wibblefish

Good night when the heavy cloud cleared. I was using an ND polariser but still got blinded by the moon when observing with high mag. Found that my 12mm is the perfect balance between magnification and detail which is nice.

I didnt have a plan otherwise so wandered with an 18mm investigating anything interesting with 12mm. As expected the moon washed out the sky however I am fairly certain I spotted something in Gemini which looked like a very diffuse dim cluster of stars which my apps suggested might be IC444. Will have to confirm another night 😎

16 minutes ago, Tiny Clanger said:

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

Yeah, that one is an AZ pronto head and aluminum mount so its a little more meaty ST80 on a small photo tripod though it doesnt feel like alot of weight (the mount head is actually the heaviest bit) when I have disassembled before but I suspect the OTA length is the more unwieldy bit. I merely wondered as there was talk about an ST102 whether something similar would be a good half way house between the two but I am not overly familiar with the ST102 specs. I honestly think the OPs gut feel of a wide field 80mm portable setup is likely the way to go unless dead set on planetary in which case a 102 / 127 Mak would work  

14 minutes ago, Basementboy said:

I've been thinking that, yes! But I also quite like the idea of what you say you do ... hunting around just to find anything and everything. GoTo seems cool but a bit like .....  cheating ..... ?  

I can't help but think that if you struggle with DSO even in Bortle 5 skies, then I'm going to flail in Bortle-9 and might be best off giving up and going planetary for now

Ah I don't know on that, I suspect its just me being a bit alot of a newbie  

19 minutes ago, Basementboy said:

Could be! I think 75cm is too long, though – for that I might as well be going whole hog on the 100 ED doublet. But I hear you on price. Wary of splashing out before I know what's what about what.

What are your skies like in Norfolk? London really is quite washed out, although my chosen park location – on top of the Burgess Park hill – is about as far from street lights and houses as it's possible to be here. But I'm thinking DSOs might just not work for me in the city. So I'm starting to think to focus on planetary – in which case yep, a Mak!

Where I am its quite washed out (middle of town in Norfolk) at times I think its rated as Bortle 5 (19.25SQM) so it makes star hopping quite difficult (plus dodging bright lights in all directions). That said even if you can't see stars visually at times when viewed through a finderscope / main scope there is always a good view especially with a wide field refractor it seems

I think DSO is tricky, I have only been at this since early Nov and I still struggle with them especially faint ones, often its trying to work where and what its meant to be but I think its a practice thing as well. I think the most impressive ones I have seen so far tend to be star clusters and some bright nebula such as Orion!

I nearly got a 102 Mak as a first scope but glad I didn't as I am not sure planetary would've held my interest overall, that said I am enjoying double stars which is another good target for Mak. Mostly I like just trying to locate anything and everything even if my scope isn't the most suitable, its equal parts frustrating and rewarding

Honestly whatever scope you choose, get one you will get the most use out of and it will always be the right one that will give you many wows

Just a thought (not sure on budget / portability) would something with a GOTO work, that would make you less reliant on star hops etc. I am sure there are plenty of other peeps who will be able to wade in with options who have lots of telescopes and experience!

Would something like the Evostar 90/660 and its ilk be of any use as a step between the 80 - 100 range? I have one and find its fairly portable moving around the garden but it wouldn't fit in a rucksack I don't think (tube is 75cm from diagonal to end cap). Its a typical short tube excels at clusters and wide field, I have seen a few brighter DSO, Mars is the only planetary target I have been able to see at present which you can observe some shadowing on the surface on good nights (though small), does some doubles where they aren't overly bright (you get to much CA halo'ing otherwise). Has its share of SA at the edges but not enough to cause me to much trouble. Sadly I fear there is no good "all rounder" they all excel at different things and as I have found out you can push your telescope to do various things but it can be an exercise in frustration at times 

I don't have either but I would suspect something like a ST80 or Mak102 would be ideal for what you are looking for from reading lots of posts. I would hesitate to buy a small ED scope due to the cost for visual only. 

Go with something you will likely use, pointless spending extra pennies on one that will be a pain to lug when you could invest in eyepeices (which make a huge difference) etc. Good luck with it

5 hours ago, NGC 1502 said:

Excellent 👍

Even in bright moonlight from town doubles are great targets. My main resource is the Cambridge double star atlas version 2.   It’s also an excellent general purpose set of charts so if you can find a copy well worth tracking down.

Ed.

This recently came back into stock on the Cambridge University Press site and I think Amazon as well, I was debating this or Interstellarium deep sky atlas (which is twice the price)  

Feel your pain, I am hoping for clear skies tonight (its been green on ScopeNights all week) ... then this morning it flickered to yellow (partial cloudy), then red (full cloud cover) ... now its back to green (minimal). Guess it'll be a stick head out the back door and hope! Luckily the 90mm has almost zero cooldown time and I'm looking forward to my second night ever looking at the moon since it will finally be in a favorable part of the sky  

Just an update, I didnt have the right bits to actually do to much but pretty sure I could as there are a couple of useful countersunk holes in the middle of the dovetail I could attach a bolt and metal plate to hold weights.

For now I have moved the dovetail forward and telescope forward in the rings which seems to have improved things significantly.

1 minute ago, John said:

The 8mm BST Starguider is a good eyepiece and should be very sharp, especially in the central area of the field of view.

I have compared the 8mm Starguider with my 8mm Tele Vue Ethos in my 12 inch dobsonian at a star party a few years back and I was surprised just how good the much less expensive BST actually did.

With the screw up and down eye cup section, the positioning is usually up for non-glasses wearers and down for those who do wear glasses when observing.

In your scope the 8mm is giving you 81x magnification which is really just a "medium" magnification with the scope.

Might be worth checking the collimation ?

I will admit I didn't know that down was glasses wearers good to know! I usually don't wear mine at the telescope though I am tempted as I need them to find the RDF target and often swapping them back on they haze up and then are useless. I also worked out the other night that my right eye is much better at observing than my left when I was trying to find some fuzzies, I guess its slightly stronger. One day I will overcome my dislike of contact lenses and that will solve everything 😛 

Very cool, I think I probably need to look into this (or a really good star atlas) as I find the mobile version of Stellarium is totally unintuitive when I am out. My main trouble is getting guide stars available through the light pollution murk atm, I can see why GOTO is so popular  

Thanks for the suggestions! I am adding them to my targets list  Sadly looking at my weather app we are back to snow and fully cloud for the next week but you never know maybe it will change.

I find with my 8mm BST that it is a very fine line to in focus and slightly out of focus, I find its worse on very bright targets (i.e. Sirius / Rigel) to find correct focus but that is probably more due to refractor CA issues. I also find its harder to focus when I don't screw the eye cup all the way up

If you can achieve focus on the same target with the 9mm vs 8mm that does seem a little odd to my mind as I wouldn't expect 1mm to make a huge difference when swapping between EP. 

11 minutes ago, Goldenmole said:

Wow mate that sounds really cool! Thank you for giving me a target for tonight!

No problems, I honestly hesitated about posting as I figured most people would know about this one / have seen it. I had heard of it but why I hadn't tried to locate it I don't actually know still another one off my list

5 minutes ago, Raph-in-the-sky said:

With a refractor open clusters are really great targets. If you haven't already, try and have a look at the pleiades, the hyades, the beehive cluster, the ET cluster...

I haven't heard of the ET cluster but I have tried the others (oddly the beehive took me a few goes to find!) will add it to the list thank you for the suggestion!

So last night in the cold after a fairly disappointing session trying to find various things with little luck I decided to just pan around the sky looking for interesting things. When I was panning around Cassiopeia (after finding a suitable stool to kneel on due to the scope angle!) I just stumbled across the Perseus Double Cluster (NGC 884 / NGC 869).

It was an absolute gem and really made the whole night!

I tried a few different EP on it and found the best view was with the 12mm which was able to fit both of the core of both clusters comfortably though they were nice and bright enough to go down to 8mm to look at each separately in more detail.

How I have never tried these before I don't know especially as they are something my refractor actually gives wow views for rather than the frustrations of deep fuzzys and tight doubles  

Had a go towards the end of the session last night but much to low in the sky so it was mostly full of light pollution where I am sadly though I think I got in the right area  

If I manage a Fri / Sat night at some point I'll stay out a bit later (post-10pm) and see if I can get them when they are higher in the sky!

Thanks for the options @John I'll have to see what might work for the az-pronto I guess its just the way they behave so that's reassuring at least, will have to update when I work out a suitable plan

7 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Slow mo controls are nice. Hopefully you'll find bits you can use in the garage to add a counter weight bar as those other mounts heads you mentioned don't have slow mo. A did similar to my az3 and it worked great and no slipage at high altitude angles and I liked to keep soft enough tension to use as a push to.

Yeah I like the slo-mo, the AZ5 does have it though but at £175 just for a mount head its almost the same price I paid for the whole telescope package so if I can find a cheap solution that'd be a lot better already spent plenty on new EP, diagonal, finders, filters etc as it is! Will try and McGuyver something together  

I bought this one the other week from Altair mostly for the compression ring which is making it so much easier to change EP. Not sure it makes a huge amount of difference to the seeing over the stock admittedly

https://www.altairastro.com/125in-lightwave-premium-dielectric-diagonal-red-765-p.asp

9 hours ago, John said:

Sounds like the same sort of issues that you get with the AZ-3 mount.

I think they are caused by the centre of gravity of the scope being above that of the altitude axis.

With the AZ-3 folks would add a counter weight on a bar to counteract the tendency of the scope to tip backwards when pointing upwards. The AZ-3 modification is detailed here:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/275499-finally-finished-my-az3-modification/

Maybe you could adapt it for the AZ Pronto ?

Thanks for the suggestion John I suspected it might be something like that. My counterweight attempt was to strap a wrist weight around the front part of the OTA but that then becomes precarious when elevated as it moves above the axis so I can see why the example in that post goes for something that will remain angled at the front.

Ultimately I guess upgrading the mount head to a more conventional side arm style AZ4 / AZ5 etc. would be a solution but I might see what spare nuts and bolts are hanging about in the garage to put some weight on the front (I guess it'd have to be the dovetail itself).

Someone else has mentioned pushing the telescope further forward on the rings also so I might see if that would help.

I have a SW 90 short tube refractor mounted on an AZ Pronto. 

I am having some issues with altitude slipping either when doing slow mo or at times when the tripod is tapped / changing EP. This is worsened the higher the telescope goes towards the zenith.

I suspect it is due to the weight of the BST EP I am using but I was wondering if there is anything I can do to counteract it.

I have already moved the telescope as far forward on the dove tail as possible. I also tried to strap a weight on the front of the telescope but that seemed to make it worse though perhaps I added to much weight / to the wrong place.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! I have toyed with the idea of replacing the mount head but that feels a bit extreme (also not sure if it will actually fix it!).

That was mildly depressing did mine, bortle 5 (19.94 SQM) and got 7 .... just about. I swear my night vision is terrible as well! 
I keep hoping the council will start to try and save money by turning off the street lights but no luck so far 😂

13 minutes ago, Neil H said:

Taking bets on what get here first van or clear skies

It'll be the clear skies, then you will get cloud cover for a few weeks because that is how the gods of astronomy like to mess with new telescope enthusiasm

On 08/02/2021 at 10:48, Neil H said:

Hi most red light torches have 2 settings dim and bright I only use mine on dim , I seen people use red insulation tape over the light you add more if not dim enough I tried red paint was ok but I found the torch so much better this is the one I use 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carson-RedSight-Pro-Flashlight-Brightness/dp/B01MY4WIW9/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1WG8RDSPWGHYV&dchild=1&keywords=red+light+torch+astronomy&qid=1612781295&sprefix=Red+light+to%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-5

Even if it's on bright I don't find it upsets my night vision

I had this one as well, very good (and it has a glow in the dark handle in case you drop it :P) with the two step dimming unfortunately mine has not lasted longer than 4 months  

I purchased the one below as a replacement and its a bit more substantial but lacks the dimming function so I am not sure if it will be to bright (though a few reviewers said they use it fine for astronomy). I have yet to be able to use it but fingers crossed soon!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07MMV7BF8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Since they finally came back into stock (albeit they are from US so I am not sure if I will need to pay import fees on arrival) I ordered myself an Orion Dualbeam waterproof lantern which seems to get very good reviews.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071Y4FWSP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Good report, glad you got out, I am hoping for clear skies tomorrow though it looks similarly cold here  I love the snow but honestly if it could do its cloudy snow bits during the day when I am at work and give me crisp, clear nights for observing I would love it more. 

Final upgrade for my telescope (🤔) arrived..... Altair Lightwave 1.25” diagonal to replace the stock SW one which was marring my BST barrels!

Well done Kirk my able delivery driver for braving the snow.