Show us your Frac

[AndyThilo]

Here’s my latest purchase, replacing a ES102, Altair 130 EDT-F

[pipnina]

My SET Optics 130mm triplet after a night of imaging

Cable management is hard, but at least it works!

I seem to always end up with scopes comically oversized for my poor abused HEQ5, those two 5kg counterweights don't come close to balancing this!

[John]

SET optics rings a bell for me and I can't quite remember why 

Nice looking scope though 🙂

[pipnina]

32 minutes ago, John said:

SET optics rings a bell for me and I can't quite remember why 

Nice looking scope though 🙂

You might be the first person I've spoken to, who has any familiarity with the name at all!

The people at FLO, as well as Es Reid the optical specialist they partner with, had no idea what the company was. They'd never heard of it!

I got it basically third hand so my chain of knowledge to the scope's origin is broken. I don't know how old it is or anything!

I just know it has been a source of great pain, and I may as well have bought a new triplet instead of this second hand one with all the money I spent getting it up to standard 😕

[JeremyS]

Tessa’s turn on Venus tonight 

[Nakedgun]

~

Not a new scope, but the new accessory - Extender 1.7xR -  transforms the 60mm f/8.8 to f/15.

 

 

 

Adding the Extender Q 1.6x to the optical train makes it f/24

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[Sunshine]

On 12/05/2023 at 13:55, pipnina said:

My SET Optics 130mm triplet after a night of imaging

Cable management is hard, but at least it works!

I seem to always end up with scopes comically oversized for my poor abused HEQ5, those two 5kg counterweights don't come close to balancing this!

The pretty and well manicured green space caught my eye, the telescope is also nice!

[pipnina]

15 hours ago, Sunshine said:

The pretty and well manicured green space caught my eye, the telescope is also nice!

My dad (retired) takes the garden as his baby, in previous years I've grown things in there too (only things I could eat later mind you) but I got tired of sowing 25 plants and only getting a few ears of corn for it quite quickly.

Now I just take over his potting shed with astro bits.

The tree in the background is an apple tree that predates the house (used to be an orchard). Sadly while it looks to have character from a distance, it is likely to die in a few years as the trunk is hollow in various places (big enough for birds to nest in, and they have! Though with little success due to resident cat)

[John]

The FC100-DL observing an early evening Venus. Sun well above the horizon and the planet is nice and crisp. Maybe hints of cloud structure on the disk ?

Nice evening to be out 🙂

 

[Deadlake]

1 hour ago, John said:

The FC100-DL observing an early evening Venus. Sun well above the horizon and the planet is nice and crisp. Maybe hints of cloud structure on the disk ?

Nice evening to be out 🙂

 

You managed to use your TOE 4 mm yet?

[John]

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

You managed to use your TOE 4 mm yet?

Yes - this evening is it's 5th time out. I've yet to see any noticeable difference between it and the Nagler zoom at 4mm or the 3.5mm XW to be honest but I'll keep on trying 🙂

From previous experiences it may take a night of excellent seeing to spot any differences and I've not really had one of those for a while. 

Quite a few folks on CN are raving about the TOE's so there must be something about them  🙂

Edited May 15, 2023 by John

[josefk]

Sadly (and frustratingly) not a recent picture (cloud, cloud, cloud at every turn). Here viewing Venus in the daytime sky at Easter.

This location is in a nature (bird) reserve so i probably made quite a strange sight sat behind this with a blanket over my head (to cut out reflections at the eyepiece). What's he looking at?

[Sunshine]

4 hours ago, josefk said:

Sadly (and frustratingly) not a recent picture (cloud, cloud, cloud at every turn). Here viewing Venus in the daytime sky at Easter.

This location is in a nature (bird) reserve so i probably made quite a strange sight sat behind this with a blanket over my head (to cut out reflections at the eyepiece). What's he looking at?

Wow what a supreme scope!

[josefk]

Thanks @Sunshine. i do love it. in the pic above it was delivering views of Venus cloud variations i had never seen before ever. Frustratingly it doesn't have as many hours on it as i would like so far because since the end of February it has been more or less wall to wall cloud (at every observing opportunity of mine at least) here in my area of the UK. Never mind it's mine for the long game... 🙂

Edited May 16, 2023 by josefk

[Merak]

My 80mm Meade Adventurescope, with c100ed-r hiding behind it.    Apologies for any cloud because another frac will be joining them soon.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Merak
added something.

[Merak]

The new addition having first (day)light.

I wanted to make sure I had the correct extensions on to get focus so I didn't have to mess around at night.    I borrowed the Celestron diagonal off my SCT and read the 'system chart'.    All my eyepieces came to focus, both with or without the x3 focal extender.

Hopefully there will be a clear night soon!

[PatientObserver]

1 hour ago, Merak said:

The new addition having first (day)light.

I wanted to make sure I had the correct extensions on to get focus so I didn't have to mess around at night.    I borrowed the Celestron diagonal off my SCT and read the 'system chart'.    All my eyepieces came to focus, both with or without the x3 focal extender.

Hopefully there will be a clear night soon!

What mount are you using?

[badhex]

Got this bad boy out of storage now whilst going through my old astro stuff, so I thought I'd set it up on the Skytee to see how sturdy it is - and if my collimation attempts 9 years ago are still okay! This scope was purchased in 2014 for a pretty low price as it was damaged, but when it turned up it was unfortunately way worse than I could have imagined. I spent some time refurbishing it (thread) but never really got chance to test it properly before moving countries. 

The objective lens looks in pretty good shape considering everything it went through, better than I remember in fact, and I think it looks rather good on the Skytee which holds it well. 

In daylight low power viewing with the Pan 41mm it seems fine, a small amount of false colour as expected and a very fine touch needed to get decent focus of the rooftops across the road, but that was through glass with some haze.

Not had a chance to try it under the stars yet but strongly considering at least a balcony test sometime soon. Overall I'm happy to be reunited with it, let's hope it performs well in rich field/low power applications which is what I intend to use it for. 

Excuse the mess everywhere, still got a lot of unpacking and sorting to do - although if you look hard enough you'll find three mounts of varying ages in this picture! 

[Merak]

20 minutes ago, PatientObserver said:

What mount are you using?

Sky-Watcher AZ4.  I feel it could easily use a more compact mount, something I may look in to for trips away from the house. 

I'll probably end up getting another diagonal too.

[PatientObserver]

5 hours ago, Merak said:

Sky-Watcher AZ4.  I feel it could easily use a more compact mount, something I may look in to for trips away from the house. 

I'll probably end up getting another diagonal too.

Thanks. All the Sky-Watchers I have seen have been white. I have been looking for something similar to the ScopeTech Zero, and had not seen that one before.

[Paz]

On 16/05/2023 at 07:47, josefk said:

Sadly (and frustratingly) not a recent picture (cloud, cloud, cloud at every turn). Here viewing Venus in the daytime sky at Easter.

This location is in a nature (bird) reserve so i probably made quite a strange sight sat behind this with a blanket over my head (to cut out reflections at the eyepiece). What's he looking at?

 

I had this a couple of weeks ago. I was observing the sun from the local village hall car park as the geography there is good for it and I heard some people approaching that turned out to be a father and son walking  to cub scouts. The conversation went like this...

Son "Dad, what's that man looking at?"

Dad "I don't know, why don't you ask him?"

Son "Excuse me, what are you looking at?"

Me "The sun"

Dad "The SUN!?!"

At which point Dad, evidently horrified, lenghtens his stride and moves his little one on at a pace, and that was the end of that!

[garryblueboy]

TEC140 ED Out Tonight Moon and Venus the targets nice views 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by garryblueboy

[The Lapwing]

Here is my outfit. Tele Vue 102 on Gibraltar HD4 with a TV 2 inch diagonal and Starbeam finder.

Edited May 30, 2023 by The Lapwing

[takurrito]

Which side do I look through? My baby tak, named Tako.

My FC-76Q, a formidable 3" f/12.6 quadruplet that throws up razor sharp lunar and planetary views, named Takoyaki.

And the biggest of em all, Takurrito, the FC100DZ.

 

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by takurrito

[JeremyS]

19 minutes ago, takurrito said:

Which side do I look through? My baby tak, named Tako.

My FC-76Q, a formidable 3" f/12.6 quadruplet that throws up razor sharp lunar and planetary views, named Takoyaki.

And the biggest of em all, Takurrito, the FC100DZ.

 

 

What a beautiful family you have 👍🏻