Tiny Clanger

For targets , do a search o ere for 'moore winter marathon' , links to the very useful beginner list should be in there somewhere. Similarly, with the stories, I'd just google (well actually I don't use google, so I'd duckduckgo ... ) 'constellation myths for children' , I bet there are many resources out there ! Good luck Heather

Nice setup, that's a manfrotto 190xpro isn't it ? I have the same tripod for photo use , my 127 mak is on a manfrotto 55 /az5 combo because the extra weight of the head and mak need a heftier tripod I feel. The new tiny widefield st80 sits on my 190 and photo head easily, I even tried it on a manfrotto travel tripod (rated to carry just 3kg) with no problems. For those unfamiliar with the 102 mak 'scope, I'll point out this one in the photo has a nice warm foam insulating jacket and dew shield, it doesn't look like that out of the box! Heather

Neat ! I'd thought of buying some sugru off my favourite outdoor kit supplier to make something hand moulded https://alpkit.com/products/sugru-pack-of-8 Heather

Hi domster, I originally bought a 150 heritage dob (which I've hardly mentioned on here for , ooh, days now, so thanks for the opportunity to say : I love it , it;s great, buy one everybody . 🙂) The heritage 150 has a focal length of 750mm. I became interested in viewing the planets when Mars Jupiter and Saturn were in my suburban skies in the late summer/autumn and bought the 127mak precisely because with the 1500mm focal length it excels at planetary and lunar use. I'm not bothered by 'splitting' double stars ( I've read that around half of all stars are binaries , , I don't mind if I can tell they are by looking at them or not , ) If the Moon is up (as it was last night) or planets are in my back garden's visible area of sky, I put the 127 mak out to cool , if not, and I'm hoping to see some DSOs I put the dob out. I've only had the dob for 3 months, and have not had plentiful clears skies or comfortably warm nights to spend a lot of time just comparing the two 'scopes on the same objects yet, I'm concentrating on finding and seeing new things rather than rating the instruments. I bought the second hand Orion ST80 partly to see cheaply what all the fuss is about with refractors 🙂 , partly to have a really instant set up I can take outdoors when there is cloud cover so I may give up and pack away at a moment's notice . It goes on a standard photo tripod & head, is so wide field (400mm ) it scarcely needs a finder , it is a finder (and was used as one by its previous owner) It will never be my first choice for serious observing, but for a quick, 5 minute gap in the clouds, or to take camping, or to let friends borrow, or to stick in a bag and take to the park on foot, it fills a gap the other two 'scopes had left. Yes, I think the ST80 is a great starter 'scope, easy to use , easy to store, cheapto mount adequately, an ideal small step up from binoculars .But I think anyone sticking with star gazing would soon find its limitations annoying and want to upgrade . The wide field, an advantage in some ways, is a major drawback when it comes to magnification, and the CA (which is absent in a reflector) is easily visible. My little ST80 is 80/400 (and mounted on a photo tripod & head) vs Wibblefish's 90/660 which is of a better quality, higher mag and aperture 'scope on a proper mount if I recall correctly the pronto? Do I have that right ? Given that the OP is after a portable whole set up and will need something to go under whatever 'scope he buys , I wonder how portable and effective a set up it is over all ? Heather

It sounds to me as if your first problem is keeping the 'scope pointing where you want it to be, which is down to the flimsy tripod and less than ideal head on it. If you can close the legs down and stand the tripod on something like a stable garden table you may be able to reduce the wobble, perhaps even trying to arrange it so you are sitting down to view. Closing the tripod legs down will reduce the wobble. Ideally it you have a photo tripod , see if you can transfer the 'scope over onto that , the sturdier the tripod and mount the better, you want a firm base , and the ability to move smoothly and lock the 'scope on your target. If you don't own a tripod, and can't borrow one from someone , there are plenty of second hand ones around, you don't need to spend very much . If the 'scope came with a 45 degree diagonal as Philip R says, then I agree with him, best buy a 90 degree one, it will make the 'scope far easier to look through without turning into a contortionist . No need to go mad with a diagonal which costs more than the telescope , something like this will do the job as a straight replacement as long as your existing diagonal has a diameter of 1.25" . Once you have a steady tripod and a less neck breaking diagonal sorted, get the finder aligned as accurately as possible in the daytime (easier to do in the light and on a non moving lamp post or church spire ) , Next night time observing session start with the least powerful eyepiece, centre your target on it, lock the tripod head controls so the 'scope stays lined up when you touch it, and swap in the next most powerful eyepiece. Keep looking through at your target, and if the view is good, keep swapping up through whatever magnifications you have . Stop increasing magnification when the image seems too wobbly or indistinct, but be aware you may need to tweak the focus a bit for each individual eyepiece. I'd ignore the barlow, it probably isn't very good quality, Choose some easily found , impressive targets and do a bit of background reading on them so you know what you are both looking at . The Orion nebula is a good 'un, as are the Pleiades. 5 year olds love stories, so I'd look up the myths and legends which give the (western and other cultures ) names to the constellations, planets and the Moon to tell her too. I never 'saw' the man in the Moon myself, but Chinese children see a rabbit . Heather

Having just had a half hour play with my new (to me) Orion ST80, I can say for sure it is fun to use, easy to aim (so wide field it is practically its own finderscope .. ) light and perfect on even a flimsy tripod (tried it on my titchy manfrotto travel tripod, which whispers rather than boasts a carrying capacity of just 3kg ) but at 400mm focal length , even with my strongest eyepiece (6mm ) Mars was still only a tiny dot, and the Moon did not even fill the field of view . For an all round 'scope I suspect you would want a longer focal length , especially as the Moon and planets are some of the easy bright objects which you should be able to see in the city. And with that I've reached the end of my practical first hand experience with frac.s 🙂 Heather

I'm glad ScouseSpaceCadet posted that question, and paulastro answered it, saves me much puzzling over my bad sketching to try and find out what it was that caught my eye ! 🙂 Heather

Remarkable. I must have seen hundreds of similar chairs being cruelly mistreated in classrooms over the years, even a few being thrown (not at me fortunately) and never seen a seat crack . The legs usually detach from the plastic before any other damage gets a chance to happen !

Really neat ! If I wasn't a wildly inept hack at carpentry I'd make something similar for my 150 heritage. so it could masquerade a side table but be ready to leap into action at a moment's notice , like super man out of the 'phone box ! As it is, it sits on a very rough equilateral triangular table made from the wood from an old ikea sofa and 3 metal bolt on legs 🙂 Heather

Here's the relevant discussion:

I wasn't getting at you Stu, hope it didn't come over that way. I've had discussions with Jasonb about the thing, so know that second hand monster tripod has been a bit of a gamble for him as far as tripod/head connectivity goes.

That;s the point, it isn't ! Meade american thing, unusual to the UK connection tripod to head, but rated to carry 30kg !It's a monster. Looks like adaptation may be needed.

I don't. I would need to collapse the heritage dob extending section each time I went from polarizer filter use to none. So I'll take the EP out, rotate the filter, and replace it.

Not if your newtonian does not have a 2" tube. My newtonian does not have a 2" tube.

A cute little ST80, courtesy of Commanderfish 🙂 I like the little 'scope, my cat very much appreciates the cardboard box it arrived in 🙂

You say that Things change so fast though ... 🙂

Nice report, I got a couple of hours , Mars just looked like a dissolving effervescent tablet under much mag, so I spent the time Moon watching. The crater Gassendi was mentioned on another thread as one to see at the terminator, and it was indeed full of detail , inner wall double lumpy looking central peak . I get confused on lunar geography (selenography ?) due to using a dob ( upside down image) and mak (right way up , L/R flipped image) and set the free to download 'Virtual Moon Atlas' to show whichever orientation I need https://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/start It's not the best presented site ( translated from French ) but it's a great bit of software at my favourite price (free) some screenshots on this page show part of what it can do https://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/screenshot/start The dynamic terminator (insert your own joke here ) is a great feature. Quite apart from static maps needing to be flipped, I find it hard to relate 2D mapping to features strongly side lit and 3D looking when near the terminator , this solves the problem for me. Instant info on any feature you select too . Heather

Mars was in a part of my view wrecked by lights, but I managed 2 hours Moon watching, and actually got so warm I needed to take my gloves off ! A few lines of light cloud around now , so I've come in for a snack , and a thinner jacket ... Heather

Good to know, particularly as I have an Orion one en route to me right now ! I also intend to recycle the stock diagonal and RDF from a mak , which are otherwise unemployed due to upgrades. I have the exact same mak, also a heritage dob. but wanted a fast set-up, grab & go to put on a photo tripod . I want to be able to nip out (and back in) in an instant when there's brief opportunities between clouds , the nights with brief windows happen so often compared with the 'worth putting the 'scopes out to cool' clear for hours ones, that I think I'll get a lot of use from it . Last night, anticipating the arrival of the little 'frac I did some research about it, this was interesting ( I know it is the Skywatcher one, not the Orion I will have, but they come from the same factory !)

I endorse the 'try the filter on top ' method, if your eyepiece has a fold up cup, just place the filter in it for a quick look before faffing around screwing it on the bottom of the EP. Also the twin polarizing filters which give a range of ND possibilities rather than a single ND . These are easier to use in a 'scope with a diagonal, where you can separate the two parts, screw one into the diagonal, the other in the EP in the usual way, and just turn the EP to adjust the light transmission. Less good in a Newtonian where both go on the EP, so you need to remove the EP to rotate the filter. I really have not found I need to filter the Moon for comfortable viewing in my 127mm aperture mak, but definitely need it in my 150 dob. When the Mars/Jupiter/Saturn feast was there to view a few months ago, I decided to see for myself what use coloured filters might be on planets, opinions are divided , 'scopes of different apertures will behave differently, so I wanted the evidence of my own eyes. The only way that was possible in lockdown was to buy some, and the prices of 'good' sets being a bit high for an experiment which might prove the things were useless for me. So I bought one of the sets of cheap ones , about half a dozen, under £20 all the way from China . I'm well aware that cheap filters are a bad buy for (non astro) photography, but reckoned they would be acceptable for simple visual use on planets whose image is already distorted by the Earth's atmosphere ! The outcome was I found the green filter showed me the South Polar Cap on Mars (despite it being shrunk in size at the time from the usual diameter) , the orange let me see various markings more clearly , to the point where one night I came in after two hours on Mars ( 🙂 ) slightly puzzled, as what I'd seen did not quite conform to what the Mars map suggested was showing at the time, only to log in here and find more experienced observers with bigger 'scopes reporting ... a dust storm ! The unmapped division I'd seen (with an orange filter and a basic 17mm skywatcher plossl in a £200 'scope) was a dust storm . On Mars. I don't recall offhand what the entire range of colours was, but some were too dark to be of use in my 150 dob, and the one labelled 'MOON/LIGHT POLLUTION transmitted too much moonlight , but on the other hand, darkened my light polluted sky too much ! All these investigations were made with my 150 heritage dob, I have not had the chance of long periods of good seeing and planets high enough in the sky to give them a proper outing in my 127 mak yet. So, to my mind, I certainly got my money's worth , £20 for a Martian dust storm ! Since then I have kept my eyes open for some second hand , better quality filters , a trio of which I snapped up last week, because I am confident that they will be of use to me when those planets swim back into view. Nebular filters? I've read plenty, but will wait until one day (ah, one day .... ) I may be able to look through someone else's expensive purchase and see if it would be worthwhile for me . Heather

Welcome to the hotel telescopia .... 🦅 🦅

SGL, what a lovely place !

Not seen one of those before, maybe quite rare in the UK ? This guy likes his though : https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/user-reviews/mounts/alt-azimuth/tele-vue-tele-pod-alt-az-mount-r836 Heather

The only brands I have any experience with are Gitzo ( the Rolls Royce of tripods, only used a company one decades ago, doubt you'd see any on facebook !) Slik, who used to make good solid tripods in their top of the range offerings, but again I've no current experience of them, and manfrotto.. My favourite tripods are Manfrottos, if you can find a 55 series manfrotto second hand, that would be perfect: my old one is rated to 11kg, the newer versions to 9kg weight carrying, which matches the az5. Probably overkill for the little scope you are getting, but in the future, capable of holding up something far larger ... I have a lighter weight manf. 160 too, it is less substantial than the 55, but perfectly adequate to hold my heritage 150 reflector using that adaptor I linked to. Maybe someone else with recent experience of other brands will chip in and give you some more ideas. In general, a pan tilt head with handles is probably preferable to a ball head, easier to control and lock , you'd be fumbling under the 'scope tube to adjust a ball head. I've never liked the leg locks which are collars you turn, I like positive, snap into place clips with little levers, but plenty of photographers vocally prefer the collars, so that's a matter of personal preference ! To be a reliable tripod, anything you buy needs to be mostly metal, as little plastic as possible, and big diameter tubes ... Ideally you want a tripod so big that you do NOT need to extend the lowest, thinnest leg sections at all to raise your 'scope to 'viewing level, those thin lowest leg sections are wobbly. Best not slide the centre column up either, leave it locked down, which all reduces vibrations and wobbles. Hard to be more specific , but I hope that heps abit. Heather

Keep your eyes open for second hand tripods, especially locally : as they are big awkward things to post you might get a bargain . As well as private sellers on the usual sites, sometimes photo kit dealers take them in in part exchange for new gear and are anxious to shift them to free up stockroom space ! Heather