Ags

One of these is coming my way, accompanied by a ZWO Duo filter. I have great hopes for it as a little spotting scope, pocket travel scope, finderscope, guidescope and astrograph. Looking to snap some of the bigger AP targets with this and my ASI 485 MC - California Nebula, NaN, M31... I'm curious to hear the experiences and see the pictures taken by any other owners? Possibly I should have asked before clicking the Buy button???

Well, I did buy a new scope... not a big dob for visual after all... instead a tiny Askar 135 for AP! I decided to leave the big stuff for after the observatory build.

While browsing the Moon last night I 'discovered' this straight rille running north-south to the west of Gassendi. Does anyone know its name? Also saw a bunch of lumpy lava plain in the vicinity of Aristarchus, southward. I believe this was the Marius Hills volcanic region:

The sky here tonight was a mix of clear patches and hurrying clumps of dense cloud, which typically forbodes poorer seeing. I upgraded from my Long Perng 90 to my C6 tonight, seeing how far I could push it with the 3-8 zoom. I focused on Gassendi, trying to make out the rilles. I was mostly unsuccessful, although I glimpsed the rille leading back to Gassendi A, and the ridge just before the southern end was easy. 8 mm was very sharp, so despite the wobbly seeing 180x was good. 7 mm (214x) was also good. As for 6, 5 and 4 mm, they all gave useful but progressively softer views, so magnifications in the range of 250x to 360x are viable. I flipped back and forth between these three settings with no clear winner. I think the real winner would have been the eyepiece I didn't use tonight, the ES 6.7 mm. I did give the 3 mm setting a try, but that was way too much, for both the telescope and my eye!

Out of a total of 9 points, my case scores a 2. Now that we have a the PECS (Paz Eyepiece Case Scale) we can look forward to impartial eyepiece case ratings and step change in quality of cases seen online!

Agreed mostly, but I've had some duds too. A Nirvana 16 enraged me with its curvature and asigmatism, while some SkyWatcher 66° wide angles were unusable with intense internal reflections.

I enjoy using my "fancy plossls" - Vixen SLVs, NLVs and actual NPL plossls at the long end. The restricted view feels very nostalgic. I have a plan to make a simple set consisting of 3 SLVs - 6, 12 and 25 which would cover low, medium and medium-high use cases with an almost perfect 2x progression. Paired with a 3x telecentric barlow, the high end would be covered with 2, 4, 6 and 8 mm options. The mathematics are irresistible 🙂

I decided the Svbony 3-8 zoom wasn't getting me close enough to the Moon so tonight it had the frontpiece on my Revelation 2x barlow screwed on, making it something like a 2-5 zoom. With improved eye relief! I did not expect the view to hold up, as my 102 mm Maks (Celestron and SkyWatcher variants) both started to show empty magnification above about 150x - as if a mathematical smoothing function had been applied to the eyepiece view. To my surprise the Long Perng 90 was still sharp at 200-250x. I think it could go higher. I did not 'discover' any new features tonight, but Copernicus was spectacular, and many minor craters were visible in Clavius. The region around Plato was very crisp and the mountain ranges were sharp. My aperture fever has dropped a couple of degrees.

We are renovating our apartment so that is soaking up time, money and patience. And creating so much dust, my poor telescopes. Let's see if I can pick up a used VX10.

Top tip @John!

Yes, it would go a magnitude deeper. The OOUK version I have half an eye on would be 11 kgs, which is more than manageable. 1/8 PV optics call to me, and at that weight putting it on an EQ mount and shooting some galaxies is not crazy. I also hear the OOUK dob bases are good and light. Have they fixed their infamous customer support?

I think I will go for the 10" dob option. My sky and observing site is extremely light polluted being in a city light dome with local light sources in all directions including up. So the scope is really for lunar and planetary observing, as well as double stars and a few brighter small DSOs like globulars and planetaries. On an EQ platform, a 10" would be big enough to get some nice solar system images... I'm not expecting the dob would go out every clear night, i think on many nights I would prefer the convenience of the refractors or SCT.

The house-side barrier I need kept getting higher, beyond the feasible height of a garden structure, so a row of leiboom trees are now part of the plans. They extend up to 3 meters with the lower 60% open and admitting light to to the rest of the garden and home. Regarding the word "leiboom", the Dutch are in a real minority among European languages. This will take care of the western aspect. The northern aspect is shielded by the astroshed. I have a bit of a concern to the west too; we may need another strategic tree.

I do have nice 66 mm and 90 mm refractors and a very useful 150 mm SCT. I think what I am missing is something with more aperture, to be used for general visual ogling and solar system imaging. I calculate that a 10” reflector is about my limit, budget wise and weight wise. With a plan to build an astroshed in the coming months I have the option to use heavier equipment. I am thinking a GSO or OOUK dobsonian might be a good fit. I don’t use goto so I can save on electronics, and for the solar system imaging a platform should be sufficient.

I could just buy another eyepiece and see how I feel in the morning…

For the past 12 years I have had a case of long aperture fever. I wake up sleep shopping on FLO. Whenever I lift a heavy object, I calculate the equivalent weight in SCT or Dobsonian. I have been told the only effective cure is to buy a scope carefully calibrated to 95% of my lifting capacity. Not heavy enough to cause lasting physical damage, but enough to discourage further upgrade ambitions.

@Mr Spock good luck with the treatment!

In my 90 mm frac it looks rather delicate, the Apollo view is surprising. I am afraid the Moon is giving me aperture fever, I want to get a little closer...

I had a careful look tonight - there was a prominent linear structure near the middle of the terminator. I believe it was Rima Ariadaeus - a quite massive structure! Assuming I have identified the structure correctly, this snapshot from Apollo 10 gives an idea of its scale.

Truly superb!

Went out with my puppy Wurzel to look at the Moon with my grab and go contraption - Artcise C60 tripod, AZT6 head, Long Perng 90 frac and Svbony 3-8 zoom. Firstly I don't think Wurzel will make the grade as an Astronomy Dog. I had barely aligned the telescope on the Moon and Wurzel was already at the back door squeaking to go back in. Possibly the thin coat and smaller bulk of a Jack Russell makes them more sensitive to the cold than my usual companion, our Westie Ohmsie. With the dog returned to the warmth of the family hearth, I turned my attention back to our neighbouring ball of rock. It's the first time I have really had a chance to look properly at the Moon with the new zoom, and it was a pleasure watching detail emerge as I zoomed in, although the zooming effect was somewhat undercut by cloud intermissions between each zoom increment. I found the Moon was best around the 5-6 mm marks, but 3 and 4 gave great views too. At the 3 mm in particular I was admiring a large crater with a fractured floor which I think might be Posidonius. 7 and 8 were also great giving nice sharp whole-Moon views. I am glad the view held up well at 3 mm on the Moon as I have not found double stars to focus as well at this setting.

Don't worry - you are as old as you feel 😄

Hammer of the Underworld 🙂

Supernovas are a good thing, but disemboweled M82 shows you can have too much of a good thing! Amazing photo 😀

I have Bortle 8 skies and use a 50 mm finder to star hop. Like Mr Spock, I point myself at something bright and work my way from there. Mag 7 or even Mag 8 stars are visible in the finder and that's enough to get me where I'm going. It may be a personal thing, we don't all see the same thing in a finder scope. I'm not used to star hopping in dark skies and when I do, I struggle. Too many stars!