think it is fair to describe them as glasses friendly - although while the 70 degree ones will typically work for all glasses users, the 85 degree ones will probably work for some and not for others. If you're ever up near Shropshire, pop in and try mine.

I'll join the club. Nice read that Ags, thanks for posting

The last tweet on their twitter account was on 13th March 2023 and said:

Council tax bill?

It is probably something like 1 turn of the focuser to get the proper donut (my outer images). Not enough (or far too much) and you'll get the 'all white disc' donut - which is not 'accurate' enough for collimating. I always do it visually with a 10mm or so eyepiece - but I suggest you try again with your camera with only a very small defocus before you give up on it - no reason springs to mind why it shouldn't work.

Looks like you might not have defocussed quite enough (or far too much). And you should do it both inside and outside of focus.

The July 2020 and Aug 2020 firmware updates for the StarSense Hand Controller made some changes to the menus and GPS. If you're not on the latest firmware then I suggest the first step is to update it. https://www.celestron.com/pages/firmware-update-history

I was drafting a post making this same argument. I'm so glad you beat me to it - your post is better than mine was. One point I was going to make that you didn't - backlash is actually worse in this drive because it can occur with a change in speed, not just a change in direction.

Don't you just run them both at about 1000 so that the output doesn't move - it doesn't matter what the actual speeds are, as long as the output is stationary. You then control the output by speeding up or slowing down one of the motors (which you can do to .01% accuracy) - and the output will move by the same amount (to the same accuracy).

Do you mean that you won't be able to go? Or that the event will be cancelled?

I got a pair of these (when they were a lot cheaper than they are now) and they are great at freeing pinched connections and/or getting traction when wearing gloves. Not sure if it helps with your restricted space issue though? https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018I84358