Tiny Clanger

I had no trouble in Cornwall when walking the Southwest Coast path, fuelling my rucsac carrying , long distance walk with cream teas at every opportunity 🙂

I own the 8, 12, 15 , 18 and 25mm BSTs, all are decent eyepieces for the price , with a reasonable 60 degree field of view . The only one I'm less than happy with is the 25mm, which isn't great in my f5 dob. It is fine in my less picky 127mak at f12 though. If you mention what telescopes you intend to use the eyepieces with it would make it easier to offer appropriate suggestions. Heather

First point : 6 year olds lie. There, I said it. They also count in ways unknown to arithmetic , especially when trying to win at something (classic hide & seek 'one, two , three, four, seven, banana, eleventy three, twenty - thirty, a hundred ! Coming, ready or not' ) I'm an eyepiece sceptic, and have slowly and rather cheaply worked my way from the stock skywatcher 10 & 25mm offerings via a first cautious test with a £20 ish 17mm plossl. Would it be an improvement to my eyes in my 'scope or not ? If not, it would be an extra focal length between the 10 and 25mm , so no real risk of wasting money. The evidence of my eyes was ... yep, that's far better. Added a 32mm plossl, read about eye relief, decided against an 8mm plossl , went for a BST , yep, that's another step up . Convinced by the BSTs , I bought more, and like them all except the 25mm in the f5 dob. However the acknowledged worthwhile further steps up from the 25mm BST (or the somewhat similar32mm Plossl) were too expensive for me to contemplate new. (and out of stock even if I could ...) Luckily I managed to pounce on a very nice second hand 24mm recently, and it has made my low power views as good as I expect them to ever be. Then I thought , well, I use a mid range 15/17/18mm sort of ep in the dob more than anything else, I wonder if the Nirvana's 82 degree view is something I'd appreciate. Oh dear, it is. Heather

It's the same mirror as the 150p explorer, i.e. the newtonian https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150p-ds-ota.html I guess the dob might be the same as the explorer 150p L ?

Ah, I see you are UK based (well, probably, altho' I believe other 'Norfolks' are available 🙂 ) so UK skies will be your limiting factor as far as magnification goes, the ability to see steady views at more than 200x mag. is an unusually good night (for me in Leicestershire anyway ) The 'Astronomers without borders' 'scope is a USA only edition of the Heritage 130, the slightly smaller & cheaper version of the heritage 150. There is an absolutely vast topic thread on the AWB/130 on the US Cloudy Nights site here https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/463109-onesky-newtonian-astronomers-without-borders/ which can be a rewarding few hundred pages to skim 🙂 to see what is possible , even with that smaller 'scope. Accessories from the word go ? No, wait and see. If you find the Moon too dazzling in the 150, a simple Moon filter might be needed ( they cost around £10) , a bit like sunglasses for the telescope. Not everyone finds the Moon dazzling through a 150 aperture 'scope (I do ) so you might not need one. The included 25mm eyepiece you will get with any skywatcher 'scope is OK, but you will probably find (if you end up using the 'scope a lot) that the 10mm is unsatisfactory. A good upgrade would be a BST starguider 8mm For £50, but don't spend that until you know it the 'scope will get used enough to justify it. If you want to go low tech, a planisphere is a plastic disc , rotating star map you can set to date/time, orient north, and identify star patterns. Those things are robust, I have a Phillip's one which I regularly left out in a classroom for the winter term for KS2 children to handle and examine unsupervised , and it shows no ill effects. They cost around £10 (not the KS2 kids, the planisphere) High tech , but my favourite price (free) accessories include stellarium for a laptop or similar, or any number of astronomy apps for 'phones etc. as well as the Loughton list, a free PDF of easily observed from UK skies targets, the Moore Winter Marathon ( ditto for winter, natch.) , do a search for those terms in the box top left on here and you'll find pages where I give the links Heather

I really enjoy using my heritage 150, it was my first 'proper' telescope. It has limitations, but every telescope does, and for the price you will not get anything better , simpler or easier to store with a similar light gathering ability. Fast setup, just extend the front, tighten the two locking knobs , use the red dot to aim the 'scope where you want, focus, and you are observing. Not ideal for planetary viewing , but it will work (I later added a 127 mak on an AZ5 at roughly double the dob's price to supplement, not replace, the heritage for high magnification on the Moon and planets.) The dob showed me Mars, Jupiter and Saturn at a respectable 94x magnification, as well as the ice giants Neptune and Uranus (as featureless dots, but nonetheless... ) and gets used in preference to the mak for DSOs. From my suburban, light polluted, building obstructed view back garden I've managed to see a surprising number of objects , including galaxies, open and globular clusters , and nebulae, including (to my surprise to be honest) a couple of planetary nebulae . Negatives : as with all beginner /medium price 'scopes, the heritage comes with 'get you started' type, poor eyepieces , to keep the package price low. The focuser isn't fabulous, but as shown above, there is a cheap easy way to improve it, and making a light shroud is an easy cheap bit of DIY. Apart from a very small child, most observers will need that tabletop dob base to be raised on ... a table top or similar. Something sturdy and not at all wobbly. I used a small cast iron garden table, until the hassle of shifting the heavy thing round my garden made me make the dob a little wooden table of it's own. Positives : unlike a cheap refractor, you will not get chromatic aberration (coloured fringes round bright things) unlike any telescope on a cheap mount (under £300 ish for just the mount and tripod ) you won't get a flimsy, vibrating wobbling mount that makes the view quiver for several seconds at every touch of the tube or focuser. You won't get a top heavy set up , including a tripod with feet which may be tripped over easily in the dark by an eager small person. Here's a useful web page which explains about aperture and resolving power and choosing a first telescope https://www.popastro.com/main_spa1/help-advice/choosing-a-telescope/ Heather

Not if you buy the super de luxe nocturnal model with inbuilt electronic timer and precision geared illumination module, guaranteed to tell you the time between sunset and sunrise ,and even indoors ! (Batteries not included, devices are optimised for specific locations, travelling over 500km east or west from home will void your accuracy warranty) And of course, for the daytime models, for only £29.99 (plus delivery) you can buy a waterproof and stylish British Summer Time overlay, or if your have several devices, we offer a watch band clip of gold effect metal, which affixes quickly and easily to any wrist sundial strap, can be transferred to another strap with no fuss or tools needed, and shows, next to your wrist sundial , the beautifully engraved words ' + 1, stupid' For complete peace of mind, download our app, which only requires access to your location, bank account and entire online history, and will remind you the moment you need to add, or remove , one of those special BST accessories . What could be simpler ?

A few years ago (it must be, I was at someone else's house for no particularly pressing reason...) I was in a room where the TV was on, sound down low , I zoned out from the uninteresting gossip around me about neighbours, and gave my attention to one of those real life UK police & security camera TV prog.s , a very dreary (and cheap) way to fill the bit between adverts. A police helicopter was following some miscreant or other at night, watching with the night vision camera, and as it flew slowly over a built up area some half wit sat outside at a BBQ pointed a laser at it. The half wit in question apparently didn't understand that as well as pointing at the 'copter , his little beam was also pinpointing himself, at the other end of it, and the airborne observer directed one of the police cars to exactly where he was, and gave the cops a description of his clothing so he could be extracted from the crowd of happy party goers and arrested. Idiots like that make outdoor, upward directed laser use seem like a really bad thing to normalise .

A dob mount does facilitate cake acquisition I find ...

Scone (pronounced in whatever local language gets understood in the cafe ) needs butter , it's the indisputable first layer to seal and level the crumbly stuff, above that the true controversy starts. I've heard heretical suggestions that the clotted cream can be seen as a butter substitute, and I deplore that thought.

I'm worried that is a controversial political question and may provoke SGLers into having heated and pointless arguments It's almost as divisive as EQ vs altaz, or zoom vs range of eyepieces, or dob v 'frac .... I'm backing away slowly ................................................................................................... 🚪 Heather

High magnification sounds wonderful in theory, but as several have said above, it comes with penalties. Nothing, nothing to do with telescopes comes without a 'but ..... ' . The more you magnify that view, the more you magnify the effects of the wavering, rolling air masses of the troposphere , our 10km ish thick atmospheric band where our weather mostly happens, and thinner stuff right out to around 500km above where we stand. The more you magnify that view, the smaller the piece of sky you are looking at, so the faster any target will zip across and out of your particular piece of sky : the 'scope needs shifting to keep the target in sight. Bellieve me, I've tried it ... little 150 heritage dob, 750mm focal length , with 8mm eyepiece and 2x barlow, trying to see detail on Mars last year, that's 187.5x magnification. Out of the many nights I tried, Mars at 94x ( no barlow) was maybe half of the time too much for the conditions, and when I tried the barlow, because it seemed the air was steady enough, I found the constant adjustments of nudging the tube to keep up were just not practical. I've no idea how limiting your particular atmospheric conditions will be, but the dob nudging is a world wide constant of optics and geometry, , and spending plenty on a wonderful eyepiece will not do a thing for the atmosphere or the need to nudge , well, apart from if you buy a really wide field of view eyepiece , which gives you a little more time until the target drifts off the edge. You cannot push the magnification beyond what the atmosphere will let you, we are at the mercy of the weather.That's one of the reasons big observatory telescopes are best sited up mountains with less atmosphere for the photons to battle through. Don't be thinking you made a mistake buying the dob though, it's a great telescope, use it , use the supplied eyepieces, explore as far as they take you, then consider eyepieces. If you must try pushing the magnification, rather than potentially wasting a lot of cash on something at the extreme edge of what you can use, buy a decent eyepiece which gives you 125x or thereabouts , and a 2x barlow . Heather

Welcome, let's hope for clear skies to use those 'scopes soon and often ! Heather

Okay, so how about this : some decent 10x50 binoculars ( a good compromise between light gathering and weight) with a monopod and suitable bracket and head to steady 'em ( see binocular sky's website for excellent info https://binocularsky.com/binoc_mount.php# ) , it's not easy to hold binoculars really steady for long without some support. That takes care of wide field , DSOs, clusters etc. And to complement the binoculars , showing objects at magnifications hand held binos can't manage, a 102 mak is small, compact, packable, and can be carried on a fairly modest alt az mount , so would be an eminently portable device for narrow field, high magnification views of planets and the Moon. Heather

If she really liked using the 4" you loaned her, I'd say go for something of similar size rather than a bigger 'scope. You can be confident that she will be able to carry, store and use it. If that means there is some money left over, a few nice eyepieces , maybe a UHC filter and even a kit case for the gear to travel safely in would make a good total package. What 'scope would I buy for my sister ? I wouldn't, she's hate anything of the kind and would instantly return it for a refund to buy something she actually wanted 🙂 Heather

If the manufacturer had not wanted comments beyond those of the actual , hands on testers, I suspect they would have asked them to not post public discussions such as this .

It's an adequate paperweight .... Not sure how you feel about wide field (and I suspect it's one of those, 'never had it, never missed it' things ) but if a plossl-ish FOV doesn't bother you, the Baader orthos are £50 each , or a set of 3 plus extras (plossl, barlow, turret thingy) for under £200. They get a lot of good reviews from some folk, but having acquired a 6mm and used it a fair bit, I don't think they are ideal for me. The 10mm has had some rave reviews , I might give one a try if the opportunity presents itself , you never know. I've been looking around to see if there is anything in stock new at a comparable price and FOV and quality to the Nirvana for the 7/8/9mm ish sort of range (my next most used ep ) and .... there isn't. My BST 8mm and 12mm are going nowhere, mind, they are good in my 127mak, the heritage dob and 'frac.s , but I do hanker after some more of that 82 degree viewing window ... If you are thinking just of a long focal length 'scope , and in 1.25" barrel, then had you considered the Celestron Luminos range ? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-eyepieces/celestron-luminos-eyepieces.html I'd not read much reference to them, and only noticed when amazon suggested them to me ( with an instalment plan ! ) . I spent an evening searching out reviews , which in the end came down to 'nice in a long focal length mak , edge brightening on the 2" barrel ones, unfashionably large, a bit cheaper than ES . Not something I'll be buying, as it needs to work in the f5 dob as well as the mak. , but interesting. Heather

Spooky ! That's the exact colour the birds used to deposit on my white car's paintwork in berry season back when I had a rowan tree in the front garden above the parking space ...

Stu, I've been tiptoeing delicately around the eyepiece minefield myself for most of this year 🙂 , I like the (inevitably well recommended , barginaceous) BSTs, but wondered what a step up might look like , and if it would be worthwhile . Being aware that the 15/16/17mm eps were my favourites in my dob, and that it's f5-ness made fairly big calls on low mag, wide field eps , I took a punt on an OVL Nirvana 16mm , 82 degrees , under £100. Upon using it I find it is sharper, clearer and altogether more lovely to use than anything I'd used before, (BSTs, plossls , TMB clones, some cheap zoom I bought second hand ) and the wide field has become, over a few sessions, something I find I really enjoy. A dangerously expensive discovery ! When there are new stocks, or a sensibly priced second hand one comes up for sale, I will buy a 7mm Nirvana. Yes, the ES 82mm would be nice , I'm sure, but at a premium. And they are out of stock too ! Heather

Isn't that what they are getting right here ?

As I understand it, this is not a sample of a finished , yet to be released product, but a prototype loaned out by the manufacturer for some field testing. In those circumstances a manufacturer's requirements are for practical feedback from individuals they have an established personal relationship with, not a review for the market.

Key phrase in there for me which sounds warning in a query about a mak is " skies here seldom stay clear for long " I know exactly what you mean , and taking advantage of brief cloud-gap opportunities is one of the main reasons why I bought a refractor, first an ST80, but now upgraded to a (still cheap) 102mm apo. I have a 127 mak, it's lovely for views of the Moon & planets, but I've put it outside to cool many times, and found I've had to bring it back in because the clouds swarm in before the view-destroying thermal currents in the tube die down. My 127 needs a minimum of half an hour outside to cool before use. On the plus side, mine is held nicely on my AZ5, so that shouldn't be a problem if you decide on the 127 (well, apart from the dovetail rail on the OTA version being under the mak tube, so to have the finder shoe in a sensible place, I have to mount the mak the 'other' way round on the arm, which has inconveniences of it's own ... ) If your viewing sessions are typically shorter than an hour, unless you have some cold but sheltered place to store the mak ready cooled, I'd suggest a refractor would probably suit you better. I'm not particularly interested in double star observing , so can't say which refractor would suit that particular target best though ! Heather

Approaching this from a different direction ... If you've found online charts you could always download them and send them to an online printing service who would print them for you and post them back , and probably bind them for you too if you wanted. An online search should give plenty of choice of companies , or maybe a local copy shop you could visit. Heather

Yep, I understand entirely the wish to not give out too much information on a public forum, but a mention of country/county/city whatever does save wasted effort when we are trying to be helpful ! Heather

@Carbon Brush, I don't think OP is UK based, as they quoted a price in $ . Regardless of continent , I agree that specialist vendors are best though . Heather