badhex

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!

Ah, I had intended to post this in the Astro Lounge - mods please move if that makes sense given the topic?

Hello all, Several years (decades) late to the party discovering Ed Ting, but I have been watching a few of his great videos over the last few weeks and then did some research to find that he has been a huge deal in the astro community for years and must be very well known, especially to the more well established astronomers among you. I also read that he'd been very prolific writing excellent reviews, but had some trouble with a manufacturer who took legal action and he went quiet for a few years which seems like a huge shame. Does anyone know what happened there? Regardless, he's back now and I was massively surprised to find that despite his long standing presence, his astro videos are pretty much all within the last four months, and he only has 1200 subscribers, so I thought it might be nice to give him a few more subs in the spirit of the community https://www.youtube.com/user/edting/featured

Was out on Friday night for a couple of hours (in Berlin) giving my new C5 a quick first light and the sky was (mostly) visibly clear of clouds, but Mars even at fairly low power was only stable for maybe a minute at a time, and then five mins of horrific shimmer. I gave up in the end. Even the stars in the Pleiades were all over the place. Maybe my terrible views moved over from Berlin to the UK!

Yep, it was immediately confused as i thought it might be (and as you mentioned). I flipped the OTA over to the other side, but I'll have a look into moving the finder, but not sure it does have the screws - but can't remember off the top of my head. I've seen a number of posts about the eq mode firmware and right hand mode so that's potentially the other option.

Gotcha. The C5 has the finder shoe on the opposite side so I've had to mount it on the right. Not sure if that will confuse the tracking but as you can see the scope arrived earlier and is now set up waiting for the dark so I guess we'll find out!

I did spend a bit of time considering the C6 but decided to go with the C5 for a touch more portability (and lighter on the wallet) plus I was a bit unsure because most sites list the C6 at over 4kg. Doesn't sound like there's a lot in it though as the C5 is 2.7kg sans diagonal/EP. Good to know it works well on the AZ-GTi - I should have no problems with the C5 then! BTW which way do you mount your C6? Scope to the left or right of the mount?

Seems to be a common issue due to those RDFs being fairly standard on the synta etc. scopes (one size fits nobody?). I can confirm the shim trick worked well for me, although if you're now used to mentally adjusting, maybe fixing it would actually make things worse!

Good to know! Seems very odd to me that the OTAs are so much more expensive when they are functionally identical to the Astro-Fi models but Celestron must have their reasons. Out of interest, does the RDF not quite adjust far enough? I had the same issue with a Skymax 102 and found a couple of shims in the finder shoe did the trick. I think there are threads about that issue IIRC which might help.

Thanks Tim, fingers crossed!

After deciding to get the Astro-Fi which was supposedly in stock I ordered it, I then found they could not confirm the delivery date... and while waiting that the C5 OTA came back in stock, so I cancelled the Astro-Fi order and ordered the OTA! I third time lucky! Although i'm still waiting for the refunds on my first two attempts so I've technically paid for it three times and am temporarily broke!

Well! What a debacle! Finally concluded on the other thread that the Astro-Fi was almost certainly the same, I hedged my bets and ordered it at a pretty reasonable 466eur from that well known online rainforest retailer, thinking I'd continue searching for the OTA. If the Astro-Fi turned out somehow not the same scope I could send it back or if it was, just sell on the mount to someone for next to nothing (or even give it away), and merely put up with the horrible blue sticker... Then despite being listed as in stock, the order then said "we'll email you when we have a delivery date" 😳 Confused and rather frustrated, I figured I'd just wait a bit to see what happened and investigate other options like TS above... and then later today noticed that the C5 OTA - previously unavailable on the site - came back in stock at an even more reasonable 438eur. Very confusing. So now I've cancelled the Astro-Fi (my second attempt to purchase the C5!) and ordered the OTA (attempt no. 3). I much prefer buying from astronomy retailers but 200 euros is 200 euros. Fingers crossed it works out and doesn't arrive smashed to bits or something equally hideous.

Thanks for the heads up! I'm in Germany so good from a shipping perspective, I'll take a look.

Thanks Tim. I did see quite a few mentions regarding true aperture comparisons (including 150s and 180s in some cases) where the Bresser was mentioned. I once had a bit of a bad experience with a huge second hand Bresser 'frac which required lots extensive rebuild work... very specific situation and really no fault with the brand but I think it has irrationally put me off Bresser! Maybe I will give it another look 🤔