Voyager 3

Congrats ! Inform us how it turns out to you .

Nice first light . Enjoy your new equipment ( wait , what? )

Have you looked through a Newtonian/dob before ? The planets don't have huge spikes and it's very subtle mostly. They don't extend much beyond 10-11" from the disc . But a TSA 102 might have spoiled you too much .

. Marvellous stuff Dave .

And as you may know the ∆ mag of the double can affect the resolution even though it's not a direct factor . It is the direct result of the size of the airy disc . Evenly matched pairs are a good test for resolving power of eyes / telescope / seeing .

Be careful with it , not for use for small children .

It must be the TSA 120 !

I wanted to know why you northerners always complain about low elevation of planets in recent times . So one day in early August , I cooled the dob and pointed the scope soon after it got dark . Jupiter would have been at 10-15° altitude . My first reaction was no thanks . Bam ! What a blurry mess . The interesting thing was , the blurry , seeing effect was much more prominent and disturbing than the very mild bluish-reddish AD . Mind you , I never view the planets that low and I've never seen AD before on planets to be that much prominent , but still it wasn't the major factor in the poor views of Jupiter and Saturn . Fortunately I didn't feel the requirement of ADC , at least for my eyes , equipment and location . Now now I feel pity for folks who live much Norther than me . Luckily this trend will improve in the coming years .

I remembered this thread in mind and I tried yesterday . I was easily able to tell Ganymede and Callisto were much larger than background stars ( and other 2 moons for that matter ) . I later checked SkySafari and confirmed that both the semi-point sources were indeed Ganymede and Callisto. It was a bit difficult to tell the extended nature of Io and Europa as one would expect from their sizes . It's fun and I recommend you try to see which are the moons comparing them to background stars before checking it with the software ! I used just 96× as seeing was bad but the lower power helped mitigating it . GRS too was visible !

5mm , 8mm , 12mm and the 15mm seem to be the pick of the lot .

A good rich field refractor , a dark site , an OIII filter can keep anyone busy for a lifetime . The Veil nebula bubble helps too . 😀

Then getting both the filter at the same time is the best solution to please all of us . Just kidding , buy either of them first , keeping in mind that you will be buying the other eventually . If you really get into this hobby and have a good dark site , a H-beta filter will be a good tertiary filter .

Any comparo with your Morpheus and the Leica zoom @Stu ?

If you will be getting both , then get the UHC first . It is more universal and will give a huge boost for the more famous nebulae like M8 , M17 , M42 , M16 etc . The get the OIII for use with some supernova remnants , wolf -rayet excitation nebulae , large planetary nebulae etc .

You will be using a Paracorr II / paracorr for the best correction to use with 100° stuff . It adds 1.15× to the FL/ Focal ratio . So I take the FL as 1878 . Here is your spread with 30mm ( UFF )-13mm-9mm-4.75mm( really a 4.75mm approximately and not a 5mm ) . The 30mm can be substituted by the 20mm XWA , if your site is light polluted . 62× - 144× - 208× - 395× . As you can see this is a good set until you reach the 9mm . It's a really big jump from 9mm to 4.75mm . A 6mm Ethos fits right in at 313× , but the 7mm APM XWA will also be a good step up at 268× . Now it looks like 62× - 144× - 208× - 268× - 395× . Basically you may still need to fill the gap between 7mm and 4.7mm but it is down the list . A coma corrector like the paracorr II must be your first purchase . This assumes you already have good collimation tools .

I hope others don't start reaction videos on this topic in YouTube 😂 . Excellent report Paul . I love and absolutely agree with your last sentence - "hearing excitement in her voice was music to my ears" .

Noooo ! It is 0.00000001 second cool down time .

Has Jupiter become that large and bright ? I'm not able to see cloud bands . 🥴

It was that way among the medieval aristocrats of France !!!

T0 ? 😎

Wonderful image @IB20 !

Or where they go for !

It also shows the size difference btw the 4.5mm and the 17.5m which may be the extreme ends !

Lovely sketch ! I love the brightness and the uneven widths of the bands which gives such a realistic impression . I'm impressed .