ONIKKINEN

Clouds cleared suddenly and i put my new grab and go kit to work. The frac and eyepieces is in a backpack and a Skywatcher AZ5 + steel tripod is somewhat easy to carry out in one hand. I dont really have a backyard in my apartment complex, but a short hop across a road to a (fully lit 24/7 🙄) parking lot frees up the horizon down to 10 degrees - so barely enough to see the Moon and Saturn sweeping across rooftops. And Saturn was the true first look through the scope, i mean it would be rude to look at something else! Pentax XW10 and a 2.5x barlow in a TS- 1.25'' dielectric diagonal for a comfortable power of 125x. Saturn snaps into focus very easily even though its very low on the horizon. The view isn't super stable, but it is actually not even close to the worse views i have seen of Saturn so i am very pleased at this point, but to test how well the scope holds collimation with the heavy chunk of glass that is the XW10, i cruised around Saturn keeping it close to the edges of the FOV and seeing if the image degrades. I am pleased to report that it does not and its sharp across the field of view so doesn't seem like there is any sagging in the focuser. There was something to the side of Saturn blinking in and out of view once i got a comfortable position and looked for a while, maybe a few widths of saturns rings away and im not sure it could be anything other than Titan which is surprising with the bright night skies. No hint of Chromatic aberration for Saturn at this power! Jupiter was next, still with the same setup of 2.5x barlow and XW10. Here, i do notice the chromatic aberration as a quite bright purple edge around all of Jupiter. It does bother me a bit since purple is a very unnatural colour to see for me (newtonians only before). I let the view seep into my eyeball for a while and kinda just got used to it in no time, but i can still see it and i am thinking for Jupiter i would be better off with some kind of purple fringe eliminating filter. I saw 2 rather obvious dark bands and a varying number of other lines across the disk. I see some kind of "mush" at the edge of one of the bands that keeps coming and going with the seeing (which was pretty good actually). Occasionally i see some spiraly-swirly structure in place of the mushy something. Surprised to see that a 90mm aperture scope can give pretty nice views of planets too! Almost forgot to write that i started observing Jupiter with 3 visible Galilean moons, but during observing a 4th one appeared from behind Jupiter! Actually checking now it was Europa and it was in front of Jupiter and not behind, but this i did not spot before it had crossed the disk. Gave Mars a brief look but at 125x its a very small reddish not quite round disk. Cant really say more on this one, needs more power and a few months for Mars to come a bit closer. Looked at the Moon for a very short while. Its basically licking the rooftops and the views were awful really. But here too there is the purple fringe. Bothers me less since the Moon is enormous and i dont feel like the view is bathing in the light, but if i can see it it probably means there is some contrast and sharpness loss so another target to test later if/when i get some kind of filter. Just as a passing thought before heading back inside i pointed the scope towards the double double in Lyra and was welcomed with a very obvious split of both doubles. Quite pleased with the optics at the moment! Clouds are coming and going and most of the sky is covered in what looks like haze, so pack up the stuff and head home. I did get the feeling that for Jupiter and perhaps the Moon i would be benefiting from some CA filtering. And more power. Could definitely have used more power.

First light with a new scope, the Long Perng 90mm F/5.5 doublet:

What a beautiful scope! Must be a real planetary and lunar beast with that focal length.

Really had to scroll down to find out the specs, which are: 100mm FL and 24mm aperture. Id say it will be very underpowered for anything other than the handful of bright big objects out there. I cant help but feel it should be a bit bigger even if the price doubled. The pictures shown in the site are from bortle 4, which is much, much better than the average sky condition for most so those examples are more of an upper limit than your average consumers shot. Its not looking great IMO, but i dont think the target audience is the amateur astronomer but instead the tech enthusiast social media person or something like that.

Hello and welcome to SGL, Amazon and other non-astronomy related storefronts should be avoided at all costs for astronomy purhcases. Especially so if the scope in question is a generic noname brand like the refractor you linked. Celestron is a well known and liked brand, but this particular model, the powerseeker 127, is and im going to be honest: Perhaps the worst telescope for the money in the world. The mount is flimsy and very frustrating to use, the views will shake and wobble for several seconds after touching anything in the scope. The telescope itself will not give sharp views in the center of the field of view and it only gets worse towards the edges (much worse). Both of these scopes are i would imagine so bad that there is a good chance you give up and throw them off a cliff and never look back. To name a few stores closer to you: https://optcorp.com/ https://www.highpointscientific.com/ There are many others (dont know that many stores on that side of the atlantic). This one ships from the UK, but the prices are pretty good: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ If you have a specific upper limit in your budget we could advice better on which way to go. But still want to say again, that neither of the scopes you linked will give you your moneys worth! (there are scopes around that pricerange that would though). And as a bonus, a review of the powerseeker 127 from Ed Ting:

Remember a few years ago Betelgeuse was dimming significantly? But now it seems to be up and running again. It could be perceived as less red if it dims significantly, at least i think that is the case when looking at Mars in opposition or when further away. I think that dimming event a few years back was due to some ejecta from the star forming a sort of dimming cloud around the star or something like that. 2000 years is also not that short for a massive star like betelgeuse and that could be enough time for a change in temperature along its natural stellar evolution path. 2000 years is also long enough to make it rather difficult to check the sources 😆, so could be or could not be right.

New scope finally arrived. Also, the heatwave ended which i am happy about but the clouds that came with that i am not 👎. Long Perng 90ED F5.5 First impressions, above all, its much bigger in person than i expected (dont know why i am surprised) but the Skywatcher AZ5 + steel tripod feels like a pretty good match to this thing and it still fits in a backpack along with some eyepieces and other kit that i want to have with me so all good and fits the purpose i had in mind. Overall feels nicely built with all metal parts, pretty good feeling 2 inch crayford with a reducer knob, rotateable focuser to cover the fact that it did not come with rings and the sturdy padded case which is a nice bonus. Feels nice for "only" 500€, but i suspect the price is due to low spec glass in the ED element, but that i will find out once the clouds clear and darken.

There is some kind of filter between the prism itself and the eyepiece holder, i assume this is the ND3 filter? I can sort of see something through either the prism or the filter, but with both its very dark and only a peep of my 1200 lumen headlamp gets through.

Thanks, nice and easy to understand graph in there:

Itching to know this myself too. There is bound to be some technical explanation sooner rather than later.

Looks like JWST is a rather fast instrument so there will be an enormous pile of data left for decades after the mission ends. Who knows what will be discovered? What a time to be alive!

Well all right then. Looks like ill need a 16'' dob then 🤣

If i had to guess they have somehow blueshifted the spectrum to be more like one would expect from a real colour image. The reddest spots would be the furthest Infrared targets in that case. Would love to hear a technical explanation for the chosen palette.

Oh wow, the difference is really stunning.

I agree, the stream was anemic!

Quote from the article: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet Only 12.5 hours? Imagine a week long integration...

Here is the full thing: Unbelievable!

Gravitational lensing for sure with those warped lines around the center. Real-ish looking colour palette, really like that!

Lenscap was on all this time and just now found out? Someone is quickly taking an image of the orion nebula with their 80ED in an effort to fool the masses.

I dont trust bahtinov masks, even for DSO imaging. My star sizes decreased noticeably after switching to statistics (HFR) and visual based focusing. I think just visually looking at a dim star is better than a bahtinov mask for focus! But some folks like them, so user error and differences in the masks could play a part too. I am no planetary imaging veteran and only dipped my toes a couple of times to attempting Jupiter imaging with a DSLR (in raw video mode). Focusing was a real pain in the backside with having to look at the small screen on my 550D, but i found that visually focusing on the Galilean moons and a shadow transit of Ganymede was what were the easiest. The shadow of Ganymede disappeared if out of focus slightly and appeared as a sharp and quite obvious dark disk on Jupiter when in good focus.

Not sure i have ever been more excited about astronomy news, just show the image damn it!

This one looks much better. I think this one had much better seeing also since your starsizes are much better compared to the focus test, but collimation looks better too for some reason. Top right corner appears to be the best according to Siril (pictured) and ASTAP image inspectors. Star shapes are still a bit weird but that could also be in part due to guiding or something other than collimation (still guessing its mechanical, focuser most likely). But, i would say judging from the image that its still a bit out of collimation for some reason. But also i will admit that i would accept that as starsizes are pretty decent here and if binned x2 it would be hard to find something to complain about. Not sure how to proceed if i were you, but since your tube and mirror cell are good it leaves the sensor itself being tilted, focuser being unreliable or the mirror collimation itself as the causes. Or the collimation method you use is still somehow not quite ideal. Try the laser-through-CC method and see if something changes?

During the last opposition in 2020 i was still using an astromaster 130 which is a mixed bag of every aberration except CA and so not suitable for planets really. Saw absolutely no detail whatsoever on a slightly yellowy-maybe a bit red disk of something very bright. Did see saturns rings and very low contrast banding on Jupiter though so it looks like Mars was just a bit too difficult for that scope. Very excited to try and observe Mars through my current 8" newt.

Top right corner looks maybe OK in the LUM file. Bottom left stars are seagull shaped which means you are way out of collimation. With F/4 way out is not nearly as much as you'd think it is, mind you and it really needs to be almost perfect every time. Tilt inspector in Siril below. I'd say figure out the mechanical side of things first before tackling possible sensor tilt and collimation. If you try to collimate a scope that is not mechanically sound you will just end up going in circles and it will never seem right because it really isn't possible. @alacant usually comments that none of the cheap newtonians available today are out-of-box compatible with the demands of astrophotography in terms of mechanical stability and yours is probably not different. One more common issue you could have if the stiffness of your tube, which if not stiff enough can bend/buckle under load ever so slightly and so cause the scope to go out of collimation. Fitting a longer dovetail bar and spreading the rings out further apart from each other (i think it was about 50cm) while also tying up the top of the rings together with another dovetail bar will significantly improve stiffness of the tube. Not seeing to the mechanical side of things first will lead you on a wild goose chase where tools dont agree with each other and results vary from night to night.

Yep, sounds very familiar all of that. The diffraction spike thingy is for sure a sign that there is some collimation or tilt issue, but its rather difficult to tell which one since both will have the same effect of taking the scope out of collimation. By the way, you mention tension and focus lock screws, do these move the focuser drawtube by any amount when you use them? If they do, that's a big problem. You can check just by inserting a laser and watching whether it moves across the primary and if it does, you gotta figure out a way to put them in one setting where everything works and moves and then never touch them again. I didn't figure out a way to do that with the stock VX8 focuser. Try building something like this for the laser issue: Its just a regular cheap collimation laser with the middle target section roughly 55mm from the coma corrector lens when this is threaded to the coma corrector. Easy to use, just thread whatever you have connected to the CC off (and everything behind it, including camera of course) and thread this in place of the camera+adapters. Mark the focuser position at infinity and you can now collimate the scope with the coma corrector in place. The laser dot will probably blow up in size a bit when it goes through the CC and back, but that might actually make it easier to see the centering (i found that to be the case).