MrFreeze

+1 for this. Absolutely trustworthy. Alan is a great guy - very friendly. Have bought all my Starguiders from him. I think you can still get a discount over the eBay prices by going through his website https://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/ David

If you use inner gloves, you can use quite thin outer ones. It's the air trapped between the inner and outer gloves that keeps you warm. Our outer gloves are similar to the polka dot picking gloves from Screwfix. The trick is to keep them dry - once they get wet (condensation/dew) you will get cold very quickly. David

Now this is a subject I have plenty of experience with (I work as freezer manager for a frozen food company - -18C all day). You are never going to come up with a single glove solution I'm afraid - any glove that will keep you warm enough will prevent you from doing pretty much any fine work. We use inner and outer gloves from https://www.flexitog.com/gloves?page=1 (the true grip 13 and certified liner 440) with the addition of 'little hotties' https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Hotties-Box-Hand-Warmers/dp/B01MYDYJ2I between the inner and outer gloves if humidity is high (high humidity makes your fingers loose heat faster). With this setup we are able to operate for 4-5 hours before you start to loose feeling in your extremities. Writing and sketching is perfectly possible - in pencil, as ink freezes! It's obviously more difficult than without gloves, though all but the smallest items can be manipulated. David

Never could resist a bargain. Never tried one of these before, and at £19 it's a snip. David

It is odd that there are so few 6mm eyepieces available - a very usefull focal length. I was viewing mars night before last, using my Hyperflex zoom and wanted a bit more manification, so tried a 5mm BST Starguider, and it was much worse - I could have done with a 6mm then. There is a 6mm TMB planetary eyepiece available, which has 16mm eye relief, but I haven't tried any of these yet. (I have an 8mm in the post from China - couldn't resist at £19 from the hilariously named 'Safety Burglar Store') David

The 6mm Omni is about the limit of useable magnification on a 127 MAK. Max magnification is normally given as twice the objective diameter, so 2x127 = 254. A 6mm eyepiece will give a magnification of 1500/6 = 250 on your scope. Whether the seeing conditions will allow that may be more problematic. The eye relief on the 6mm Omni is 5mm, so no use if you wear spectacles, but probably OK if you don't, although a little tight. On the other hand, they are dirt cheap if bought from China, and the quality is excellent - they are aluminium bodies with fully multi-coated glass lenses. I have the 4mm, 32mm and 40mm Omnis and they are all good, although the 4mm is too much for the MAK. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32754506897.html?spm=2114.12010612.8148356.33.41e07ff7cjx4SK Rats - that's another impulse buy added to my cart. David

Another vote for the Hyperflex. Goes very well with my Orion Apex127, which is very similar to yours. Never impressed with the X-cells (I have the 5mm), it's a bit fussy on eye positioning, I find the BSTs much better. David

There may be exceptions, but largely yes. Certainly all the collimation eyepieces looking the same are the same, and they don't have any lenses, multi-coated or otherwise to cloud the issue. They still vary in price from about £5 to over £40 depending on 'brand' or not. After a while you can learn to trust some suppliers more than others. Svbony are one of the better chinese firms involved. I can order from them and have it here in 7 days. Some firms here aren't that fast!

I was under the impression we were talking accessories rather than entire scopes. Of course there is nothing to stop a dealer performing their own checks, but the question I thought was were the basic products the same. Whilst they could be different, I very much doubt it. It is not economically viable to run 2 or more production lines for the same item, unless there is a very large amount of money involved. A quick repaint or different stickers put on afterwards is a different story.

The generic and the branded products generally come from the same chinese factories. You too can create a branded product - if you are prepared to order a few thousand then most factories will put on any logo you like. Badge engineering is nothing new - the automotive industry has been doing it for years. I do not believe the stories (probably put out by some of the larger brands) that their products are A grade, and all the others are the rejects. Unfortunately there are no guarantees of quality with brand names. You pay the extra for the support - hoping that the 'quality brand' will replace your product if you do get a lemon. They do this so as to protect their reputation. There is no actual garantee of it, or of the converse - some 'noname' suppliers offer better after-sales service than the big boys. It is I'm afraid very much a lottery if you are dealing with an unknown supplier. Some suppliers are very very good, some are pitiful, and some are outright charlatans. I'm afraid you have to take a chance if you want a bargain. David

Have you tried running it from the car battery lately? As the mount requires 12V at 3A, I would suspect that your 5A power supply is maybe not up to the job. Especially as you say the voltage dropped to 11V on what should be only 60% of the rated PSU current. Many of the cheap chinese manufactured PSUs are simply not capable of supplying their full rated output - I have a couple of 10A supplies and they certainly can't supply 10A for more than about 15 seconds before they trip out 😠. A car battery can supply a huge current (100s of amps) as the current draw from starter motors is enormous. David

If you want a cheap one - try https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33056951646.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.48e04c4dpFyzEc . Mine just arrived today - that's just 9 days from China! And for the princely sum of £9.17 plus 60p postage. Unlike the short one I have that cost more than twice that amount, I can focus on the crosshairs on this. David

I found the hardest bit was to figure how to make the adjustments - which screw does what. I also found that a cheap laser beats a cheap cheshire hands down. I couldn't focus on the wires on the short chinese cheshires - too close to my eye. If you just aproach it logically I'm sure you will be fine. I had no choice not to do it - my scope was so badly collimated! David

Thanks for that, but emails were already selected in that section, and the news thingy now selected, but still no emails. Ho hum - looks like you have to have a daily summary, weekly summary or no emails at all. David

I did all that John, and I have the 'only send one email until I next visit' selected, but I still don't get emails. Does this forum software not support them? Or is it dependent on the 'send me news' setting? David

One thing that hasn't become clear at all to me is the site settings. As I said earlier, I don't do facebook, but it's all about 'following' and the like in facebookese (I'm not even sure what is meant by 'following'). And how do notifications work - on any other site I would get an email when someone responds to something I posted - I can't find the setting to enable that here at all - is it not supported without the 'get a daily summary of everything new'. David

Just been looking up prices, and you can get the TMB planetary eyepieces (the Skywatcher UWA you were quoting is a variant of this) on eBay for £25-£30 from China, slightly cheaper on Aliexpress. They get some good reviews on this forum if you search for "planetary eyepiece". They were designed by Burgess Optical, who (if I remember this right) contracted a chinese manufacturer to make them, but fouled up the contractural arrangements, which allowed the chinese to make them independently (which of course they did and still do). I'm tempted myself to try one (don't tell my wife🤐) David

Nice idea, but unfortunately the stock Skywatcher barlow is pants, and the cost of a decent barlow makes this an expensive option. I suspect the original suggestion wasn't a bad idea if you don't want to go to the expense of a zoom - at least you get a better FOV than a plossl or ortho. David

That Celestron zoom is from China, you may get charged VAT/duty on it, although Svbony are normally pretty good at underdeclaring vales on customs documentation, and they do ship quickly. If you are prepared to buy from China, I bought mine for a much better price from TianyuanStar at https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32221818203.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.a0ec20cb08FO7K&algo_pvid=445bf72e-eae2-43f2-9588-5143591fb1c9&algo_expid=445bf72e-eae2-43f2-9588-5143591fb1c9-2&btsid=0b0a050b16011360156892542eb2f7&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ . It's a nice eyepiece, but a bit sensitive to eye positioning. The 7-21mm Hyperflex zoom from FLO is nicer, but then it is a little more expensive. David

The Heritage 100 is a 100mm, F4 scope so max magnification should be 200X. The 3.2mm Starguider should give 125X which should be OK, but I understood Starguiders don't play nicely with fast scopes. David

I think you may find that it's a moot point at the moment, as no one I could find had any stock of the Skymax (or indeed almost any Skywatcher telescope, on any mount). I was after a 127 Mak for a while and ended up pulling the trigger on an Orion OTA, as they came into stock last friday (costs about £90 more than the Skywatcher) and wanted one for the Mars conjunction. Every other supplier I contacted couldn't supply one before late October, and even then they were not certain of delivery. Of course it's been cloudy here since it arrived (except very very late last night when it was blowing a gale☹️). David

True enough, but the cold is due to my employment - I work at about -18C as warehouse manager for a frozen food company. And I hate the cold! David

Hello there. Time to introduce myself I guess. I'm hardly a newcomer to astronomy - I was introduced to it when I was bought the "Observer's Book of Astronomy" back in 1967 as a Christmas present by my godfather. I used a pair of 8 X 30 binoculars (which I still have), and was bought a Tasco newtonian 120mm? reflector (long gone) by my parents one Christmas. I studied Astrophysics at university, and was secretary of the Sussex University Astronomy Society. After leaving university I moved to north London and didn't have a chance to do any astronomy whilst living in various rented accomodation. Eventually moved out of London and bought a house, but didn't do much astronomy as there is so much light pollution, and money was tight, so just persevered with the Tasco (optics not bad, but the mount was awfull). I married my wife in the Philippines and lived there for a while which was interesting - clear skies, but streetlights totally unscreened. In 2012 we decided to get a better scope so bought a Skywatcher Evostar-90, supplemented in 2018 by a Skywatcher Explorer 150PL secondhand, and this last week by an Orion Apex-127. (Probably why the weather has turned) I would like to thank Astro Baby for her collimation instructions, without which I would never have managed to re-collimate the newtonian. Everyone else on here stresses how important collimation is, but no one else tells you how to do it. Finally - are there any instructions anywhere for this website - I find it almost totally baffling - 'likes' 'following' -seems like facebook, and I never could figure that out. Clear skies David