Andrew_B

The Barlow screws onto the bottom of the 1.25" barrel on the Zoom rather than replacing it. The resulting combination is quite long but it's well secured and does the job.

I've just ordered one of their 32mm Plossls which was really cheap so it'll be interesting to see what it's like. I'm not expecting flawless edge to edge performance but since I'll be using it with my 60mm f6 scope which has a fair bit of field curvature anyway I don't think it'll be a big problem. As far as I can tell it's the same eyepiece as the equivalent Celestron Omni Plossl, just with a different exterior and a much lower price tag.

I wonder if it's a problem that Roland experienced in the past with silicone oils that has since been solved? I don't know either way, but if I had the choice of a silicone or non silicone-based grease I might be inclined to choose the latter just to be on the safe side.

That's a clever design and looks far easier and quicker to set up than some of the travel dobs I've read about. Does the bike journey not knock your friend's scope out of collimation, or is it rugged enough to cope with any bumps and vibration?

I think that's a good choice. I've got the AZ-GTi myself and it's easy and quick to set up and tracks well even at high magnifications. Given that you mentioned travelling to find dark skies I think the ruggedness of a Mak is a definite asset and should avoid issues of having to re-collimate your scope if it's been bumped around during the journey.

You might have already have tried this but have you gone into the phone settings and told it to connect to the WiFi network with the name "SynScan_bb22"? By default my phone will connect to my home wireless and ignore the AZ GTi unless I specifically tell it otherwise. Once it's connected to the WiFi of the mount itself you can go into the app and tell it to connect which should give you control via the phone.

Any suggestions for a particular product to use or are they all pretty similar? I ended up just putting a bit of vaseline on some threaded parts to stop them sticking and reduce wear. Something that puts me off using anything with silicone oils in is this quote by Roland Christen: "Be careful with any product containing silicone oils. It has a strong tendency to migrate. Can migrate up to a foot a year. If it gets on any optical surface, it will creep into the molecular structure of the glass. If this happens, any metal or oxide coating on the glass will lose its adhesion. THE COATINGS WILL LITERALLY FALL OFF, and there is no way that any new coating will ever adhere again , even if the glass is repolished."

That's perfect John! Thank you so much. I thought there would surely be something that would do the job and that I couldn't have been the only person who's wanted to use their scope this way. Looks like I can get something that would fit the bill for relatively little money too.

Imaging is very different from visual, especially when it comes to making use of the theoretical capabilities of a scope. A C14 under UK skies will likely never get close to being the visual instrument it would be for someone living on a mountain in Arizona. Lucky imaging and other techniques are a game changer but they can give a misleading impression of the relative performance of different scopes for the visual observer.

Fast focal ratios seem to be much more demanding of eyepieces so a cheap eyepiece that looks great in an F10 scope might look mediocre in an F5 one.

I've got a little 60mm telescope which I use for both astro and birdwatching. It's currently set up for astro viewing with its tube cradle bolted to a Vixen dovetail which then slots in to my AZ GTi mount. When I use it for birdwatching I'd prefer to mount it on the Manfrotto video fluid head (MVH501AH) I've got on another tripod since it's much better suited to spotting scope-style viewing. I can do this by taking off the Vixen dovetail and mounting the tube cradle on the Manfrotto quick-release plate but this kind of defeats the purpose and convenience of using a dovetail. Is there any way that I could adapt the dovetail to fit the video head to give me that quick change capability or am I out of luck?

The Baader Zoom is a great eyepiece and as Peter said, it gives you an option to try out different focal lengths to see what works for you. I also use it with my 60mm scope to turn it into a spotting scope for birdwatching and the magnification range works very well for that combo. Consider getting it with the dedicated 2.25x Barlow lens. It's tiny and very good quality and when used with the Hyperion Zoom it gives you an equivalent range of 3.6-10.7mm to complement the 8-24mm of the standard eyepiece.

Planewave do both RC and corrected Dall Kirkham scopes. I'm not sure who does standard DK designs other than Takahashi for their two smaller models of Mewlon.

Thanks anyway. I'll create a separate post on here to see if anyone can help figure out the problem.

That's got loads of good details. Is there anything similar for the phone/tablet app? I found this manual but it hasn't got enough info to properly troubleshoot the problem I've been having with getting alignment to work.

That's a really good picture and I think he'd do well with any decent 60mm scope. The Z61 is (as far as I can tell) the same scope as various other 60mm offerings from other brands such as the Tecnosky 60APO and Astro-Tech AT60ED and they all seem to be well regarded. The advantage of the Z61 is that you get a bit more out of the box as a package with a padded case, Bahtinov mask built into the lens cap and a decent quality and usefully sized Vixen dovetail as standard. The adjustable flattener with a Canon adaptor would be another £184 on top of the cost of the telescope. I'm still learning my way around mine having started out just doing astrophotography with camera lenses but I did manage to get this image of the Pelican Nebula in Ha from 2h 30' integration time. It's not amazing but it was cropped from the right hand side of the frame and shows that stars are reasonably round even to the edges.

Do you have a budget in mind? The William Optics Z61 works well and I've got one myself that I've used on a Star Adventurer. You will need a field flattener though and the appropriate M48 camera adapter so that needs to be included in your overall spend. A lighter option would be the Takahashi FS-60CB with a field flattener or reducer but it would be a bit more expensive.

Hopefully they won't stop making it any time soon but I can see it becoming a collector's item like the FC-50 in years to come with its no compromise design in a relatively tiny package. Not long ago I wouldn't really have understood why someone would want multiple scopes of the same aperture but I totally get it now! I've got my little WO Z61 which I bought primarily for imaging and recently got an FS-60CB for visual which is a stunning little thing. I've also got the Q-Extender module so I can use it as an FS-60Q and both versions of the little 60mm are brilliant in their own way so really I'd like to have both without having to swap pieces in and out and the extender is really for my FC-76 so I'd have to buy the full FS-60Q (and not just because I want that red nameplate). 🤣 On top of that there's the FOA-60Q which anyone into small refractors would want because it's the most perfect little telescope ever made.

What a beautiful little scope and a fantastic addition to your collection. I bet the views are razor sharp and unless I'm imagining it, having a longer focal ratio seems to do a better job of cutting through less than brilliant seeing. Isn't it great that Tak decided that they were going to make their corrected best scope ever, because they can? Mr Yuyama really pulled out the stops with his design and I can't imagine many companies these days that would have green lit a product so unashamedly targeted at the visual observer. Don't forget to coat that precious lens with toothpaste after every use to replenish the fluoride!

Impressive! I always think of eyepiece projection as being a technique for lunar or planetary imaging and wouldn't have thought to try it on DSOs.

That's good. Presumably then you're familiar with things like image stacking and the post-processing to remove light pollution and bring out the details. It sounds like you've done some photography with a static camera which can give great results with a wide angle lens. I think the next step would be to do some tracked exposures with the camera attached to the mount directly or piggybacking the telescope - one of the tube rings holding the scope might have a 1/4" bolt which you can fix your camera to. The other thing I'd recommend is photographing the Moon just using your DSLR at first either as single exposures or by taking a load of shots and having a go using software that selects the best images and stacks them automatically. You can do the same thing with the Neximage and it's more suited to lunar and planetary photography in many ways but the chip it uses is obviously much smaller than the one in your DSLR so its field of view is tiny and getting objects in the frame is more difficult so I'd start with the easy stuff first. Start off with the wide angle and move to longer focal lengths as you get more experienced. You'll be able to see things like how well you've polar aligned your scope based on whether you have nice round stars or not and it's easier to do that with a wide angle first and then progress to your telescope which I think has a focal length of 650mm if I'm reading the right spec sheet. If you do struggle to get round stars and you've polar aligned as best you can then try reducing exposure time and just taking more images until you find something that works and doesn't show tracking errors. The nice thing about using your DSLR is that you don't need it to be wired up to a laptop. If you don't already have one, an intervalometer is very useful for setting up imaging sessions - you set it to take maybe 120 exposures each 60s long and it will control the shutter firing automatically. A decent one is pretty cheap and you don't need to pay for brand name hardware. Some cameras also have an intervalometer function built it but it may be a bit limited if you want to take longer exposures - my Fuji lets me set exposure times up to 30s but any longer than that and I need to use a separate intervalometer.

The question that came to mind reading your post is: have you ever done any astrophotography before just using a camera and lens? If the answer to that is no then I'd say do that first, ideally with your wide angle lens because it's easier, and don't worry about using your telescope or trying to do planetary photography just yet. Astrophotography is a lot more complex than normal photography and when you're starting out it's best to make things as simple as possible while you get used to techniques and workflow. There's a lot more to think about when you introduce a telescope into the mix and a lot less margin for error which can be frustrating when you're starting out, especially if you try to do too many things at once.

In failing to destroy a single one of those fine telescopes you haven't just let us down, you've let yourself down! Good to know that they last so well though, even in our damp climate. The folks perpetuating these myths about fluorite or ED glass being incredibly fragile don't stop and think that if it was true we'd be hearing about telescope lenses being damaged all the time through normal use, but we don't.

I think that's just being sensible with the extreme temperatures you're observing in. Thermal shock can be an issue and while I don't know what you'd have to do to break a lens that way, why even take the risk of finding out when it should be simple to avoid? Maybe in winter you should just get a big freezer to keep it in!

I think what happens is that there's often a nugget of truth somewhere but people take an idea and run with it until it becomes nonsense. Fluorite is quite a bit softer than normal window glass or pyrex and needs more care when handling, but that's mainly an issue when making lenses rather than using them. I just looked up some figures and fluorite is harder than limestone and similar hardness to some types of marble, which are not materials people think of as being very soft. It's also true that it's soluble in water, apparently you can get 15 milligrams of the stuff to dissolve in a litre of water at room temperature. I wonder how many litres of water there are in a film of dew on a lens?