SuburbanMak

Good tip, I’ll check that out and comment in the EP section.

The postman brought this Stella Lyra 30mm UFF, despatched quickly and safely from @FLO as always. Looking forward to improved widefield views in 2” modified ST80 and GSO 10” f5 Dob!

A lot of high haze around last night but was able to grab another quick garden session playing with 2” EPs in the ST80 (31mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric and 26mm GSO Superview). Initially I could only pick out Mag 3+ stars so the sky looked like a simplified constellation map through Gemini, Auriga, Orion, Taurus, Perseus & Cassiopeia. Enjoyed the very widefield views of the whole Orion sword area, Pleiades, Hyades “the kids” area of Auriga all very pleasing (M36/7/8 being detectable but unspectacular at this Mag in this haze so I went exploring around Auriga). Craned overhead to spend some time on the Double Cluster in Perseus - looking good in the surprisingly enjoyable GSO Superview at 26mm (lots of queasy edge distortion but on axis a sharp, bright, contrasty view). Best view of this limited session though was of the Orion’s Belt/ Collinder 70 region in the Baader 31mm in a field over five degrees pulling in the whole cluster. The three main belt stars interwoven with silvery ribbons of fainter stars, beautiful.

Hmm. This prompted me to go off and count eyepieces and was a little shocked to find that it’s 24 - I have been doing this seriously for 2 years so that is quite a rate! My Skywatcher Mak came with a 20mm and a 10mm Plossl. The 10 was horrible and the 20 didn’t get the max FoV out of the Mak which is limited anyway. So, after much pleasurable research I plumped for a Baader 8-24mm zoom + Barlow and a wider Hyperion 24mm. These are still my main EPs in this scope. Next I got hooked on cheapo eBay classic frac’s and have ended up with 4 - which between them came with 6 generally murky old .965’s. I converted these scopes to 1.25” but needed lighter weight EPs and was struck that the whole minimum glass thing chimed with the vibe of these old scopes. So along came a set of 3 Baader Classic Orthos (I love them, especially the 18mm) + a 32mm Plossl. I later added a TV 15mm Plossl as I wanted an in between magnification and was curious to see what all the fuss was about with Televue. Next up came an ST80 and a conversion to 2inch for super widefield viewing - having loved the Baader Hyperion 24mm, I stuck with the brand and bought the 31mm Aspehric (turns out this was a mistake, lovely EP but not great in a scope this fast, hence an order today for the Stella Lyra 30mm UFF to replace!). Then in the hunt for ever dimmer Messier objects with the Mak @Stu pointed out something technical about exit pupil and I acquired a 40mm Celestron Plossl to aid with galaxy hunting (good tip btw). Lastly, Dob fever got the better of me and I picked up a used 10” GSO f5 Dob, which brought with it a comprehensive set of 7 Plossls and (I think) an Erfle. And just like that, I have a drawer full. Hang on, I just realised I also picked up a box of old RAS fit EPs for the brass Clarkson Edwardian observing experience - there’s another 12 right there. So with the UFF on order, that’s 37. Someone should set up a self-help group for this.

Moonwashed clusters between broken cloud tonight first with 10x50s then fetched out the ST80. Played with some different EPs and ended up favouring a Celestron 40mm (10x) and Baader Classic Ortho 18mm (22x) tonight. Cruised around Orion, Alpha Perseus & Double Clusters, M35 (just, in the moonlight) Hyades and Pleiades. Lovely night & seeing and transparency quite good between cloud banks. Due another gap in an hour or so, if I stay awake that long…

2022: 51 Sessions noted in total with around a dozen at my darker spots. Tailed off in the second half of the year. (Lots of additional solar and quick peeks not recorded). Added 20 to the Messier tally with some (for me) tough multi-night hunting for a few, notably M76 The Little Dumbell, M33 and the UM galaxies (of which M109 and M102 still elude!). Did quite well at using all my various 'scopes, still mastering the art of the 10" Dob and often motivation fails and I take out the Mak 127 instead. Standout sessions: Stunning Binocular session on holiday in Cornwall at a good Bortle 3 - M33 which had been so hard to track down just popped and the Milky Way was superb!. A cracking summer night on the South Downs sticks out - saw M6 & M7 plus thrilled by M104, The Sombrero Galaxy along with a crop of the summer Messier's. 2 fabulous nights on Orion & other doubles in perfect seeing early in the year with Mak 127 & Towa 339 80mm f15. The Dob on the Globs. Mars, generally. 2023: Finish the Messiers - 15 to go & a mixture of very seasonal and very dim objects left (Galaxies M77, M74, M83, M109, M102, M88 & M91 presenting the biggest challenges bar being in the right place on the right night!). Explore the next tier of NGC objects - especially seek out new clusters and brighter nebulae. Documenting what can be seen through my lovely old Clarkson 3" F15 - this deserves a sketched record in keeping with its Edwardian vibe! Take better notes, looking back to write this reminds me how lazy I've become in this regard. Write more observing reports on SGL rather than just a quick note on "What Did You See Tonight?" Equipment plans: Upgrade ST80 to DS Pro ED 72 and mount alongside Mak 127 on a new AZGTiX. Buy a pair of IS Binos. Happy New Year and Clear Skies all!

The last relative visit of Christmas today presented an opportunity to give my brother’s kids a look through the “gentleman’s telescope” (Old brass Clarkson 3” f15) at the moon & an early evening Jupiter. Lovely crisp, steady sky & a great view of one of the Galilean moons just off the disc of the planet about to slip behind (Edit: just checked Stellarium & it was Ganymede). Also good resolution of the main equatorial bands at 114x - this scope gets a bit iffy with colour fringing much above that but performs amazingly well at lower mags considering it’s age and is quite an exciting thing to look through. Definitely got some ooohs & ahhhs, brother suitably impressed by Jupiter whereas young Henry preferred the moon, you never know a possible astronomy convert in the making. I spent a nice hour afterward on Saturn, Mars & more on Jupiter. Lovely way to end the Christmas break!

Nipped out earlier with the ST80 to look at Jupiter & the Moon in the same field (24mm Baader Hyperion giving just over 4 degrees @ 16.7x Mag & a reasonably flat field). With this still on the tripod I went back out later for an ad hoc couple of hours on a cluster of clusters Took in M42/3 and up through Orion, Auriga clusters M36/7/8, the Double Cluster, Owl NGC 457, M35, M67, M46, M48, M50 then finished up with the brighter Beehive M44, Alpha Persei cluster and the Pleiades M45. Lovely to get reacquainted with some winter favourites and lazy widefield GoTo operation worked well & suited my mood.

@Nik271 - that’s a special observation, nicely done!

The family conked out early tonight after several days of feasting & relative visiting so I popped outside with the “gentleman’s telescope” - a c.1900 Clarkson 3” f15 for a quick look at Mars. Conditions were pretty good so having worked my way up through the magnifications and enjoyed steady images up to 190x I dialled back to 114x with the BCO 10mm for the best view. A thrill to see the polar hood and Syrtis Major + other albedo features in this beautiful old brass ‘scope. The steadiness persuaded me to break out the Mak 127 and I warmed while it cooled. Fab views of Mars for about an hour until it swung into the column of wobbly air above a neighbouring roof. As expected much better definition on the surface features than the Clarkson & as good a view of the red planet as I’ve had. Orion was looking superb so I couldn’t resist a half hour on M42 & was rewarded with a fabulously contrasty view in the Baader 18mm (83x) + contrast booster filter. The dark finger of nebulosity below and West of the trapezium particularly prominent and good detail in the almost 3D swirls. Back in now and enjoying a wee dram - clear skies and seasons greetings all!

Here’s a link: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adm-replacement-saddles/adm-dual-dovetail-adaptor-for-az-gti.html Not cheap but I found worth every penny.

Ooh! This one has gone right to the top of my wishlist. I've hovered over the buy button on a SkyTee 2 so many times as I really want to mount a widefield next to the Mak, but hesitated as I find the tracking on the AZGTi so useful. This appears to be the perfect solution and well priced. Will be very interested to learn if the ADM clamps configured for the original AZGTi fit this model as this upgrade made an unexpectedly dramatic improvement. Might have to have a rummage through the stable, see what I can sell...

You could do far worse than buy him a decent pair of binoculars that are light enough for him to hold (maybe 8x40s) and a good book on getting started like Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consolmagno and Dan Davis or Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson. This way he’ll get to learn his way around the night sky and have an optical tool that will serve well for many years. Telescopes are a bit like camera lenses for amateur photographers, there is no single one that covers everything and once you get going you’ll end up buying a few different ones depending on how you want to pursue the hobby. You would be amazed at what can be seen in a decent pair of Bins & they can also double up for other wildlife spotting duties.

Out looking at Mars with the Mak - got some nice views until the cloud rolled in. Enjoying the TV 15mm Plossl barlowed to 6.7mm giving 225x in the Mak. 127 Seeing at times good with the polar hood beautifully seen and darker Mare across the equator and into the Southern Hemisphere. Will have a warm and see if it clears again.

Another fan of the Mak 127 here - aperture is big enough to, on the right night, show Jupiter’a bands with some textture, Great Red Spot and watch the Galilean moons and their shadows’ constant dance around the planet. Saturn shows the rings with Cassini division, shadow of the rings on the planet & vice versa 3 moons and some cloud band features. On Mars right now the Mak is showing the pole and surface Mare features - amazing! The Moon of course shows a wealth of detail and the Mak can give the immersive “Apollo window” effect. It’s a very good double star instrument (splits pairs down to around 1 arc second if they are reasonably even in brightness) and on deep sky objects particularly star clusters & the brighter planetary nebulae, and whilst it won’t reveal huge detail on galaxies will show some form in the brighter ones on a good transparent night. Along with all that the Mak 127 is short, light & robust enough to be a genuine grab and go option. I leave mine set up as it’s so easy to be up & running fast. I have a 10” Dob and various refractors but the Mak remains my most often used scope.

It’s been a while but I got the urge tonight… When parking the car I first noted that it had stopped raining and second that between scudding clouds the Moon, Jupiter and Mars looked quite crisp. The Mak 127 has been left set up for just such an occasion and I was quickly out & viewing Mars from around 9:30. At first the still-cooling Mak was only revealing the polar cap (or more likely hood) in steadier moments but as things stabilised I got some more detail. I started with the Baader Zoom and enjoyed letting the planet drift across the wide (by the standards of my EP stable anyway) field. 10mm - 150x in the Mak seemed doable with some 3 or 4 second bursts of decent seeing revealing darker shading in each hemisphere with a lighter area to the NW. Switching to the slightly crisper 10mm Baader Classic Ortho with a Neodymium filter confirmed the features and gave better definition. A thicker bank of cloud intervened so I switched SW to Jupiter for a few minutes and enjoyed the 4 moons all strung out to the West and some good texture in N&S equatorial bands - the South in particular looking more contrasty than it often does. At times I was getting a view of the Temperate bands too & darker grey tones at the North pole. Shredding cloud allowed me another 20 minutes or so on Mars. Everything nice and cool now and these were my best views of the session. Definitely seeing Mare in both the N & S hemisphere, the S being the larger of the two. The white line of the polar region better defined. Tried stepping up to 6mm - 250x, but the sky wasn’t having it so back to 150x. This time I played with a UHC which although making everything a dim green, really made the polar region pop and sharpened the boundaries of what I assumed to be Mare. Seeing the cloud rolling back in, thicker this time and threatening another shower, I enjoyed my last couple of minutes filterless and retreated having grabbed the best part of an hour of really enjoyable discovery. Back inside with a cuppa I was chuffed to check Stellarium and a couple of books and recognise the shapes I’d seen as, I think, Mare Acidalium in the North & Mare Erythraeum to the South, my first Martian features identified beyond the pole! Glad I popped out…

My favourite EP is the Baader Classic Ortho 18mm - super crisp across the field, contrasty and Barlows well to 8mm. Most used widefield is the Baader Hyperion 24mm 68 degree - my galaxy hunter. Both punch well above their weight for value.

As reported above - both seeing and transparency not great here so had a quick peek at Saturn & Jupiter, nice-ish views in the 18mm BCO & Mak127 at 83x but that was about the maximum usable magnification tonight. Had an enjoyable meander around Almach, the Owl cluster, some Cass doubles, Pleiades, M31 then a wobbly moon and Mars, not really stable enough to definitely tease out any features. Good to be out though…

Thanks @Zermelo - I find the Mak a great compromise between aperture, sharpness, portability & ease of handling vs my f15 fracs & a 10' Dob on many nights - good views, an easy setup and when used with the tracking on the AZGTi the narrower field of view of both the scope & BCO's is largely mitigated. Look forward to your reports!

Thank you - that's a good tip, will try this both in the Mak 127 & 10 inch GSO Dob.

Thank you! It is a great picture though…

Thank you. For me the idea of physically experiencing the photons that have travelled across space is part of the appeal - and the Mak 127 is a great way to collect them!

Thanks @Stu - I use the BCOs way more than I thought I would, originally bought them as a lightweight minimum glass option for Classic ‘fracs but they are just so sharp & contrast y I use them all the time. Binoviewing is definitely something I’d like to try at some point and think the BCOs look ideal (and cost effective!) for that. I am considering treating myself to something shorter for the Mars opposition however, maybe in the Pentax XW range.

I had that "its Friday I don't want to go to bed yet" feeling around midnight last night and was mulling over which movie to watch when I noticed Jupiter shining like a headlight to the South East and even through the window looking particularly steady. The Mak 127 was still all set up from last weekend so in 5 minutes I was out and aligning. It was a warm, damp night smelling of the recent rain and with a little low mist around and some big high banks of thin cloud in stripes N-S and from time to time, lumps of lower cumulus drifting through, I didn't know how long I'd get. I decided to use the AZGTi tracking so that I could use the narrow field Baader Classic Orthos without constant re-adjustment. I took some care levelling the tripod with the bubble gauge on the Berlebach report and then into the familiar routine of North Level alignment, which I have found gives the best results. I drop the Baader Hyperion Zoom in set on 24mm and centre on Polaris using the Telrad, zoom in to 8mm - noting a very steady split of the secondary at all magnifications, very promising especially as the Mak still had some cooling to do! This gives a reliable North direction and then I set the scope level just by eye - if I've spent the time to properly level the tripod in the first place this seems to work well. Aligned on Jupiter and with the Zoom the view was immediately great - rock steady seeing, an unusually crisp oblate disc and plenty of banding, back in a moment... Next alignment target Vega, equally steady and once centred at 188x I diverted to the Double Double (Epsilon Lyrae) to check that seeing and wow! A superb view of two rock steady pairs with perfect diffraction patterns hanging in the eyepiece and splitting clearly from around 100x on up. Back to Jupiter and a switch to the BCO 10mm with a Neodymium filter - just lovely detailed views at 150x. North and South Equatorial and temperate bands readily visible with much texture, particularly in the NEB where the disturbance and bulge so clearly captured in @Kon's brilliant photo from last night were plainly visible in the Western hemisphere. The moons were pin sharp and disc-like (I need to do a bit of maths to figure out if I was actually resolving their discs or whether this was an Airy effect, either way they looked superb). I had obviously recently missed a shadow transit with Io (I think) close in to the West and below the plane of the other moons, love the 3D planetary system effect this kind of arrangement gives and it always makes me think of Galileo watching this night after night and thinking "hang on a minute, I get what's going on here...". For a laugh I dropped in a UHC filter and despite the weird green cast and considerable darkening of the image it certainly teased out some crispness in the turbulence visible in the banding and added some definition to the fainter bands. After a few minutes I reverted to my normal Neodymium and some of that definition persists, as if the eye builds up a composite and after seeing with the filter some of those details are easier to perceive. I lost some time doing all this and realised that Saturn had now emerged from the trees but was also about to be engulfed by cloud. I slewed across but was only granted a frustratingly quick glimpse of what looked like a superb view before the cloud rolled in. Stepping back and looking around there were still some big holes about, and Cygnus & Lyra were clear so I spent a happy half hour looking at M57, the mini-Beehive like M39 in Cygnus, the "Cooling Tower" of M29, Alberio and the even, fairly wide (28") Yellow/Off White pair 61 Cygni, a nice double. All the while checking to see if Saturn had emerged. Instead the cloud thickened and the holes were smaller and fewer so I gave up with the main scope and, still enjoying being out, popped inside for my trusty Celestron Nature ED 10x50s, dried off a sunlounger and enjoyed sweeping whatever popped through - Cassiopea's rich star fields, the Alpha Persei cluster probably my favourite binocular field and the Pleiades. As I was looking at the Pleiades I realised that the cloud had evaporated across a huge swathe of the sky so Saturn was back on & back to the Mak! The best view was with the BCO 18mm barlowed 2.25x to 8mm, giving 188x. The BCO 18mm is I think the crispest EP I own and loses little paired with the Baader Barlow also giving a comfortable eye-relief. The physical length of this combo makes it easier to use in the Mak too, the shorter orthos requiring care not to bang your head on the Telrad and disturb the view! Rock steady, photo-like view of Saturn with the rings well delineated and visible even against the disc, Cassini division well seen and almost constantly visible, the shadow of the planet on the rings which again I love seeing for the depth it gives, 3 bands plainly visible despite their subtle colours and 3 moons. I watched this awe inspiring field until it started to pick up the next band of approaching cloud, all the time requiring on a couple of small adjustments to keep the tracking centred - fab stuff. It was by now very late/early and with cloud building from the South again I switched to Mars, by now at 30 degrees or so to the East. Mars has been a checkbox for me so far having bought the Mak as the planet was already receding from its last opposition. I looked quickly earlier in the summer but still had that "small planetary blob, sandy coloured, a bit fuzzy - check" experience so wasn't expecting much but thought it worth a look given the still super seeing. It was immediately apparent that this was a better view in the BCO 10mm at 150x - a much crisper gibbous disc with graduated brightness N-S and, as the image steadied and I looked longer very definitely a white pole! Longer still and I thought I could pick out a broad grey/green patch at the equator which became a sideways Y shape heading East across the face ending about 3/4 of the way across. The SW quadrant of the disc was a notably ruddier shade than the bright, sandy N and E. Switching to the 6mm BCO at 250x confirmed these views and proved another job for this EP that often only seems to improve image size, in this case though that really helped and made Mars a still small but very real, spherical looking planet occupying around 15% of the FoV. Chuffed and excited to become a regular Mars watcher as it approaches opposition this December! A fab, ad-hoc night with familiar gear working perfectly that left me on one of those post-astro highs! Clear Skies. Mark

Just in from what started as an unplanned quick look at Jupiter which was, contrary to forecast, looking very steady around midnight. 3 hours later I’ve had one of my most memorable planetary sessions yet courtesy of the Mak 127. Also some lovely 10x50 bino starfield views as I waited for usable gaps in the cloud to appear. I’ll post an observing report tomorrow after heading to bed basking in unforgettable views (in some super seeing) of Jupiter, Saturn and, for the first time, discernible features on the surface of Mars!