(Twitching )spotting scope. Oh no !

[cotterless45]

Ebay, Camlink 20x60  80 mm spotting scope on Velbon tripod, less than half price delivered. Condition , used once . Comes with carry bags for both scope and tripod.

Unpacking it was like from new. Quite amazed at the quality and the ease of using a snap on quick release fitting over the Whitworth thread for photo tripods. The objective cover just tightly pushes on and the zoom is covered by a screw on cover. It's nitrogen filled , fog proof and I hope fool proof. There's a thing on the ota go enable twist and tighten , for more comfy viewing. Very nice coatings.

Very sturdy and well built. Nothing but the chimney about 100 yards to try it out on. At x60 I could see the moss spore heads on their stalks and that was through double glazing . Sorry , some of us are very keen on Bryophytes. Lungworts at a push !

I fitted it on my uber heavy ancient tripod and with ease it could reach about 70 degree up at extreme height. For terrestrial I use my 90 , but it's a bit of a handful to carry to wild spots. Bit of a scurry if anything moves !

I'll get first light eventually , it's something that I've never looked through or thought of , but I do love optics !

I was in Lidl fiddling with a Bresser spotting scope. For £25 it showed very sharp views of the lights. Reviews however were not so good with focussing changing the fov. 60mm aperture is a bit outside the box.

We're off to Skye for two weeks in April , can't think of anywhere better to set up .

Quite forward to a new way of observing , any scopers out there ? !

old Nick, not twitching.

[gtis]

Nick I am thinking about getting one for when I go birdwatching 

[iPeace]

Using a compact, convenient scope can be very addictive. Hope you'll be okay.

[Alan White]

Nick, no need to feel ashamed and not post a picture, you are among friends..........

Next thing you know it will be an alt az mounted TV 60mm 

 

[iPeace]

5 minutes ago, Alan White said:

Next thing you know it will be an alt az mounted TV 60mm 

NEVER!

[niallk]

I took a punt on a €25 Lidl one 2 yrs ago.  Its fine/quite good for daytime use.

Not good tbh for astro imho...

[happy-kat]

I really like my 70mm mini mak, just need to sort collimation, made a huge difference though hacking it apart of making a custom back plate for it and removing the awful prism that gave the mak chromatic aberation.

[Alien 13]

My best ever astro views were through a spotting scope, it was a military one though with a 70 mm objective and X6 magnification but probably cost around 30K in today's money.

Alan

[Ags]

14 hours ago, cotterless45 said:

could see the moss spore heads on their stalks and that was through double glazing . Sorry , some of us are very keen on Bryophytes. Lungworts at a push !

Wonderful little plants, I do agree. I would love to go back in a time machine and see the world when the mosses ruled!

I'm quite taken by the "micro" Celestron spotting scopes, but they are pricey.

https://www.celestron.com/products/hummingbird-7-22x50-mm-ed-micro-spotting-scope

[Merlin]

I have an ACUTER 25X60-80mm spotter. The ACUTERs are not expense spotters, but the optics are surprisingly good.

[John]

My spotter is a very low cost Celestron Landscout 12-36 x 60mm. For the few quid that it cost it performs well for birding as long as you stick at around 20x - the FoV narrows a lot at 12x and things get a little fuzzy over 25x. I've viewed the Moon with it and that was pleasant enough. It shows Jupiters disk and it's 4 brightest moons. It's not going to win any prizes in the astro role but as a cheap birding / wildlife scope it does well enough.