badhex

Thanks for the tip. Thankfully only two of my A-team EPs have undercuts so I will take care whe using them.

I got both in the end. Hard to take a photo but even visually the aperture difference between this and the (synta) ones is significant. I hadlve had first light with it (last night) and so far it seems very well built piece of kit. One minor niggle is that the 1.25" EP adaptor gets a bit stuck sometimes on insertion, and a couple of times I nudged the scope enough to lose my current target. Hopefully with use it will insert a bit more smoothly.

After various discussions and research, TS-Optics 2" diagonal which allows maximum clear aperture for 2" EPs - and its smaller sibling for 1.25". I would have loved a Baader clicklock but struggled to justify the additional 270+ eur. The saving allowed me to get the 1.25" version and still be 170 eur better off 😱

Made of purest unobtainium

In Berlin I might be miraculously okay, pretty much just during the eclipse window. Clear outside has been fairly accurate the last few days so I'm crossing my fingers. I won't get the full eclipse same as the UK and I'm also not sure how much visibility I will get with buildings etc. but I'm going to go for it nonetheless.

Even the diagram artist seems to have given up at the end and just not bothered labelling it, and given you a toilet roll tube to look through 😂

Quick update on this. I did quick test last night on the Ring comparing naked eye, UHC and OIII. The OIII definitely brought out more detail in this case, at the cost of making everything green and dimming the other stars, as expected. The UHC was also helpful but not quite as much contrast, although it doesn't muck about with the colour and brightness quite so much.

Yeah, I guess that's probably where the money is at the moment given the popularity of AP, especially for small rigs in urban locations.

Lovely stuff, thanks Louis,these will be very helpful!

I'm currently quite enjoying manual at the moment, and have just about perfected the right balance with my 102ED F7 and scopetech mount zero combo. When using my ZS73 I typically have it on an AZ-GTi which I occasionally use just for slewing and tracking. Eventually, when I have the right circumstances, I have an EQ6-R Pro waiting for more regular use, and I imagine that I'll probably often use that for simple slewing and tracking as well.

Nice. I can definitely see the appeal of motor driven but not using the goto functionality. Plus it looks pretty cool!

I was just watching the Ed Ting video on this (or one like it). He said the futuristic LCD handset was a bit tricky, how do you find it?

Cheers Ags, good tip on exit pupil. I'll have to double check next time I'm out but in general I've found something similar from my location, although it does vary from scope to scope. I can tolerate a bigger exit pupil with my ZS73 presumably due to the lower light gathering power. I'm not sure if I've actually ever had two observing sessions within a few days from a dark(er) site then back to urban skies which I think is what has frustrated me, especially because I was using a new EP with a rather cheap scope in the dark sky vs bigger, better quality kit at home I also suspect that my surprise at Lyra containing so many stars was that I can't see half the damn things from here!

Thanks Louis. I guess I'm just trying to find some small improvement wherever I can as most of my observing will be from this location for the foreseeable, but in my heart of hearts I know it might be a fool's errand - obviously the best improvement will always be darker skies. Perhaps I'll persevere with the UHC for now and see how I get on. Most people seem to say that Orion see great improvement with a UHC, however I personally found the Oiii to work better in that particular case. I could do with a list really of which filter of the two will work best in which targets.

This was the bit I found confusing in the description for the CLS: - Visual observation (dark skies): Good, to reduce light pollution by mercury-vapour lamps (streetlight) - Visual observation (urban skies): Good, an UHC-E or UHC filter is more suitable Surely this is the wrong way round? If you're in dark skies why would you need to reduce light pollution from street lights? Also, as already discussed doesn't the UHC cut out some wavelengths desirable to general observing? Very confusing. What we really need is someone who has both filters who can advise in the real world performance. Not sure if I want to spend €175 to be that person though 😂

Thanks Louis. The CLS-CCD blocking IR was my understanding as well from some of the literature, but I'm not super familiar with all ideal/desired wavelengths for visual, so info like this is very useful. Are you able to determine from the graph whether this filter is likely to cause significant image darkening in visual use, or block any other important visual wavelengths? I wonder if there is a full list somewhere of specifically which wavelengths are important for visual.

Thanks Paz. I have seen a bit of stuff on the Optolong L Pro, such as Astrobackyard's video, but I had (perhaps incorrectly) understood it was primarily designed for AP. This is sort of the problem I'm finding with researching filters in general. Almost all videos or reviews tend to be for AP.

Thanks Dave. Very jealous of your Bortle 3! I'll have a dig about to see if I can find any first hand experience of this filter.

I'll have to look into what the street lights are but I imagine that there are still a lot of sodium and Mercury lights in Berlin. Interesting side note, Chris Hadfield took a photo from ISS about ten years ago which actually showed the division of east/west Berlin, because the light technology was different in each part. They may of course have been replaced by now. "Daniela Augenstine, of the city's street furniture department, says: "In the eastern part there are sodium-vapour lamps with a yellower colour. And in the western parts there are fluorescent lamps – mercury arc lamps and gas lamps – which all produce a whiter colour." The western Federal Republic of Germany long favoured non-sodium lamps on the grounds of cost, maintenance and carbon emissions, she says."

Nice. I was just lamenting going from Bortle 5 skies in Ducky to Bortle 8 at home in Berlin on another thread!

It's certainly a cut above the MaxVision that it replaced. There's something about the large eye lens EPs that has attracted me over the last few years and all of my A-team (except the orthos) now fit into that category.

Nice! Not a bad size to start with if you've got the space. Also I note you're another Derbyshirean? I was just visiting my parents in Duckmanton!

Hello all I was recently in Bortle 5 skies with a small 70mm Celestron Travelscope, and managed to pick out the Ring nebula with averted vision at 17x which I was pretty pleased with. Fast forward to me being back home in the city under Bortle 7/8 skies, and even with a 100mm scope with far superior optics and a variety of high quality EPs to choose between, the job was much harder. I also did a "direct" comparison by choosing an EP that gave me 17x and about the same TFOV, and the background sky brightness was terrible. Having a direct comparison within just a few days of each other highlights (ha ha) just how bad my LP is and I'm a bit tired of it. Moving house is not currently an option, so I'm seriously looking again at high quality LP filters. What are my options? Criteria are: 1. Visual only 2. Primarily for small/medium fracs (73mm F6, 102mm F7), 2" fitting 3. Primarily used under urban skies, so LP is pretty bad 4. Should be useful for general observing, all types of targets I should mention I do have Astronomik and Oiii and UHC filters and I have read some conflicting information that suggests the UHC can be helpful for all targets, not just nebulae, but I've only used it for nebulae and in limited tests found it blocks light from stars, clusters and galaxies which is kind of what I expected unless I am getting confused. Astronomik seems to do two LP type filters, the CLS and CLS-CCD both shown in this graph - I presume the CCD one is literally designed for CCDs and not human eyes.

I also discovered that there is a 1.25" version of this being sold by TS. Considering picking up both sizes.

Thanks! I have picked up hints of color before, I'll have to look back at my previous reports to see if I mentioned green!