mikemarotta

I wrote: "The SR is a "Symmetric Ramadan" two Plano-convex lenses. " Yes, of course! It was not me. It was the type-ahead. I hate it and shut it off whenever I can just because of such infused idiocy. Thanks for catching that lest someone be confused by an obvious blunder. Mike M.

The oculars ("eyepieces") you have are fine. A Barlow lens will not do much for you right now. You have to learn how to use the telescope. It will show you much beyond Jupiter and Saturn, as stunning as they are. With Orion rising now in the evening, you will find that it is loaded with targets, including, of course, the very famous Messier 42 nebula cloud formation in the Sword. Do not rush into magnification or extra gear. After Christmas, you will find a lot of options for returned gear with reputable retailers such as First Light Optics here. (Where are you located?, if I may ask. See about setting up your user profile and options there.) Nothing will look like it does online or television with specials about Hubble Space Telescope images, and all that, but the truth is that you will be doing your own exploring and discovering of Lunar features, the planets, double stars, and open clusters, fuzzy globular clusters, and more. It is your gateway to the Universe. By the way: Is one of those 20mm eyepieces a "correcting" image? The way to know is to look at the Moon. The shiny side will point to the Sun of course. However, because in space, there is no up or down, most of our eyepieces do not correct for orientation. In fact, if you look at maps of the Moon often you will see South at the top. This website will help you plan for viewing Jupiter: https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-content/plugins/observing-tools/jupiter_moons/jupiter.html And this one for Saturn: https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-content/plugins/observing-tools/saturn_moons/saturn.html Note that they give you options for three views. You want the Inverted: Newtonian/Dobsonian when you are in the "native" mode. If one of the 20mm is a correcting lens, then you want the Direct view. I have to disagree, Mike. The Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ is an excellent telescope at 40 to 100X. Our new friend has 20mm and 10mm oculars and 50X to 100X is perfect for it. This is also a German Equatorial Mount. So, learning to use that is also a bit of a challenge. jjmorris90 will have to find out for himself about inverting the telescope when he crosses the meridian. Myself, when I started with my Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ, I also bought the Celestron lens and filter kit. It is a great toolbox. I bought it because I saw people at star parties with huge telescopes refractors and reflectors both and the same Celeston kit. I am still happy with it after seven years and I am now spending as much on single eyepieces as the kit cost back then. That said, though, I did not get any use from it for the first 10 or 12 times I went out with my telescope. In fact, I was disappointed with it. I only learned to appreciate it after I learned to use the telescope well with its "native" equipment, the 20mm and 10mm eyepieces. Best Regards, Mike M.

Ciao e Benvenuto. (... ma proprio non parlo italiano). Feel free to ask for help, of course, and when you have solved your tehnical problems, please share your observation reports with us. Best Regards, Mike M. (Pronunziamo il cognome "Marada" e non trilliamo la r. As the Scots say, "I do not roll my ars.")

I have an Explore Scientific 102mm achromatic F=660 and first view of Rigel was last week 8 December at 165X with an StellarVue 4mm and then at 94X with a 7mm Nagler Type-1. When I tried the 14-mm Meade Series 5000, I knew that it was there, but, truly, I could have not reported it on that basis alone. (My other hobby is numismatics, where optimistic grading is common.) Last night (this morning 0005 Hours), I got very good separation with an Explore 5X focal extender and the 14mm Meade for 235X. That is not my experience at all. Skies and eyes are all individualized. I have been able to split the famous double-double epsilon Lyrae with 70mm entry-level telescopes (Meade and Celestron). Here from my notebook for 05 November 2021. However, I was unable to do this with the National Geographic 70mm and for that, I had two of them, one older (2015) and the other new from the box. The Meade F=700mm. So 233 X to do this. The Celestron is a longer f/13 F=900. So 225X. For myself, the one pair is always harder to split and here even with the longer focus, the Celestron had trouble. Because the Naitonal Geographic could not do this, I bought the other two to test the limits. Otherwise, I use (as above) my 102-mm with F=660. My first view was on 20 November 2020 with an 8mm Ploessl and a 2X Barlow (both Celestron) for 165X. Silly? Let me tell you about silly: "Jupiter at 1100X" here on my blog. However, there, I do cite Ronald Stoyan "The Visual Astronomer" blog at http://visualastronomer.com/ (Note that it is not secure socket https.) He says that magnification is never wasted. But, as much as I agree that more power can serve a purpose, I still view casually mostly at 40X to 100X. (47X with the Meade 14mm now. Previously, I tended to the Celestron 32mm + 2X Barlow.)

Everyone recommends their own favorite and no one says why or why not some other by comparison. Probably the best advice started out on a different tack:. wulfrun from Wolverhampton opined: TLAO would be my personal favorite. I stress that personal favorite. Books are like cars or friends or anything else: highly personal. My honest recommendation is to use your public library and your best local bookstores. Browse the shelves. Read the books. Buy the one (ones) that speak to you. I borrowed Turn Left at Orion several times from my local libary and still do not own my own copy. I do, however, have several planispheres, including one that came along with maps of the Moon and the Sky as a package from Cambridge Press. But I found it at a used bookstore here in town. If you want to know which "brands" to trust, look for the Patrick Moore label from Cambridge Press. They are not all stellar. (I just gave one a bad review for the poor editing. They let the author down. But I was a writer long before I was an editor.). Best Regards (and clear skies), Mike M.

Congratulations. I did not know about Universal Astronomics. Now, it is too late. That last price list is dated three years ago. RETAIL PRICE LIST effective November 1, 2018*

It is very smart of you to seek all of that as separate components. It is most common in the hobby to just accept the Package Deal of a great telescope and a flimsy mount and tripd with two oculars ("eyepieces") that you will soon replace with something more suited to your actual viewing needs. After several years in this hobby, I finally started doing that, buying the component separately.

Beginners - and not beginner alike - need to be really careful about what they read. First of all, every maker has great gear and junk. I know colleges in the USA with huge Celestron telescopes, even though the Celestron 114mm reflector is a Bird-Jones (spherical, not parabolic) design hated by those with more expertise who ask rhetorically why a nominally reputable firm continues to sell such rubbish. And so, too, here. The last line: "... Eyepieces, an SR4, an H12 and an H20 Provide Multiple ... " The SR is a "Symmetric Ramadan" two Plano-convex lenses. The H stands for Huygens, also two plano-convex lenses. In the SR, the curves face each other. In the H, the flat sides face the viewer's eye. The Huygens design is from the 1600s. The Ramsden is from the 1700s. Both have long since been superseded for hobbyists by the Plössl (Ploessl or incorrectly Plossl), which is four lenses in two sets of two. I found this out the hard way, buying "First Scope" set from Celestron as backup. It came up in our local club that with Covid restrictions and realities, we did not want people sharing eyepieces. So, when I saw these, I bought them. The advertisement did not say "Huygens" and after they arrived, I wondered what the H stood for: Heave into the Rubbish Bin, apparently. Read more on WIkipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyepiece

I had the same problem and same easy solution for another mount, the Celetron AVX. I hate taking things apart because they are harder to get back together, but it seems that it really should be part of one's procedures for all new gear to really inspect everything indoors during the day to figure how they work.

Been there... done that... I bought a new Celestron AVX computerized mount and I still have not used it much. The second night out, taking things back inside, after bringing my telescope in, I loosened the center bolt connecting the mount to the tripod before I took out the counter-weight. The mount took a dive. As you said, "Nothing was damaged, just my pride."

He has been singing the praises of this: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/sky-watcher-capricorn-70-eq1-refractor.html They say: "The Capricorn 70 is a classic looking 70mm (2.75") F/900 refractor on EQ1 mount perfect for beginners. Please don't let it's low price mislead you, the Sky-Watcher Capricorn 70 EQ is not a department-store toy. The 70mm aperture, long focal-ratio and coated optics provide pleasing views of Jupiter and some of it's moons. Saturn with it's rings is easily identifiable and the lunar surface will show a wealth of detail. Some of the brighter deep-sky targets are also within reach including the Orion nebula, M13 Globular cluster in Hercules and the beautiful double-star Albireo. " Neil's point is that the long focus of 900 mm gives this a focal ratio of 12.8 which makes this what many aficanados would call "a planet-killer." It is also suitable for deep sky targets. Moreover, its longer fcous also removes much (perhaps all) chromatic aberration, typical of shorter refractors. And - allowing some discussion on this point - longer ("slower") telescopes are easier to focus sharply. Shorter ("faster") telescopes are less forgiving. At its higher magnifications this 70-mm refractor is not going to allow all of the Pleiades or the full Moon, but at lower powers it will. That is a trade-off versus for examples a larger reflector, especially a Dobsonian 6-inch or 8-inch or beyond. The Dobsonians are price competitive because their mounts are typically inexpensive fiberboard or plywood cradles. Also, reflectors do not suffer from chromatic aberration. It is a tautology, however, to point out that a nice as the view is in a large reflector, the telescope is big and heavy. This is small and light.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light. Godfrey Kneller's Portrait, 1689. Few people except numismatists know him to have been the Warden and Master of the British Royal Mint for thirty years. He had himself sworn as a justice of the peace so that he could pursue and prosecute counterfeiters. For most people, Newton is famous for his Three Laws of Motion. Beyond that, those with additional education know him for creating the Calculus to prove his theories of celestial and terrestrial mechanics. In addition, Newton invented the reflecting telescope as a result of his experiments with light. And he also proved the general case for the Binomial Theorem (“Pascal's Triangle”). He served in Parliament, representing Cambridge, where he had been a professor of mathematics. He served as president of the Royal Society. Newton’s ideas are easy to explain today, especially using algebra and the Leibniz notation for calculus. The proofs in the Principia are—and could only have been—delivered via geometry. We do not know it so well today. Richard P. Feynman intended to develop and present his own proofs to a class as a treat to relieve the stress of up-coming semester final examinations. He could not do it. He did not know enough geometry. "Conder" Tokens from Middlesex. Catalogued as Dalton & Hamer 1035A. (See Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775–1821 by George Selgin.) It seems that three students at Tokyo University started Newtonmas in their dormitory sometime before 1890. As the undergraduates developed into graduates and assistants, their professors were drawn into the celebration, and a more suitable assembly hall was found in the University Observatory. By 1890, they called themselves the Newtonkai (Newton Association; 皆 = kai = “all”) and moved to the Physical Laboratory. There, they played games symbolic of great mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers: Newton’s apple, Franklin’s kite, a naked doll for Archimedes … That story comes from “A New Sect of Hero-Worshippers” published in Nature, Vol. 46, No. 1193, p. 459, 8 September 1892. It available from the publisher for $18 if you are not a member, or it can be found online at Google Books. Reminders of Newtonmas Past https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2017/12/reminders-of-newtonmas-past.html This year's greeting. https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2021/12/merry-newtonmas-2021.html

Well... I gave myself a project. I am comparing entry-level 70-mm refractors. So, this is what the postal carrier delivered this week: MILE HIGH ASTRO - LAKEWOOD, COLORADO EXPLORE SCIENTIFIC, SPRINGDALE, ARKANSAS. So far, it has been an interesting four nights and five early mornings.

This is very nice work. The snapshot is fine, of course, but your sketch is truly extraordinary. You are very talented. Thanks for sharing. Clear skies! Mike M.

I hadn'tthought of that. Of course. Thanks for the lesson. Best Regards, Mike M.