badhex

I would struggle to choose between the my TS 102ED and WO ZS73. Obviously the 102ED is a better all-round scope but significantly less portable than the ZS73, meaning no more holiday observing which has brought me a lot of joy over the years! The ZS73 also punches above its weight IMO. Very tough call!

Exactly!

As the adoptive brother of Burnham you would know that 🙂 I haven't actually got that far in the series yet; when it came out I lived in Germany so my options for half the dialogue were either Klingon or German, neither of which were particularly conducive to following the plot 😂

There are so many beautiful vintage scopes still in existence in historical observatories it makes you wonder why they didn't just design one in the same style, but it is impressive nonetheless that they did actually build a real prop (aside from the aforementioned functionality issues). Funnily enough I was watching Star Trek Discovery last night and in the very first episode they resort to using a telescope due to sensor interference. Looks to me like a 'weathered' Skywatcher/Orion achro, probably the 90/660 on a modified AZ3, along with the supplied 45° prism diagonal and super MA EP. I love the idea of a super advanced spacecraft and the only optical scope on board is a budget achro 😂

RM here in Beckenham has generally been pretty good, but then we have a decent postman, which certainly accounts for some of it. Most recently a member sent something to me Monday AM and it arrived Tuesday AM, so it definitely could be worse!

First time here in a while - finally got round to picking up the tiny Borg single arm fork mount thanks to @Franklin Was always the plan to go with my converted Evoguide 50ED, so looking forward to testing when there is finally the opportunity!

I can pretty much guarantee that you won't be disappointed with this scope @Ratlet!

Basically what everyone else said about travel, and house buying options. Finding out that Nisyros in Greece was a Bortle 3 was a reason for going there on island hopping travels. Similarly knowing it would be worth taking a scope to Ponza as it is a 4 (and it was a good 4 at that!). It's not the most accurate scale, but it's a good finger in the air for what to expect.

Here you go:

Haha thanks, another one to add to the list! Similarly then, you might enjoy this thread - look out in particular for the double star tables from @JeremyS and Lockyer's lost from @Mircea

I've never had the opportunity to be part of a regular AS apart from the Amateur Telescope Makers of London, which is less observing and more making as you might imagine. I also don't have any astronomy friends with whom to discuss astro topics in any detail. SGL mostly services that need in all but the in-person part. I joined originally more than ten years ago then later took a several year hiatus from astronomy, and came back with a vengeance some years ago, and it felt like the same place it was previously, which is definitely a good thing. Everyone is super friendly, helpful, and as well as still needing plenty of help and advice myself, I'm also able to pay it forward and give a little advice to others. Very few topics are off the table apart from the obvious ones, and I get to indulge my silly ideas like trying to find Enceladus with the smallest scope possible and other nonsense. Plus, all the kit threads and observing threads mean there's always something good to read even when you can't observe yourself! 11/10

This!

Last year I was trying to chase down Enceladus with a 73mm F5.9 FPL53 doublet, 7.7mm eyepiece, and 2x Powermate under similar LP levels. I didn't catch Enceladus itself but I did get all of the larger moons with no problem, as well as Neptune. Saturn and Jupiter are small with this setup but extremely crisp, with plenty of larger detail visible. As you can see from an example of a smaller scope, yours will be more than capable and also get better image scale and resolution. You could consider an Svbony 3-8mm zoom if you're only doing planetary observation. They are well regarded and relatively inexpensive if you find the right place to purchase from.

I totally get that you might think folks are being negative, but science sensationalism is generally not well received, and it harms both the hobby and the professional side of it too, just like any other sensationalism. Granted, we don't know for certain, but that's true about most things. The professional astronomy community does have *a good, data based estimate* though which is what science is about. Unfortunately, feeds like the live stream and associated "BrIAn CoX sez BETELGEUSE WILL DESTROY teh EARTH" type stories are not dramatically different from flat earth and astrology - based on pseudoscience and not a lot of facts, which is why the response may have felt a bit less than warm.

Should probably value the opinion of the actual variable star expert, plus most of the rest of the professional astronomy community rather than youtube clickbait though right @Bazz? As far as I am aware there are very few published papers which disagree with the current thinking, which is tens of thousands of years, with sometime in the next 100,000 being the best estimate as @JeremyS and others have pointed out. If there is something other than the recent unpublished paper which disagrees, please share - would be interested in reading.

Congrats to all, great images!

I have both the 30mm and 24mm UFF. They are both excellent, but the 30mm edges out the 24mm slightly. If you're happy with using 2" EPs, then the 30mm is an excellent purchase and I'd go for that. It really is as good as everyone says. If you want to stick to 1.25" format, then get the 24mm, which will give you the maximum (or thereabouts) TFOV in 1.25" format. There are others well regarded EPs in that max TFOV category but I don't think anything else represents the value for money you'd get from the 24mm UFF, again it is a very good EP.

In other news, I have basically done zero observing for months for various reasons and not least another upcoming house move, but re-reading this thread has reminded me how much I'm looking forward to cracking out the 80ED for some double star sessions once we've finally moved!

I think @The60mmKid posted it earlier in the thread but it's an excellent article and definitely worth a bump!

Nice report @Stu! The smallest (in fact only) scope I've managed both Trap E and F with is my 102ED, aroumd this time in 2022 - as I recall it was not that easy!

I don't mind stargazer at all and it does have some romanticism to it, though I don't particularly use it to describe myself. I feel like stargazer perhaps captures the idea of the hundred billion or so humans before us who, during the vast period of history when the stars were not drowned out by artificial light, looked up at the stars with wonder. Some of them even wrote stuff down! That said, I have a physicist friend who does "real" science at a synchrotron, and a few years back I was chatting about observing Nova Herculis 2021 over the course of a few nights, and showing him light curves and spectra recorded by folks on here which I thought was really cool. He responded with words to the effect of "yeah, you can write to Nature and say 'look we discovered that stars contain hydrogen'". 🙄 I retorted that it was like saying Darwin had written to Nature to report that tortoises had shells; the devil is in the detail. The whole thing reminded me that actually you don't need to be wearing a lab coat or working in a giant observatory to be contributing to science. Even if you're only observing for yourself - seeing, and possibly writing down, something like a rare nova or the formations of sunspots or colour differences in multiple star systems is genuine astronomy, and I have referred to myself as an astronomer since then without feeling like a fraud.

How was Megan Argo's talk? She was my tutor last year so I stopped by to chat but I only went to the exhibition, not the talks.

Wow, great intro - welcome!

Haha I took almost exactly the same picture!

Yes they really are!