Arty68

4 hours ago, CatRas said:

Hi,

 

 I'm new too Well sort of. I was a member but you know how it is life gets in the way etc. I am looking to get back into astronomy.  I probably will not buy a telescope until next spring. The biggest reason is right now I am going through chemo and it totally wipes me out for days. I go three weeks in a row then have a week off. I am in the PNW so from late fall through winter we get rain and cloudy skies quite often. We are in need of rain so bad right now. I also cannot drive due to medications.  Working on hubby to have us spend a year living in Hawaii.  They have nice dark skies there. 🙂 I have had two telescopes in the past so I am not completely clueless (but not overly knowledgeable either) I'm going to start reeducating myself. 

You might want to look into getting an 80mm to 120mm good refractor between f/8 and f/10.  My Sky-Watcher ED 100mm f/9 has perfect collimation [I'm not saying they will all be perfect, may be I got lucky] and produces better images of Saturn than my 8" SCT.  I can see the Ring Nebula even though I live in the city with the 100mm, and now with all of the smoke in the air I can still see it.  Bigger scopes will show a brighter image however they are also heavier.  Winter and spring should produce some good seeing, unfortunately Saturn and Jupiter will be low in the sky in the spring, however by early May Jupiter, Saturn and Mars will be easy to find around 5a.m. or so, if you can see that far East and Southeast.  I hope you can get well soon.  

5 hours ago, John said:

The lowest levels of light scatter that I have experienced with eyepieces have come from HD orthos such as Baader Genuine Orthos, University Optics HD orthos and Fujiyama orthos and also the TMB Supermonocentric.

The more complex designs (including the premium ones) do seem to introduce a little additional light scatter in return for their wider fields and longer eye relief. The Pentax XW range seem to control this well for a more complex design though. I believe the Tele Vue Delites are very good as well.

Of course keeping your scope optics free of dust / condensation and well cooled and collimated helps minimise scatter as well.

The low altitude of Jupiter and Saturn (at least where I am in the UK) does not help with the visiblity of these finer details either. Instability of the image can vary hugely moment to moment so patience and time at the eyepiece is required more then ever to catch those short golden moments of clarity.

This reviewer has attempted to quantify the effects of light scatter with a number of planetary eyepieces:

http://www.wlcastleman.com/equip/reviews/5mm_EP/5mm_ep.html

 

It looks like the most likely culprit is wild fires.

2 hours ago, Louis D said:

Don't forget the effect all those optical elements in you SCT can have on scatter as well.  There's also the possibility of poorly controlled stray light seeping around the baffles.  Were the views equivalent between the frac and the SCT as far as stray light?

Try removing your diagonal and then view straight through to eliminate the possibility that it is adding scatter.  Dielectric diagonals tend to scatter more than silver or prism diagonals.

Make sure your field lenses on your eyepieces are clean.  Being closer to the field stop, any grime there has an outsized impact on light scatter.  Use a super bright tactical flashlight to look for any greasy film buildup on them.

Move Saturn around the field of the eyepiece and look for changes in the view.  This can help you pinpoint where the actual problem lies.

Light scatter does not change when I move my eye around the eyepiece.  Both diagonals are silver.  The lenses are relatively clean, only a very slight amount of dust particles, I keep they covers on them when not in use.  You present some good ideas.   It looks as though the problem is smoke from wild fires, something I did not take into consideration.

2 hours ago, jetstream said:

Right now forest fire have the sky here filled with haze, really bad viewing conditions, including scatter. I use really low scatter equipment, but it doesn't matter at the moment.  Particles in the air scatter light, made worse by planets low elevation. The 82ES ep's have more scatter than your (vg) orthos. A 12.5mm Circle T is a mainstay in my TSA120, for some reason I really like this eyepiece.

To minimize effects use your great 100mm f9 with orthos- one thing what diagonal do you use? I had an expensive poor one that cause massive scatter in a 90mm APO years ago. The SW mirror diag I have is vg- but maybe check "straight" through?

I never thought about smoke from wild fires.  I looked the information up and - there is a lot of smoke in the atmosphere and it is most likely the problem.  Thank you for your help.

My diagonals, both were supplied by the manufacturer, 1 1/4 for the Meade and 2" for the Sky-Watcher.

4 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Does scatter change as you move your eye around? If so then you might need to clean your eyepieces.

I often have such issues with my eyepieces because of long eye lashes - it is very easy to grease up eye lens of the eyepiece and that creates distinct light scatter.

Another thing that creates scatter is dust / smoke / humidity in the air. These present more like halo around objects (both planets and stars) - that does not move / change as you move scope and you eye around.

If there are forest fires near by or you have large body of water like a lake, swamp or river and temperature is high - you could be having issues from the atmosphere.

Light scatter does not move when I move my eye around the eyepiece.  Thank you for your help, I appreciate your experience.

EDIT:   Before going any further, please note that I have checked maps for smoke filled skies and that is, by far, the most likely culprit.  The thought of smoke from wild fires entered my mind, however I pushed that idea out of my head and blindly pushed forward.  The result was poor seeing without much of an answer to why, given my equipment and the good state that it is in.  If anything, hopefully this post will help the next person with poor views of the heavens, at least until the smoke clears.

Here is one map source, note that it changes, sometimes relatively fast:  https://fire.airnow.gov/

I recently got back into astronomy after decades of absence.  I live in town and visibility is usually poor to very poor.  Telescopes: a Sky-Watcher f/9 100mm ED refractor with outstanding collimation and a Meade LX65 8" f/10 ACF Catadioptric with GoTo mount, I can put both scopes on the same mount/head.  This evening I mounted both telescopes & rechecked the collimation on the 8".  Primarily I wanted to view Saturn.  It came out from behind some trees at about 10:00p.m. EDT.  By about 12:30a.m. this morning views of Saturn was about as good as it was going to get.  I could see the Cassini Division but barely and I could see Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys.  Enceladus was too close to Saturn and I couldn't see it for the glare/light scatter.  I could make out a little color in the clouds on Saturn.

Unfortunately the light scatter in the eyepieces was so bad that it nearly ruined the view.  If it were not for the light scatter everything I saw would have been much better, crisper more detailed.  I have a variety of eyepieces that I have picked up over the years, none top end but should get the job done, and every one of them had a great deal of light scatter with the University Optics 12.5mm Ortho giving the least amount of light scatter.

Eyepieces are:  5.5mm 62 degree & 14mm 82 degree Explore Scientific, 6mm & 12.5mm UO Orthos, 7.5mm Orion Epic ED-2, 9mm Fujiyama Ortho, 32mm Meade Plossl, & a very old Celestron Ultima SV series 2x Barlow [the good one, model 93506].  All are 1 1/4" [don't have the money for good 2" eyepieces].  I have a series 4000 f/6.3 field flattener for the Meade telescope but I didn't use it last night on planets.

Does looking at a light filled sky in town have an impact?  Should I try to paint the interior of the eyepieces?

3 hours ago, siennax said:

i’m fairly new to telescopes and i’ve assembled it properly but i can’t see anything through it. i’ve taken off the cover on one end but when i look through the eye piece it’s black but when i take out the eye piece and look through the whole i see an image but it’s very tiny.

After you watch the video that John posted you may want to watch this one on another important topic.   Telescopes that have mirrors need something called collimation, look into it after you figure out the basics of your telescope.  

8 hours ago, mikemarotta said:

Welcome to the forum! I, too, am looking for a mount and tripod to carry an 8-inch Newtonian and (separately) a 115 mm apochromatic refractor. The supply chain is still very much impacted by the pandemic and inventory is hard to find all over. You just have to keep shopping. 

You have some nice telescopes. Your stable of instruments provides you with a lot of options. I also chose my current telescopes for their portability. 

If I may ask, where in Ohio do you live? I know the state well having worked in Dayton, Cleveland, and Columbus over the years.  Do you belong to a local club?

Best Regards,

Mike M.

I live in Marion, don't belong to a club.  In decades past I have made visits to the Dayton observatory and Columbus.

I used to star hop with my 8" and 10" Newtonians.  As I grew older the heavy scopes fell by the wayside.  I now have a Sky-Watcher 100mm ED refractor with perfect collimation and a Meade LX65 8" f/10 ACF Catadioptric with GoTo mount.  Currently looking for an affordable mount for the 4" refractor, I can mount both scopes on the Meade head however another mount would be easier to transport out of the city for darker sky.  I am an old guy and don't have the strength and stamina of my youth.

Looking forward to good conversations in the future on this forum.