Tiny Clanger

Gnu Moon ? Shouldn't one of them go , and leave the other one standing alone ?

Ah vlaiv, you don't have the same cultural references as I do, my immediate thought was 'Hey, Muskie !' 🙂

There's a place called Gornal in the Black Country where the legend goes they were so fond of the pigs (kept, often by a small co-operative of households , to fatten on domestic scraps) they took them out and sat them on the front wall to watch the parade go by ...

🙂 I hoped the reference wasn't missed ! Genuinely Doris' sister (my gran) told me their grandparents were posh, you could tell, because they had a pig at the bottom of the yard ...

Pink blancmange ? PINK BLANCMANGE ? Th' doesn't know tha's born ! Doris used ter dream o' pink blancmange while boiling tripe ...

No, more fearsome than that, Doris was from the Yorkshire branch of the family ...

You never met my aunty Doris , obviously. Heather

Or

Excellent choice (it must be, the slightly bigger heritage 150 was my first telescope too 🙂 ) While you wait for the clouds to clear, this very helpful vid. by an SGLmember should keep you busy :

I don't think it is possible to be too careful with your sight ! Remember to remove , or leave the caps on, any magnifying finder on your telescope too : I bought a simple solar finder for about £15 off amazon, not so much to find the Sun, more as a physical reminder to put it on the 'scope instead, and not use the usual finder. Heather

I wondered the same, altho' I was cautiously starting my solar observing with a little 80mm refractor . The nearly A4 sheet of Baader film turned out to be big enough to make a full aperture filter for my ST80 and a smaller filter (or two ...) the size of the small cap-within-a-cap aperture. I've only had very brief chances to test both filters when the clouds have cleared, but reckon that the larger aperture gives a better (visual) image . If you are careful with making your filter there will probably be a corner of Baader film left over which will be big enough for you to make both, I have sufficient for a full aperture filter for my 127 mak as well , which I intend to make now I feel confident in the filter : all those years of dire warnings about not looking at the Sun meant it took me a while to trust the stuff ! Heather

Welcome, I've found this to be a site with almost entirely positive , polite and helpful members, a rare find on the internet ! I'm sure you will enjoy it. Heather

Just recalled , there's a second hand one for sale for a bit less

I suspect there is no specific technical expertise in the amazon warehouse set-up , and any inspection is cursory and visual and not by an expensive to employ expert in electronics or optics or any such speciality. I bet whoever unpacks the returns does it, and simply bases the rating on the original buyer's stated reason for return, and gives the box and contents a quick once over for missing parts, marks, dents, paint chips, scratches and breakages. There might have to be more checks on mains powered electrical goods to comply with the law . I've bought a few other things from the warehouse, lowepro soft camera lens cases for example : it's easy to imagine why stuff like that didn't work for the original recipient (wrong size for their lens) and easy to see that the items are perfect on arrival. Anything more complex and with possible faults hidden to a cursory examination, and I'd be making a very detailed inspection of my own asap. The free returns set up means you lose no money on such a deal, but it is a waste of your time sorting the return. It just struck me, we are actually amazon warehouse's technical quality control system .... Heather

As above 🙂 , having a RACI (right angle corrected image) finder is handy, it avoids the whole dobsonian 'scope weird yoga position thing which you can get when attempting to use straight through finders . There are two types , right angle finders , which reverse the view left/right and match the view in a refractor , but I suspect would be annoying with a dob ! Then the RACI which shows the sky as it is, just like the view in binoculars. RACIs are usually more expensive than right angle finders , you can tell them apart visually because the right angled corner of the black truncated triangle plate will be truncated too , that corner 'cut off' , So the one in your illustration is a right angled finder not a RACI ! You can see the difference in the photo of the RACI on the page I linked to . On a dob, a 9x50 RACI , which is a substantial lump of stuff, is in scale. I use mine in combination with the cheap red dot finder that ca,e with the 'scope to roughly line up on bright objects. On my mak I use the smaller RACI with a very nice Rigel Quickfinder, a slightly more sophisticated non- magnifying illuminated finder which stands up from the ;scope tube and is therefore easy to use. In theory I could shift the finders between 'scopes, but they were never on the right one, and always needed to be re-aligned after being transferred, so each tube got its own . Heather

You could save £15 and go for one of these :https://www.firstlightoptics.com/finders/astro-essentials-9x50-right-angled-erecting-finderscope.html I have one on my heritage dob, it is good, I have the skywatcher in the smaller 6x30 size on my mak too,

If you have the space to store it , and are able and happy to carry it outside (they are substantial items) you could get a 200mm (8") dob , £400 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-200p-dobsonian.html or a slightly nicer and lighter weight £430 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bresser-telescopes/bresser-messier-8-dobsonian-telescope.html If you spend all of your budget on a 'scope, you will soon find you need to stretch it further for some upgrades asap , another £200 would get you two or three decent eyepieces (e.g. BST starguiders, around £45 each new ) and a better finder . As I'm sure you've read , the provided accessories are usually not very impressive (altho' reputedly the Bresser eyepiece is less horrid than the skywatcher stuff ) Or ... as you have two very different target types in mind, deep space and the planets , how about a small mak on an alt/az mount like this for £260 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/sky-watcher-skymax-102s-az-pronto.html , long focal length , compact and portable, slo mo controls to make fine adjustments and keep those planets in view easily , ideal for bright planets and the Moon, and a tabletop 150 heritage dob , more light collecting potential for the fainter distant stuff £250 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/sky-watcher-heritage-150p-flextube-dobsonian-telescope.html It's a combination which serves me well (I have the slightly larger 127 mak, ) As a relative beginner who is interested in pretty much everything it has given me some amazing views from my suburban garden during lockdown , despite light pollution , neighbour's hideous garish garden lights, and my general ineptitude at finding stuff. I take the dob out for faint stuff, and the mak if it's a moonlit night, or there are planets well placed. The bad news is ... you have plenty of time to think about it , there is very little in stock at the moment. The good news is ... you have plenty of time to think about it , there is very little in stock at the moment ! Heather

This thread may help :

It's extremely windy here today, which means the odd cloud gap doesn't last at all long, but I managed to nip out with the little ST80 and full aperture Baader film filter for a brief look at the Sun around 2pm: saw the spot , put my borrowed UHC filter on the eyepiece ( as suggested by Stu in the upcoming eclipse thread ) and saw more detail to the spot ( a couple of smaller subsidiary patches, and a less sharp boundary to the main spot) in the seconds before the clouds rolled back over. Think I'm going to have to actually commit to buying the UHC now .... Heather

I'll hazard an extra bit of speculation : the grazing impacts from smaller mass objects which cause the few elliptical craters we can see will have released less energy, so will be shallower than more direct, more massive impacts. With no plate tectonics and scarcely any erosion, the craters on the Moon have persisted (while the exact same sort of features made on the Earth have been almost all smoothed out ...) so the shallowness of the elliptical craters might not seem a reason for them to be less numerous. However, we can see that there are plenty of craters which overlie older ones , so my guess is there may have been more elliptical craters originally formed, but most have been obliterated by later, greater impact craters, or perhaps obscured by impact ejecta. Heather

Pixies beat me to it ... you need to remove the pan/tilt head , which should reveal a 3/8" screw . The screw protruding from the pan/tilt head, the one which goes into the base of a camera or lightweight 'scope is a 1/4" screw. Many tripod heads remove by simply rotating the head anti clockwise, usually not hard to do if you lock the pan / az axis so the top does not rotate . Some have extra devices to stop this happening accidentally (e.g. the Manfrotto grub screws underneath) , and some cheaper or lighter weight tripods may have their heads permanently fixed to the column.

Yep, the AZ5 will hold it easily , and has a 3/8" socket in the base which matches the standard photo head to photo tripod screw.Assuming your tripod has that, it should be no problem . I've not tried the heritage 150 on my AZ5, it has my Maksutov living on it permanently ! Most tripod heads simply unscrew from the tripod's centre column, I've no idea if your one has grub screws underneath the small platform at the top of the centre column as the Manfrottos do, but if so, it's just the work of seconds to loosen them.

Randall seldom disappoints 🙂 https://xkcd.com/1331/

You turn the inner tube, it has a thread cut into it, as does the outer tube of the focuser . The whole thing is a bit rattly and imprecise, which is why people put wraps of PFTE plumbers tape on it to remove some of the slop. It's a bit rough and ready, but it works OK, and I'm sure it keeps the price down . You can see it in this very useful vid.: Heather