SuburbanMak

Glad you were able to catch it down under Joe!

Hi @Optic Nerve - in the words of Douglas Adams, first - Don't Panic! Everything that can be adjusted is meant to be, so nothing you tweak is irrevocable. I went through (am going through) the same learning process last spring after buying a Dob for the first time with zero experience of collimation. I got some great advice on here (from many of the same people contributing above) and from watching through a bunch of YouTube videos. Take it slowly, try and enjoy the process and the top tip is to make sure you only adjust the secondary when the 'scope is flat so you don't drop your allen key or screwdriver on the primary! Other than that tweak away - I found that I improved the view by increments eventually getting the views I expected. I did all of my main alignment and secondary fiddling in the daytime and only adjusted the primary out in the dark. Here is the SGL thread where I asked for help, some of which you might find useful. Good luck!

Sneaked another bino session while number three son at swim training. Moonwashed but atmospheric out of town by the river. M35-8, M41, M42, M44, M46 & 47, Double Cluster. The big clusters are mesmerising in the 6.5 degree field of the Canon IS 10x42 - M45, a whole new appreciation for the Hyades, Collinder 70 (Orions Belt & environs). Highlights were watching a plane fly in front of a dim but expansive M31 and craning overhead to catch C 2022 E3 ZTF in among the Auriga kids - lovely field. Can’t wait to get these out somewhere dark on a moonless night!

This is one very dangerous thread…

Two short sessions last evening. The first with Canon IS 10x42s as dusk fell. Some nice views of Jupiter & moons, watched the full moon rising and enjoyed the crater ray systems on display. Then watched as Orion, the Pleiades & Hyades emerged from the twilight. The sky had been improving throughout and although there was still some high cloud about, I though it worth putting the ST80/Mak 127 combo out. Then spent a nice hour mostly on Orion, splitting some doubles in the Mak and enjoying the 5 degree field in the ST80 (the novelty of sitting to observe, having both scopes side by side and of the wide and FLAT field in the ST80 with the Stellalyra 30mm UFF will take a long time to wear off!). Seeing wasn't too bad - Rigel splitting easily and I was able to split Alnitak with a Baader zoom from about 10mm (150x) although much above that wasn't improving the view. Moonwashed views of the Orion Nebula and 5 of 6 stars in the Trapezium. Finished up with last view of the now somewhat ghostly comet, like a smudged globular cluster, high overhead and with the ST80 in a beautiful field around Capella.

I use three resources + popplng out regularly to see what it looks like! 1) Met office cloud cover map: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/cloud-cover-map#?bbox=[[42.74701217318067,-35.63964843750001],[63.7630651860291,27.641601562500004]]&model=ukmo-ukv&layer=cloud-amount-total This gives a guide to what kind of transparency is likely and I find quite accurate, though not infallible, over a 12 hour or so period. 2) UK Jetstream forecast: https://www.netweather.tv/charts-and-data/jetstream This gives a steer as to how still or otherwise the upper atmosphere is likely to be and helps steer what kind of targets might be best. 3) Clear Outside, seems a bit flaky but I do find it useful for an early heads up on which nights are likely to be best if planning a session that involves getting in the car. All that said, I've had nights when all the forecasts look good and ended up with wall to wall murk and others where I hadn't planned to observe based on the forescast that suddenly turn out to be pristine, all part of the fun.

My Skywatcher Skymax 127 is my most used 'scope & I love it. Its is great for planetary views: Jupiter - GRS, lots of banding with texture on the right night, endless dance of the 4 Galilean moons including shadow transits. Saturn 3 moons, rings + Cassini division, surface banding. Mars, at recent opposition I could see the main albedo features, polar cap/cloud hoods. Venus, watch its phases. Uranus can be seen as a tiny disc and Neptune you can just about tell its not a star! The Mak is superb on the moon, you could have years of observing it with it - super crisp on the best nights and taking very high magnification. Its a mean machine on double stars down to its optically theoretical limits at 1" separation, will show form in the brighter planetary nebulae M57 as a perfect 'smoke ring' in space, the characteristic shape of the Dumbell Nebula M27 etc etc. It will also show some form in the brighter galaxies (M81, M82, M94, M51) and, especially if you can get it out to a dark sky site reveal ghostly form in others. Endless star clusters sparkle on an inky background. It is very portable and, crucially, rugged - I have had mine in constant use for 2 years in and out of a backpack and car boot to darker sites. I did some checking last week to confirm that collimation does not require adjustment & its still spot on. Mine has run very well on the AZGTi mount but it's quite happy on a range of small mounts. It's short length means less virbration and wind interference than with a longer tube (I have some long refractors and love them but really they need a heavier mount & tripod to control to the same level as the short tube Mak which is fine but implies additional cost and weight to achieve the same stability = somewhat less portability). There are two accessories that I would say are vital - firstly a dew shield, as that corrector lens at the front will fog up on many nights in the UK without. I've found the basic Astrozap one to work all night on all but the dampest of evenings (i.e. I haven't felt the need to invest in heaters) & I believe Flo now do an Astro Esssentials version. The second is an additional optical finder - the Mak's view is a about 1 degree which will cover all but the widest DSOs but you might need some help locating things. I use an 8x50 RACI + a Telrad on mine (illuminated rings like a gunsight) and can scoot about finding things all night. The Telrad is a bit big but there are others (Rigel quickfinder) that have a smaller profile, equally the supplied RDF + an additional optical finder would serve. At this price point the optics are hard to beat and it punches well above its weight in my biased (but based on happy experience) opinion.

Fair enough - my reasoning was that it was either try another eyepiece or upgrade the 'scope! I haven't tried the UFF in my f5 10" Dob yet but am hopeful of similarly improved views there - which would then make his eyepiece amazingly good value, honest (actually at £179 its cheaper than a lot of the other APM UFF rebrands, well done @FLO & I've seen a few reviews where it stacks up very well against the TV Panoptic 27mm - these were all the things I told myself before buying

Updating this older thread with a great gear combo for the ST80, including here as this one did end becoming a bit of a resource of tips and upgrades for the humble Startravel! Having converted to a 2'in focusser and used with a Baader Hyperion 31mm (5.5% field) my ST80 took a bit of a back seat for a while. Whilst the very wide views were impressive, the level of distortion in the outer 20+% of the field was such that the novelty quickly wore off. However, with the addition of a new Stella Lyra 30mm Ultra Flat Field the ST80 is very much back in business. 5.25% and pin sharp across 90% of the field with tolerable distortion in the last 10% - close asterisms stay recognisable right to the edge. It has nice contrast and a good clean field stop, altogether a very immersive and pleasing combo. (I imagine that for a standard 1.25" focuser equipped ST80, the Stellalyra 24mm UFF would perform similarly pleasingly being of the same optical design & deilver a still wide 3.9% view). More use will come also from mounting the ST80 alongside my Mak 127 on the new Skywatcher AZGTiX tracking & GoTo mount. All has got me loving my battered ST80 once again

Aside from the 1981 Tasco 4VTE on wobbly mount perched on a Triumph Toledo, which set me off all those years ago, it's hard not to include a certain Italian but that aside I would go for: 1) William Herschel's 20 foot telescope - 470mm, f13. 2) Charles Messier 3.5" 120x Achromatic Refractor (I picked this one because I always think about it when looking through my old brass Clarkson 3" f15) 3) 100 inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson which Edwin Hubble measured Cepheid variables leading to the acceptance of the existence of galaxies outside our own, the expanding Universe - really the foundation of modern cosmology.

Cheap and cheerful Amazon tripod bags to store classic f15 refractors (may even get them out to a dark site now). Not bad, padded and roomy.

Nice night - far too late for a school night! Comet & clusters mainly, a successful field test for the “Winchester small telescope array”.

Just popped out with the new Canon 10x42 IS to watch the ISS transit - thrilled to see it arcing across the sky preceded by a tiny companion, presumably a resupply mission on its way in or out. At 10x i could discern that the main body of the ISS was squarish, but not the clear cross pattern I've seen before in the ST80 at c, 25x. I'd liken it to watching a Jupiter-like in terms of brightness and size object move across the sky with a magnitude 3 or 4 star just ahead of it. Magic!

c'mon... you can do it

Thanks @Stu, after a couple of years I've figured out the way I want to observe and (admittedly based on one session) it really seems to fit the bill. I've a couple of tweaks to the GSO 10" Dob planned and then I should be set for a while. My plan is a) get sketching, b) get the absolute best out of the 'scopes I have before succumbing to the Televue/Tak urge . (Those bin's though may have ruined me on that last point...). Your latest setup looks incredible btw!

It’s just biding it’s time waiting for spring galaxies and summer globs… Part of the rationale for stumping up for the chair is to get more use out of the Dob with a few less contortions - so hopefully it’s not feeling too left out.

Guilty as charged!

Managed a nice couple of hours early evening yesterday playing with rigorously testing the new kit. Very happy indeed - the AZGTiX tracks beautifully and if anything runs a little smoother than its AZGTi predecessor, alignment between the 2 scopes is spot on in Alt and within a half degree in Az (around 10% of the field width in the ST80+ 30mm UFF, so the target centred in the finders and the Mak appears just right of centre in the ST80). I can live with this as a trade off vs. using the supplied L-Bracket which would allow for Az alignment but introduce more vibration, right now everything seems nicely damped. The Berlebach chair is a really super thing, just works and will get a lot of use across all my 'scopes. Enjoyed widefield views of C2022/E3 (ZTF) in the ST80 at 13x and higher mag side by side in the Mak 127 + 32mm Plossl (47x). Not a great night for transparency and as you can see from the photos below, my garden is a bit of a nightmare for local LP, so not much visible in the way of a tail but nice to pick it up from the garden and was able to show my teenage sons who were pleased with the view. As for those Canon 10x42 IS Bin's they are stunning - rock steady, bright contrasty & pin sharp flatfield views, even overhead. Easily picked up the comet and then enjoyed Orions Belt (c70) and Sword (M42) region, the whole of the Hyades, the Pleaides, alpha Persei and Double Clusters & of course the Moon. The thing I most notice with the IS is that by removing the vibration, you can really dial in a crisp focus which in turn brings out more detail. They are also fantastic for tracking satellites, really look forward to having a peek at the ISS with them. To date they are the best binoculars I've looked through

Does indeed sound fab, great sketches too!

I really noticed this a couple of sessions ago after a long and very cold session on the comet up on the Downs, was a real effort to figure out how to break the mount down and get it all back in the backpack. Is I believe the earliest sign of developing Hypothermia

Thanks - I just grabbed 5 minutes on the moon with them between meetings, WOW!

Actually the lovely Kathy has no problem with my obsessions & after 30 years of marriage they don't come as a surprise! tbh I think she's still relieved I got rid of my MGB a few years ago, now that WAS a money pit

Yes it is, that’s a Feisol PB 70 panning base. I use this if I’m going fully manual. Of course doing it this way means data doesn’t flow through to the “Freedom Find” encoders but if I’m having a session where I bother to align I just use the app controller to move around and it remembers where it is pointing. The goal is to avoid having to over work the Az clutch on the mount, I’ve no particular evidence to suggest that it’s a regular point of failure but it does just look and feel a bit flimsy. The Alt clutch on the other hand is nice and solid and has been beefed up a bit on this iteration of the mount. Generally it’s all a bit chunkier, I imagine they’ve uprated the motors a bit and it’s the better for it, seems to be scooting about very solidly with this load on board and I think would handle quite a bit more.

One word, padding. For me the choice was clear (+ it matches my tripod, sad I know but these things make me happy). It does btw seem to be a fantastic piece of kit, yet to test in the field but does have that feel and simplicity of something utterly fit for purpose.

You have a super portable setup there - one of the things I love most about my Mak is it’s ruggedness, well worth popping into a backpack and finding an out of town spot that is darker - makes a huge difference to what can be seen.