Ags

NexStar 4SE - ten years was long enough. ST80 - turns out CA does bother me. Skymax 102 - not sure why I sold this one. 150PDS - Not its fault it was undermounted.

Welcome!

Yes, I slightly oversized the mask to account for manufacturing tolerances. I will glue on some felt to make the fit snug. I was considering making the 70 mm mask an insert for the 80 mm, should be doable.

I uploaded the design to the Dutch site I initially found, and the price is pretty competitive there, but less choice of materials. I see it's possible to print in flexible plastics. I have some ideas for end-caps!

This is just the 80 mm mask, printed in ABS as a test. I have a few more projects to work on - a 70 mm mask, various focusing aids, a solar finder. If only I could cut the shipping costs... Looks like ordering a 3D print is as cheap as ordering some photo prints! Only problem with online printing is the need to get the model right first time.

Printed via CraftCloud. The object cost EUR 3.50 - and multiple times that for shipping.

I have bought my scopes to complement each other so going down to one is hard to imagine. I suppose it would be the ZS66, simply because it is the lightest and most fun.

Drawing my thing in tinkercad:

I think you're right, I was thinking of the Megrez 88.

Isn't the Megrez 90 exactly the same as the Long Perng 90 (which I have)? With the exception that the LP90 has improved glass...

A Mewlon 180c or a Tak FC76 DCU or a C9.25 or an RC8 or a Borg 90 or a...

I think, based on your experience, that it should be quite doable, especially as I will be using f6.3 reducer for a focal length around 945 mm, roughly a third of yours. But I will need a very calm night.

I worked on reducing the graduated shading representing star density to sharp contour lines. Hopefully looks less like a printer's error now! It was quite easy in the end, just little bit of integer division and remultiplication, plus a few cosmetic tweaks to reduce the number of dark countours and avoid very light contours.

I am trawling your back catalog of images after seeing your stunning M51 These results really motivate me to have a go with my C6/HEM15.

APOD! I was trying a similar shot with somewhat lighter equipment - a HEM15 and C6, but the night was too windy (still learning my way around this new mount). Next year I might move to Bortle 4 skies - looking forward to that after a decade of Bortle 8...

The print proof arrived today. The cover is way too dark, but was just a quick placeholder so that Lulu would print it. The family verdict on the milky way traces I added to the charts was "Is it a printing error?" I am happy with the look of the individual asteroid pages. The book includes some pretty pictures. Whoever sent the book to the printers with the green debug boxes switched on is FIRED!!!

I gave in and bought a new one. It arrived today. Now... Where did I put it?

It looks so nice!

And a print proof of my new bookety-book.

T2 spacers and an Astronomik L3 filter!

I suspect you will find the structures are made of blue stuff 😀

Hmmm, found this one in the Netherlands. No sign of clear pricing, which is usually a bad sign.... 3D Printen voor particulier - 3D On Demand (3d-demand.nl)

Sounds like a very expensive job.

Using a big dob on M31 is a little like using a magnifying glass to examine an elephant. It is a big object and doesn't need magnification so a bigger scope doesn't help. Also the brightness of an extended object depends only on the exit pupil and not on aperture, so M31 will be just as bright in 7x50 binoculars as it would be in a dob with an exotic low power eyepiece, with the exception that the galaxy will fit in the FOV of the binoculars. By far the best view I have ever had of M31 was with a pair of cheap and very rubbishy binoculars.

Inspired by a comment by @vlaiv, I want to print some aperture masks for my Long Perng 90 refractor. I find the color correction fine for visual use, but I am thinking of trimming the aperture slightly for some photographic targets. My only problem is the lack of a 3D printer. I don't want to own one, but surely there must be a website somewhere that can print on demand? Does anyone know of one?