badhex

It's actually more that Delphinus is normally too faint to pick out as I'm city based, but maybe I'll give it a go again. I meant to do a writeup of the week's observing at the time, but it was something like 5 days worth and I never got further than putting all the notes and objects together in one list to expand on!

Hello all, I'm trying to figure out what to take to an astro meetup/public outreach event which will essentially be from late afternoon with solar observing, followed by some evening observing until about midnight. There is a dedicated area for scopes, and (as far as I can tell) I have a spot there. The thinking is thus: I can only do solar with my ZS73 and not my TS102 (which is the scope I'd prefer to take) so I could take both scopes, a Scopetech mount zero, AZ-GTi, Gitzo 5 and then swap out the scopes and/or mounts as needed when it gets dark. This is a great and very portable option, but maybe not so sturdy if members of the public are involved. The other option is the below, which is way more/heavier stuff to take but is much much sturdier for public viewing, and allows me to set up the ZS73 for solar in the day and then dual mount in the evening, with the ZS73 as super widefield, and the TS102 as medium or high power on the same targets (alignment is not perfect but close enough for widefield) . I've thought about it but never actually used it in this way before and I reckon it will be fun, plus it looks mega cool. Thoughts? Is it a bit much?

I tried for this some weeks ago when I was in darker skies (Delphinus basically invisible from ym normal location). Unfortunately it was behind a tree every night by the time it was dark enough to view 😂

@ED Splitter @bosun21 there's a very quick paragraph about the BBHS at the bottom of this first light report as promised 🙂

Thanks Jeremy, and yes - a delightful fact which I neglected to mention!

Rightio, I finally got round to writing some words about my first light with the Superzoom!

Hello all Finally managed to get an hour or so with clear skies to try out the new APM 15.4mm - 7.7mm Superzoom. It was also first light for my Baader BBHS Clicklock diagonal. I was pretty worn out but didn't want to miss the opportunity, so I set up on the balcony for a quick session knowing that at least some of Perseus and hopefully Jupiter would be around in the bits of sky available to me. Transparency was excellent, but unfortunately seeing was pretty rubbish - it had been 38°C during the day and was still 30° even at 0045 😱 so I assume there was a lot of atmospheric disturbance from the heat. Thankfully, the Double Cluster was well within reach so I selected that as my first target. Spent a while zooming in and out and playing with focus etc. Zoom EPs are somewhat of a novelty for me so this is all learning. I started by zooming right up to 7.7mm (93x) and focusing there, then dropping back down to the other end of the scale, per best practices I have read on SGL. I found it to be very sharp when focused but it did take some playing around to find something that worked well across a few focal lengths. I would say it is close to but not quite parfocal, as advertised. Seeing was not really helping either, so a nicer night is needed, plus some more practice. With fixed FL EPs I often spend some time swapping around and finding the right balance between contrast, framing, background lightness etc. Obviously zooms are great for this particular exercise, however this is really the first time I have truly experienced it first hand with a decent eyepiece. It made a nice change from all the swapping, even though the range is quite small. I eventually settled on 12mm (60x) which gave lovely views of the double cluster, great framing and a reasonably dark background sky (for Berlin). At this point, Jupiter was out from behind the tree so I zoomed out to 15.4mm (48x) and shot from the hip so to speak, roughly pointing in the right direction, and located it after a few seconds of panning. At power both the NEB and SEB were easily visible, although it was not really possible to pick out much more detail in the cloud bands. Partly I think this was the sheer brightness of the planet s well as the seeing. I tried a few different FLs just to get a feel for it. 7.7mm (93x) was also excellent and well defined. I had also brought with me my 2" GSO 2x barlow so I decided now was the time. Starting at 15.4mm gives 95x, so just around where you leave off without the barlow. Although the seeing was very poor as mentioned, 7.7mm (185x) was still surprisingly good, although the image, although fine focus was an issue. Backing out a bit to 9mm (159x) turned out to be ideal, allowing much sharper focus. Banding was again very obvious, but no detail to be discerned in the cloud tops. Feeling the draining effects of a relentlessly warm day, I decided it was time to call it a day, with a quick swing back to the double cluster at high power before heading off. I've collated here at the end my thoughts which punctuated my original observing notes. Essentially, my very first impressions are that this is a great high quality EP and certainly on par with the optical quality and build of the other APM EP I own, the 24mm UFF. I did not have any obtrusive issues with AMD/barrel distortion which have been reported, although it was certainly fairly obvious when panning. This was a session concentrating on only a couple of targets, though, so perhaps other sessions with more panning may fare differently. Changing FLs was very smooth, but it has been extremely warm weather here so we will see what colder weather brings. I noticed between the last two clickstops at one end of the range (not sure which) there is slightly more resistance, so I will again monitor to see if it persists or is just in need of breaking in. My biggest problem, noted several times throughout, was the very long (for me) eye relief causing continual issues with eye placement and distracting from the view. That said, I personally think that longer eye relief is better overall to allow more comfortable use especially for glasses wearers who may not be otherwise not able to use a given EP. APM and KUO have given us multiple configuration options by adding the M43 thread which allows Dioptrx use, or for those that don't need the extra long ER such as myself, Baader M43 extension rings and eyecups can be used to fine tune the experience. I have already replaced the eyecup on mine with such an arrangement and it should hopefully be much more comfortable. One final thought on the Baader clicklock. Obviously, it is a pretty much flawless piece of optical equipment - which one should hope given the ridiculous cost. I really like the clicklock system and it is easier to use than some other self centring twist-lock type mechanisms (the one on the Starfield can be quite stuff and unwieldy). That said, the clicklock itself requires very little rotation to safely lock EPs into place, and it behoves the user to be careful as to just how tightly you lock the mechanism. On multiple occasions I pushed the scope completely off target when trying to unlock the diagonal and switch the barlow in and out etc. Either way - it is a great and solidly built piece of kit - just hideously expensive which is understandably not for everyone.

The Zeta Reticulan factory? 😜 (but yes, I'm also sure)

I have heard it used exactly the same about Tupperware, however you are perhaps the first to apply it to astro gear 🙂

Picked these up for about €25 which is significantly cheaper than the Celestron ones. Aside from colour and branding they look the same. We'll see if they're any good!

I think I heard @Louis D use it first and was quite taken with it 😂

Turns out the Pentax XW also has an M43 thread available, although thankfully I have no issues with ER on my 10mm XW so I don't have to resort to this monstrosity 😱

Speaking of slowmos, I heard about the Borg single-arm fork mount the other day which could be a good option for travel kits. At 0.7kg even smaller and lighter than the Mount Zero and I understand it's good for up to about 2.5kg payload for astro. Looks a bit like a 1970s central heating timer though

Sounds like you made it as far as Step 4 - making a searching and fearless inventory of your eyepiece collection. Only another 8 steps to go!

Yes have been lurking over there myself and reading the various feedback on a few of those threads. And obviously taking cover from the occasional Nedelin catastrophe scale disagreements as per!

I actually can't reach focus in 1.25" mode with my TS102 and Baader BBHS Clicklock. First time I've had that happen with an EP actually. On the eyelens cap, if you do end up replacing the eyecup with the extender+baader eyecup, the existing lens cap fits snugly just inside the cup and does not require 'burping'.

Managed an hour or so from the balcony trying out the new APM Superzoom

I actually meant the Superzoom 😅 but actually I've learnt something today as I wasn't really aware IS bins until today 🙂

Don't forget the sugar!

If you press the IS button on and off really fast while panning around it will be just like slow motion 😂

Nice! You got one. Were you always planning to or was it the good reports coming out of the forum that convinced you? I told myself I didn't need one until I started reading feedback on SGL 😅

But seriously though these sound super interesting. The ludicrous 50x (digital) zoom on my phone camera does image stabilisation and it's remarkably good - I wish you could turn it on for lower zoom levels, like the 5x optical zoom.

At the risk of giving @Stu a heart attack shouldn't this be in the EEVA section 🤣🤣🤣🤐🤐🤐

Interesting combo! Was not aware of the PBI until you mentioned it - I must have missed your post. Will let you know once I've had it under the stars, I can try the 40mm Lacerta in it to see how it compares to your notes.

Yes, the 24mm UFF does have M43, I'm awaiting delivery of an additional eyecup and extension for mine as the ER is slightly too long for me (naturally 😂). Weird that the 30mm doesn't follow that standard. I believe I read somewhere that the top of the Pentax XW eyecup has a piece which unscrews to reveal an M43 as well. I'll have a look tmw and report back.