badhex

Great, thanks! Was thinking of setting up a plate of some kind on the top mounting holes for my scope, but I only have the smaller tube rings as it's an 80ED. As it's only a small number of accessories perhaps perspex would work for me too.

Nice setup. What's the accessory plate/tubering/dovetail combo you have there?

New member of the owners club here! Decided to treat myself (ordered early Oct) and just arrived a few days before Christmas. Will be mostly using as a sturdy long-term investment for visual; initial setup will be with an Evostar 80ED. I finally have a mount sturdy enough to use my Panoptic 41mm! I enjoy using the synscan app with the AZ-GTi so I've also bought the WiFi dongle to give me more flexibility in the setup. Eventually I may plan to do some AP which I know is where this mount shines, but in the medium term I wanted a tank, and the EQ6-R Pro is certainly that!

Yes, Ducky is surrounded by quite a lot of farmland still, so the main LP comes from the village itself which is not too bad, and the M1 and commercial park where the pit used to be. My stepdad does have a cheapish frac but not sure how much use he gets out of it. I have only had my gear out there once some years ago. We went out to Clumber Park and found a great spot out of of the way and sheilded from local LP, had an excellent night's viewing. Would love to do that again!

Dronnie eh? I'm a Chesterfield (Duckmanton, nr Bolsover) lad originally although in Berlin now! I would much prefer your Bortle 5 skies 😉

I had the foresight to get my C5 outside on the balcony before I went out for the final food shop of the year in the vague hope that a) I would get back in time and b) it would still be clear. Despite the landlord's best efforts to delay us leaving I did manage to get back in time and it was, remarkably, still clear. I got set up upstairs on the shared roof terrace with my pre-cooled gear, and fit in a solid 20 mins of reasonable viewing, and maybe another 10 of not so good viewing. Still, both Jupiter and Saturn looked great even at 71x in my Morpheus 17.5mm, and I was able to easily pick out the Galilean moons and Titan. Switching up to the Meade HD60 9mm started to really push limits of the seeing so I ended up spending most of the time with the Morpheus. I'm surprised just how much detail I could pick out at 71x but the Morpheus continues to delight and it does seem to occupy the go-to EP sweet spot at the moment. I am lucky to have access to a roof terrace in a capital city, but the skyline is still pretty hectic on all compass points except NE, so it doesn't take long before the atmospheric interference from all the buildings ruins the view for such a low lying target, sadly, but I'm happy to have got a decent chance now in case it's not possible tomorrow. Good luck to everyone else!

Maybe with a quick peek through some binos to represent the Eyes of Our Lord Charles Frank 😊

Can us 'new owners' of an old book join the club? If so I'm in!

The thought just occurred, that around the time I found a hardcopy, I also managed to to track down a PDF version - I've attached here for your delight! Of note is that the same illustrations posted by @Moonshed occur on different pages in this scanned PDF version - pages 118 and 122 in the pdf rather than 112 and 115. Presumably, then, there must be a couple of editions released. CharlesFrank-FranksBookOfTheTelescope.pdf

@Nigella Bryant looking at your photo again, I think, apart from the pier instead of the tripod, the above is true of yours too?!

Great thread! Although I was not around when Frank's were still operating, the first scope I ever looked through as a young lad - and which years later became my first scope - is a 6“ F8 Charles Frank newt which belonged to my Grandfather. It was given to him by the Chesterfield Observatory (Derbyshire) / astro society where is he was a member and looks to be one of the deluxe versions, mostly original with a few modifications, such as an added Cruezet Valence AC motor. The finder is an Aldis WW2 illuminated gunsight and the tripod is British military / govt from a Ross of London binocular gunsight, and the focuser is a helical 0.965 push-fit or you can unscrew the push fit to reveal a RAS thread. It came with three EPs - two swift circle-t Kellners, 20mm and 12mm, and a RAS threaded, unknown focal length and rather loftily named "Charles Frank Ultra Wide". I eventually picked up a copy of Frank's Book of the Telescope and I'm always on the lookout for more of those volcano top Kellners in the other focal lengths and more info to add to the history of the scope!

Looks great, and also excellent for the OCD crew amongst us!

This is awesome. Great match for the EP colour scheme as well!

Maybe it will become part of @FLO's Black Friday sale! Seriously though, a huge loss for astronomy and Puerto Rico. Arecibo was on my fantasy list of observatories to visit. The one silver lining is that they had not decided to repair it and had people working on it at the time of collapse.

Thanks. Sorry missed your reply somehow. This is pretty much my thinking. I guess my concern is whether there is dew/ice that I won't see and end up trapping inside the case, but like you say I can leave it for an hour or two to equalise and check again, or open the cases at that point to let any remaining dew evaporate.

Very nice! The 17.5mm is rapidly becoming my favourite EP.

Slight update to the 1.25" case. @Chinapig put me onto the Baader Morpheus 17.5mm to replace my Meade UWA 18mm which had some weird coating damage. I also quite like the 25mm Plössl that came with my C5 as a cheap and cheerful, and I'm not doing any imaging at the moment so I took out the Lifecam HD so I swapped that out. I'm sure I'm done for a bit now.

Hello all, We're at that time of year in Berlin where equipment gets hellishly cold during a session but not cold enough for frost to form; thus far I've managed to avoid dewing apart from on one occasion a couple of weeks ago when it was significantly warmer. So if there is definitely no dew on your scope or EPs, and you pack everything away into the various cases, dust caps and so on outside - is it best to leave it packed away to come back to temp once inside the house? Typically I have always left EPs and scopes without their dust caps on but in the cases with the lids open to come to temp and let any condensation evaporate, but yesterday everything was perfect when outside, but immediately became a huge condensation magnet (particularly the C5) the moment i opening up the cases. Can't help thinking it would have been better just leaving everything sealed up away from the more humid air inside. Thoughts?

My second entry in the world of cats but my first SCT!

Excellent stuff! 👏👏👏

Bought three copies, one each for my two nieces and my sister who has Down's syndrome. Hey @FLO what say if we can get to 50 "ordered" replies on this thread, perhaps you could consider sending Aston a small FLO gift voucher or something along those lines?

After reading this post yesterday I popped outside to the balcony and saw a moon-shaped glow behind the clouds which were steadily clearing, so I thought I'd crack out my new C5 for 30 mins of moon viewing while there was chance. Turns out you should probably look to see where the moon *really* is instead of assuming, as it seems it was just a lunar reflection and the actual moon was well out of the field of view of my covered balcony. "That's no moon" etc.

+1 for shimmering/boiling. When I was having poor seeing issues on Friday with my new C5, defocusing really shows up the issue - I used to use the same trick with my old Skymax 102. Effect is just like the haze you get from a hot road but the distortions look bigger, presumably due to magnification but someone smarter than me should probably confirm that theory.

Ah, poor Ed. He seems like such a lovely chap. Anyway like you said I'm glad he's back and making content!

Thanks Michael!