SuburbanMak

I used AA cells to begin with and found them to drain fast and be unreliable much below full power. I use a Celestron power tank, pictured.

I agree it’s a very limited list - I quite enjoy programming the night‘s doubles ahead of time to the User Objects. I can also theoretically use SKy Safari but have found in the field the GoTo to behave a bit inaccurately compared to the native SynScan app.

Enjoyed a clear(ish) Friday night with 10” GSO Dob & Towa 339 80mm f15. The Moon with the Dob is jaw dropping - even impressed my 17 yo son and his mate returning late from a party. Despite the moonlight gave great views of M13 & M57. Meanwhile the f15 delivered on some moonlit doubles in Lyra & Bootes. Had thought I’d wait for a look at Saturn but cloud has eventually intervened.

So many! If I am showing a friend then (depending on time of year) I go for M31, M13, M57, M44, M45, M42, M81/2. Also coloured doubles go down well - Alberio, Almach, Iota Cancri. Since adding a 10inch Dob to the stable I’ve been revisiting many objects and M51, M94 and M27 are currently on my “look at every time” list with this scope.

Cloudy nights at the weekend followed by clear ones in the busiest part of the week - multiply frustration 10 fold if the above applies over new moon. That’s all countered by those sessions where everything goes right!

Very satisfying impromptu session with the Mak 127 tonight ducking between banks of high cloud - seeing spectacular in the clear patches. Enjoyed great views of M13 with diamond dust apparent with an 18mm BCO (83x) & M57 a crisp smoke ring at 120x. Spent most of my time on obvious doubles and got stunning views of Izar (epsilon Bootis) splitting at 120x and opening out all the way up to 337x with a 2.25x Barlowed 10mm BCO - cool blue white secondary sitting just outside the first diffraction ring of the warm orange/yellow primary. Similarly rock steady and well spaced views of the Double Double in Cygnus. Looked at other doubles & clusters (M29, M39, Alberio, Omicron,17,61 Cygnus) before the cloud expanded to the packing-up point. Nice though.

Great choice! The Mak 127 has super optics, great contrast and enough aperture to give satisfying views of all kinds of targets! As many have said above I am another convert to the Telrad + 9x50 RACI combination which really makes object location simpler (The Telrad is fine on the Mak 127, equally the Rigel would do the job with a lower profile). Also with you on alignment - take your time, use high magnification and (my most recent obsession) really paying attention to a level tripod all make a big difference in accuracy. Clear skies & enjoy your Mak!

Pretty much exactly my experience - was out in a very isolated spot alone & was slightly freaked for a few minutes by it’s “otherness”. Was pretty sure it wasn’t a ground-based light & had a “noctilucent cloud” like quality to it. Like you I noted it’s similarity to the moon viewed through cloud, the angular size I think similar, but know there was neither moon nor cloud so added to the sense that something odd was going on…

Posted these pics looking NW from Hampshire at 00:09 - first spotted a couple of minutes before. About half a degree in extent, glowing and setting quite rapidly. (Also noted in “What did you see tonight”). Also a cut from Russianspaceweb.com - apparently an unknown Russian military satellite launch. Spooky stuff.

Ooh- that’s quite a thing to have seen, here’s a crop from Russianspaceweb.com and the timing is perfect - apparently what I saw was the second stage re-entering & burning up. Started re-entry at 00:05 BST, I noticed it a about 00:07 and my pictures are timed at 00:09. Payload: unknown military.

Stunning and well done for getting up! I had half a plan to stay out until sunrise but cold intervened

Wow that is so cool! I assumed it was a weather balloon! Thank you.

Cracking night up on the South Downs with 10” Dob & ST80. Seeing great, transparency good to North & above, progressively worse to South & lower down - where I wanted to hunt for new Messiers… never mind, a night of classics and some best-ever views. Only stopped as feet & fingers numb. Report to follow. + saw something very odd to NW around midnight. A glowing, perfectly circular misty patch that appeared to set quite quickly - managed a couple of snaps. Answers on a postcard?

Mak 127 on AZGTi. Great optics an all rounder (barring widefield) and a good compromise of aperture vs. robust portability.

The Prinz once belonged to an academic department - hence the stating-the-obvious labelling

Nice white light session this afternoon out with a Prinz 330 60mm f11.8 and then the Clarkson 3”f15. Counted 8 active regions in total including one quite large spot in the Northern hemisphere hoving into view around the Eastern limb. Lots of detail - tiny spots between the main Western groups and in the best moments of transparency (which was generally a bit hazy, although seeing steady) noticed a couple of faculae. Best views with a TV 15mm & Baader continuum giving 47x in the Prinz and 83X in the Clarkson. The Prinz edged it for sharpness but love any excuse to get the 120 year old Clarkson out!

Great reports and inspiration for a recent 10” Dob owner!

Great report and a couple of new targets to look for. Glad to hear flocking operations have gone well!

Out with the 10” Dob tonight to road test new sack trolley, works superbly. Also proved collimation held well after a trip in the car & practised adjusting in the field. Sky was dark and reasonably transparent, good overhead. And then I realised I’d not transferred the finders from the Mak’s backpack! After a bit of swearing and rolling around sighting along the tube I managed a great view of M13 which was standing Mag up to 156x, the 8mm end of the Baader zoom which was the most I had with me tonight. Many stars resolved and wispy tendrils spiralling outward. Long look. Had a go at finding a few other things without much joy, there’s a lot of space out there without finders. Managed a lovely view of M94 however, really bright core and good extent of surrounding nebulosity. Decided to chalk it up as a practice session & retired for a sensible amount of sleep…

More doubles in Cancer, Bootes & Coma B. tonight with the old Clarkson 3” - such fun to pair this old brass thing with a modern computerised mount and put it through its paces.

Out now looking at doubles with the old Clarkson 3” - startling observation of Izar with the secondary a bright red against the white primary. Never noticed such colour contrast before. Am sure this is a quirk of CA in this very old scope as these are the “wrong” colours, nevertheless it really helped highlight the split! PS. Went back out after a half hour break and all is clouded out. Shame, that was fun!

Good point. Well made. Duly edited.

The 90% moon was already high and bright before sunset and the prospect of an extra day off on Thursday offered the chance for a good long session with the "new" 10" Dob. I set up to cool whilst it was still light, first parking the car over the road, giving me better clearance and sightlines from the least light infested part of the back yard. The first task was this new collimation business. I'm now fairly sure I've got the secondary well positioned and used the now-fixed Astro Essentials laser to collimate, delivering almost perfect circles on Capella, still quite high over the rooves to the W. I attempted to get this perfect adjusting just from the star test and managed to mess it right up again. Went back to square one with the laser and this time the result was very close to perfect, if collimation is like tuning an instrument then this was "good enough for jazz" as the muso phrase goes... (Many thanks to @Pixies @malc-c @Spile for all your help de-mystifying this for me, definitely getting there!). So to the moon in stunning detail. I am thrilled by the resolution of 10" - so many more craters and craterlets, rilles become much more commonplace and tiny shadow details, for example, although Sinus Iridium was fully lit, there was a tiny dark shadow cast by Promontory Heraclides that I am not sure I would otherwise have picked up. As others noted, the Valis Schroteri, Aristarchus, Heroditus , Montes Harbinger region looked superb, crisp & 3D with deep shadows. The Baader Mk IV Zoom seems a great tool in this scope, giving 156x in normal mode which was about the useful limit in the early evening's slightly swimmy seeing. I did experiment with the 2.2.5x Barlow however which turns the zoom into a 10.7 - 3.5mm zoom - up to 357x, which although messy tonight was still well illuminated and focusable, boding well for future rock-steady seeing nights. With that great big thing shining away, it was clearly not a night for the galaxies - although I spent a good while trying to get M81/2 in the finder, struggling a bit with the elevation and unfamiliar dob-nudging technique. Gave up and went for some clusters instead - despite the moon and being low in not the best part of the sky from my garden, the Double Cluster looked superb, such a dense core in the more Northerly cluster and huge depth of stars resolved. Can't wait to look at this with this 'scope on a dark night when well positioned! I was using a 31mm Baader Hyperion Apsheric for finding purposes giving a whopping (to Mak users) 1.79 degrees and despite there being noticeable edge-coma the immersive view in the 2" eyepiece was nevertheless lovely. One difference from the Mak & refractors was that I ditched the Baader Neodymium filter that I love and routinely use in those 'scopes, here in the Newt it was giving a blue tinge that looked odd, better without. A quick check in on M36,37 & 38 - all showing more stars than I am used to but not as good as a few nights ago when I enjoyed some moonless time with them. On to the Beehive and more struggles with aiming the Dob near the moon with very little in the way of reference stars visible, dropping the Telrad half way between Castor and Algieba and hunting around. I went and fetched the 10x50s from inside and this helped me get this in the field and I spent a long time drifting in space enjoying the depth of the view. Having achieved what I set out to do Dob-wise, much improved collimation adjusted in the field, and enjoyed some stunning views of the moon and clusters, I decided to give my neck and back a rest and have a lazy GoTo tour of some doubles with the Mak 127. It was late by now and seeing, whilst not perfect had definitely improved to a slow phasing with four or five still seconds at a time. All that collimation fiddling makes aligning the GoTo properly on the Mak seem a breeze, so I really took my time levelling the scope and using the Zoom's 188x to carefully centre Capella and Arcturus. As a result was able to land perfectly on: Castor, revelling in the perfect tight, bright diffraction rings. Then the Sapphire & Gold of Iota Cancri (an Albireo challenger in my opinon). Bathed in the glow of Algieba's golden headlights. Porrima, a relatively easy split at 150x of an offset, even white pair. Having great fun by this time and enjoying standing and the ease of use of a small scope on a tall tripod (complete with wine eyepiece tray), I spent a good while on Izar. Couldn't split it at first but upped the power to 150x with the Baader Zoom and watched the white secondary pop out of the first diffraction ring - adding more power pulled this out and I got the best and reasonably steady view at around 250x with the zoom/barlow combo. I watched this for ages - thankful for the tracking mount on this 0.25 degree field of view. Had a good long look at M3 whilst waiting for Vega to pull out of the light extinction to my North East. At this point was missing the aperture of the Dob but still a nice view, and M13 even more so, definitely glittery and one of my favourite objects in any 'scope. Epsilon Lyrae - The Double Double, split from around 100x and up delivering a fine, well separated view at 225x (Baader Classic Ortho 10mm, 2.25x Barlow). The BCOs work brilliantly with the 2.25 Barlow for the Zoom, with the added advantage that it raises the viewing position on them to a point where banging my head on the Telrad is less of a thing... Finished with a cracking view of the Ring Nebula M57 - a tiny, crisp smoke-ring in space. The best of both worlds tonight, long deep views with the 10" and the fun of crisp double-splitting with the convenience of GoTo & tracking in a moonwashed sky(Bring on new moon with that big Dob though..) Best of all, no work the following morning!

I agree it’s frustrating - skies in Winchester should be Bortle 5 but local security & decorative lighting make the garden more challenging and real dark adaptation impossible. Outside of lunar and planetary I save my serious fuzzy-hunting for darker sites and regard garden sessions almost as a different category. Also enjoy lazy GoTo tours from the garden and easy doubles with my classic refractors. Meantime I’ve got organised around the concept of grab and go - Mak 127 and ST80 live in their packs ready to walk/bike/drive to one of a few sites ranging from the local park, where I can decently avoid the security light problem and get a real Bortle 5, edge of town where I get just about Bortle 4 and rural 15 minutes away where I can get a good Bortle 4. My next project (this weekend) is to make the 10” Dob grab-n-go ready

Thanks @Paz After tinkering around a bit I found that if I remove the long focus extension tube, what’s left is precisely 1.25” in diameter, so I can use my Tak prism and there’s enough in-focus to get things sharp with just a couple of mm to spare. I use Baader Classic Orthos and simple 32mm & 40mm Plossls so as not to overtax this push-fit arrangement and all is nice and snug. I have a box of RAS fit eyepieces, which are interesting to try but mostly poor views, with the notable exception of a Charles Frank “wide” which I believe is a 40mm which is fantastically sharp but has eye-relief measured in miles.