Deadlake

I was plotting to get one of these cases:

http://www.max-case.co.uk/store/p16/max505cam.html

I currently have one of these

https://televue.com/engine/TV3b_page.asp?id=64&Tab=_epbag

but now I've got some large APM XWA's (17 cm long) they are to big for the bag even if I demote some EP's, the other option is one of these:

https://televue.com/engine/TV3b_page.asp?id=64&Tab=_ethos

Edit: Above no longer an option Ethos 4 mm is around 15 cm long, 2 cm too short.

16 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

It’s this version, though they don’t seem to have the 12.5mm in stock. They’re well out of my budget.

http://apm-telescopes-englisch.shopgate.com/item/32373639

They're cheaper if you go to Japan:

https://www.kyoei-osaka.jp/SHOP/nikon-nav-125hw.html

20 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

£1100??? I didn’t realise it was as much as that.

Which one, APM has a sale, €332 + vat for 10 mm

https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/optical-accessories/eyepieces/58-74-wide-angle/other/nikon-nav-sw-10mm-eyepiece

Looking around has the Nikon SW been discontinued ?

4 minutes ago, Stu said:

Albert Heath and Newlands Corner are are quite well known spots, used by Guildford AS amongst others I think.

Interesting, never knew GAS met up there. I thought GAS used Pewley Downs.

Someone mentioned Painshill Park, Hatchlands maybe another option?

Newlamds corner is a little limiting if you want to look north.

The other option is Albury Health car park

https://goo.gl/maps/pQxVkMQoSdzTnJNh9

Around 20.5 SQM and 22 minutes from Esher Common.

Final site I’ll check is here

Thursley Common Main Car Park
https://goo.gl/maps/BNonT7uPxm1sLhf76

SQM 20.89 however I suspect the views will be obscured with trees.

Abouth 30 minutes from Esher Common, however I don’t believe the estimate in this case.

APM has increased it prices in Europe even without the additional 25% charge to the US.

Still not the scale production outside of china to produce these products, still a cottage industry. For example in the US only Astro Physics and Stellarvue have the CNC machines for producing lens, I believe there are 6 manufactures in the Far East who have CNC plant for producing lens. 

27 minutes ago, johninderby said:

No shortage of TVs though. 

I thought there was a global semiconductor drought going on???

Maybe over productions, you can always get a good deal on last years model for sure...

6 hours ago, Stu said:

Out of interest, what is frequency shift?

Also known as band shift in narrowband filters. 



The narrow band filters consist of dozens  to hundreds of 1/4 wave thick medium of different refractive indexes.
When light passes normally (90º) through the filter each refractive layer is seen by the passing light as a 1/4 wave.
When the light is non normal (less than 90º) each layer appears to be thicker and this added thickness changes the spectral band admitted by the filter. This thickening  red shifts the admitted spectrum.

At any given focal ratio, sine(theta) = (D/2F) = 1/2f#, where theta is the maximum ray angle, D is the entrance pupil diameter and F is the system effective focal length.  The lower the focal ratio, the steeper the rim ray angle and the greater the wavelength.  Low f/# lenses are not compatible with narrow bandpass filters.

@PeterW Thanks you pressed enter while I was formatting...

5 hours ago, GavStar said:

I guess you haven’t read this (pretty long!) thread? I think it answers your question about why I posted these nv videos in this section 😀. Basically sgl does not allow nv posts in the observing section even if it is properly signposted. Any nv posts in the observing sections are moved to eeva by the mods.

 

I did read this thread a couple of months ago. I did get the impression that the word electronic precludes NV picture being published in the DSO section. I suspect that the people in question might have push to or go to electronic mounts but of course this is over looked in this case. If I'd spent my budget on a 24" dob and then NV came along then I would be pretty miffed as for the same cost I could see a lot more using new technology and a more lightweight scope like a C9.25 as commonly used in the USA. I also get the impression that this was imposed by non NV users on the small NV community here and I do see more UK NV users posting on cloudy nights then SGL, so if that was the purpose it has been a great success.

5 hours ago, GavStar said:

My Fsq85 operates at f2 with the 67mm so gives nearly twice as bright a view as the stowaway with nv. This means I can turn the gain down a bit more to reduce noise/scintillation even further, so maybe get a bit better live views and hence video recordings. The iPhone is pretty poor at recording the live views even with a 1 second exposure time and the actual live views in the eyepiece are more detailed, completely stable and very natural.

This is interesting so for the smaller number of objects that are served by the image scale of the fsq-85 (really its focal length?) is a better option. Noise I presume is more of an issue with your London 18.5 SQM you need the faster scope to rude the intensifiers gain. At the same F5 APO scopes are rare, if you where in SQM 20 skies whats the lower speed for a scope before noise becomes an issue, F6 which are more common? 

Excellent pictures as usual @GavStar. Buried in EEVA I didn’t see them till today. Obviously some discussion before I joined but why not post in DSO section where more accessible? The intensifier is just like an eye piece in use, i.e. it walks talks and quacks like one. Putting NV in EEVA is a classification similar to making all pics taken with an OIII filter in a separate section, it’s just another tool for visual observation. NV is different to EEVA as not stacking taking place.

Rant over.

@GavStar Where did you observe, London?

How so you feel the viewing would be using your FSQ-85 versus the AP stowaway I guess you used here?

Do you feel the slower speed of the AP was lead to more frequency shift in the image?

All the best

Martin

11 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Here's another thought. A 10" Dob. Could keep it in the shed and have some long handles with wheels on the end to move it around. Surely much better than 120mm size refractors?

You need a weather machine to control seeing and since atmosphere is also correlated with the sun activity you need to control that too. 😀

I think a 4-5" scope is the one that gets used most nights and then on amazing nights with good transparency and seeing get the mirrored scope out.

41 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

really ????? what about OPEC ?????   ( only just read a previous answer ) .... OPEC meet to discuss reducing supply which in turn increases the price of oil "to" the oil companies who in turn put up pump prices to all which translates to higher costs which then get passed onto the beleaguered consumer who basically pays twice !!!

Fuel rarely goes down in price ... maybe a penny here or there ... unfortunately we are in the middle of a round of fuel prices being hiked which means higher costs for EVERYTHING potentially 

This would a recession in the OPEC countries and end user countries, I don't really follow.

Just now, MiladyB said:

The price/supply issue is leaving me with a massive dilemma. I REALLY want to buy a Heritage 150p when they're back in stock, but I'll have to gamble regarding the price not falling again. If I leave it, am I risking having to wait months for them to come back into stock again?

It'll be my first telescope, but I do have binos to keep me going. So hard to know what to do for the best. May just have to bite the bullet and go for it. 

MiladyB 

Why do you think they come down???

19 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

This is untrue and would be illegal for oil companies to act in that way.

Isn't OPEC meant to set quota's to balance price and over/under supply. If the oil producing states charge too much they will cause a recession in the end user countries and not enough uneconomic to extract. 

Interesting that the UK is not part of OPEC.

Petrol prices at the pump in the UK are largely made up by the largest duty charge levied on the planet.

This is obviously set by the UK government which for the vast majority of my life has been conservative.

Any slight change in the refined petrol price will be magnified by this levy.

At the same time I would like it explained that why do petrol prices go up in school holidays, very correlated.

14 minutes ago, jetstream said:

You need a place to sneak in your new purchases 😀

BUT heeding advice can be cheaper in the long run much cheaper...

btw, not just my advice.....

Ok , the other half is leaving for a bit...time to open the new ZWO camera box...

Where do you hide a 24" dob Gerry? 😀 I have a theory why new EP's must be the most bought piece of astro kit, they just turn up in a small box, need to talk to FLO about putting "May Contain Clouds Inside" as give away.

33 minutes ago, KP82 said:

I remember there was a thread on CN talking about this. Many test reports for refractors only cover 95% of the diameter from the centre of the lens. When that gets expanded to 100%, the performance figure drops quite a bit. Now I'm not sure how many vendors are testing for 95% and how many are doing 100%. In that thread AT was confirmed to only test 95% whereas Markus posted in that thread saying APM did 100%.

I was thinking poly strehl is not reported/tested, nor RMS and PV.

Sensitivity of lens cell to temperature, the premium makers know but you have to contact them to find out. 

At present field testing is only guarantee or buying premium.

8 minutes ago, oymd said:

This thread has deviated a little bit from the original topic on TS Optics..

My thoughts we are discussing reports on QA process of Sharpstar who OEM for TS, thats on topic??? 

One question (which I would agree is increasing scope) is how much we should trust a test report by TS or FLO for a scope as I'm sure not all the metrics are being considered in such test.

8 minutes ago, oymd said:

Sharp Star: TS Optics, APM what else?

For Sharpstar, APM not any more.

KUO -> APM

3 minutes ago, KP82 said:

While SharpStar is considered one of the better telescope factories in China, I've noticed their QA has been slipping down recently. There are quite a few reports on pinched optics and excess amount of CA in their EDPH (mainly the 61) triplets. Long Perng and KUO seem to be more consistent with their quality. The 140 and 152 doublets along with the latest 203 f/7 triplet are not products of Sharpstar.

I'm told the 140 and 152 are KUO produced and have lens cells which are derived from Zeiss (where Markus worked) to fix various initial design issues. So really a Chinese made Zeiss designed scope with blanks from Japan.

I'd of bought one if I didn't need a fast scope.

It's the Sharpstar optics which have become unpredictable over the years which is a shame as APM transferred a lot of knowledge to help them with this.

1 minute ago, oymd said:

Yes, I know. Jesper's!!

I have been agonising over the second one he has for sale!!

BTW, did you buy it this year, or last year BEFORE Brexit?

Am I right in thinking that currently after Brexit there will be Tax & VAT applied?

The transport handling charge has gone up from €20 to €100 as well as the cost of air freight which is 8x more expensive.

I bought an LZOS before Brexit so avoided this new tax being introduced.

7 hours ago, KP82 said:

There are many 4" f/7 triplets on the market, but most of them are FPL53 based rather than the new FPL55. The 55 is slightly worse than the 53 on the Abbe scale but is supposed to be easier to work with. So overall the results should be comparable to the 53 scopes. I'd use the reviews for the FPL53 version (easily found on the web) as a reference.

The TS 107mm f/6.5 is basically the same scope as my APM 107/700. It's made by Sharpstar. I use mine mostly for visual (I use the 115 for imaging) and it works really well. And when I did image with it and a TSRED279 reducer (I didn't have the Riccardi at that time), the result was pretty good on par with what you'd expect from a well made Chinese FPL53 triplet although I detected a tiny bit of pinching in the optics (it was a very cold windy night).

Not sure about the 100mm quad.

As a brand TS Optics is quite well regarded. Their customer service are very helpful and respond quickly. I bought quite a few adaptors and eyepieces from them including asking them questions beforehand. They all went smoothly. However be aware of import tax and VAT if you're ordering scopes from them now.

The QA quality from Sharpstar means for APM FPL scopes are now made by Long Perng and or KUO. You can speak to Rupert at Astrograph.

Also OEM scopes are made to different specs, so not all the same..

Flat but you have to walk some way to getaway from the trees, shame as 20.89

Blocked off at present:

This one looks promising, SQM 20.99, just a five minute walk, still need to see if any views are any good, ran out of time when visited:

Not visited the site yet, might be easier access:

1 minute ago, Stu said:

No, very different beast...

https://trackthestars.com/product/tts-300-mammoth-mount-head/

Has @GavStargot that one or the TTS 160?

11 minutes ago, Space Oddities said:

I just had a look at these mounts, they're very impressive... I'm sure the T4000 could also carry the Hubble telescope!  

I'm afraid to look at the price...

If I was going for a C14 then the price for a goto mount is around there due to its weight. My current mount an SXP2 can carry a C11 or GSO 10" RC (17 kg) within the limit of 22 kg for visual. It's Japanese who are conservative with the load. 
Being an SCT wouldn't you have more tolerance as what the mount carries is really a measure of torque it can produce and thats proportional to the length of the scope.

A goto premium DOB (Lockwood, SV) would cost around the same as a C14 with a goto mount however the eye price would be at the right end of the scope.

Also Crux harmonic drives might work as well, this one has a 40 kg capacity.

https://astrograph.net/epages/www_astrograph_net.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/www_astrograph_net/Products/AGCRUX200HD2

Usually around 10 metric tons is allowed to fall back to earth in an uncontrolled manner.

The Chinese are allowing 20 tons to re-enter in an uncontrollable manner, last time they did he created a mess all over Africa.