Ags

I try to have the best of both worlds. I just wish the eyepieces themselves were better looking. I think I will only be happy with the case if I buy 12 identical 18.2 mm Delites 🤣

I have the William Optics 66 ED and pleased with it, meaning of course I want to upgrade 😆 Currently looking at the Explore Scientific 80 f6 triplets - the basic version is not a lot more than the Stellamira doublet, and they are very short and light tubes so good for travel.

Ok, the diagrams now show Bortle 8, 6, 4, 2, and leave it to the reader to do the logical interpolation. If the faint stars on a Bortle 6 chart are easily seen, then maybe the sky is closer to Bortle 5, but if they are marginal naked-eye stars, the sky is probably closer to Bortle 6. In addition to the original Ursa Minor, Octans, Orion and Scorpius, I now also cover Crux, Cassiopeia, Pegasus and Leo. This covers the poles, a mid-latitude constellation for every season, and two prominent circumpolar constellations (Crux and Cassiopeia). Here are the rejigged Bortle charts, showing Leo and Scorpius. I have also upscaled the label size on the charts and removed the superfluous finder circle in the middle.

I think I could get more Bortle diagrams in the book, as I think I only need to show diagrams for Bortle 2, 4, 6 and 8 - the reader can easily interpolate between these charts. "Worse than 8? Must be 9." That would mean each costellation would fit on one page, and I could add four more constellations without adding to the page count.

Of course, QR codes! Much better that what I am doing now - putting long URLs in a book

I didn't want to devote too many pages to the subject, but my thinking was the poles and Scorpius/Orion (equatorialish, diametrically opposite sides of the sky) would cover most users on most nights. I can easily make a PDF for you with Bortle charts for each Constellation. Then you can print off the pages you need?

Some nice detail in these ARs.

Solar Scout - 1000 4ms frames, best 10%. Solar Scout SS60-DS stopped down to 43 mm.

I arrange my own eyepieces on the 1.4x rule, which is also why I thought they would add an 11 mm not a 13 mm. But my OCD is pacified by the fact that Nirvanas now have some kind of mathematical progression, albeit linear.

Ah, now it makes sense 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, gaps of 3!

At the Borg 107 FL.

If I am not mistaken the xs does use a low-dispersion glass element.

Congress won't pay for a thirty year mission, but they will pay for a ten year mission, the next 20 years of project life comes from budget creep! It will be interesting to see how long JWST will last.

Is it really the same optically? The aesthetics of the Omegon do not appeal to me 😀

Switch it off and switch it on again?

After years (decades?) of being an odd range with just 3 1.25" focal lengths - 4, 7 and 16 mm - the TS site is showing a 13 mm now. If anything the range is even odder now with 4, 7, 13 and 16. If I was going to add one focal length to the Nirvana range it would have been an 11 mm - halfway between the 7 and 16.... https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p14477_TS-Optics-1-25--Ultra-Weitwinkel-Okular-UWAN-13-mm--82--Gesichtsfeld.html I had the 16 mm for a while and loved it on some nights (fabulous views of the Moon) and loathed it on other nights - on those nights it was fuzzy and astigmatic off axis. My experience didn't chime with the general consensus of the eyepiece holding its own against the equivalent Nagler... Still, I toy with the idea of picking up another (maybe I was unlucky with my sample of one?), and getting the 4mm for my top magnification. I wonder how this 13 mm will fare?

The book covers the whole sky - north and south, the whole year round.

Always remember: this is an imaging rig designed by a government committee!

I updated the PDF with the edits received so far - added references to NGC or other catalogs to all descriptions, and fixed a number of typos. Discovering Deep Sky Objects PDF

Loading up the AZT6 tonight. Can't wait for it to get dark, that counterweight hurts my eyes!

Console yourself with the thought that even if you bought your perfect scope as a first scope, you would still have bought all the other scopes. You simply wouldn't know the 4 inch apo was perfect until you tried the big reflector, the planet killer Mak etc etc.

😮

Here in Holland I have the sense light pollution has worsened over the past ten years. I would definitely say making out star shapes like Bootes or even Leo has slipped from difficult to impossible. I can't make out all the stars of the Leo question mark for example, and while I recall Bootes looked like a large retrovirus, I simply can't make out the shape now. Could be my ageing eyes though...

I look forward to your feedback 😀

I thought the BBC4 stuff was why you had a BBC. The stuff on 1 and 2, anyone can do.