Eyepiece Help For a Noob.

[TankBall]

oh yes thats helps so much. i love getting technical to but when its somthing as new as this it just goes over my head untell i understand it. so with that said i take it "A sky Full Of Stars" more or less shows off the Winter Albireo in the right light (SS from the VN itself)

also what i learn for me is if i use the top of the telescope like a gun sight i can get it on the starts i want to look at around 90% of the time. since i cant seen the get the targer to line up right.

i may look into geting a eyeiece with cross hairs so i can line everything up right before night time. also where did u get your metal handles for your Vixen? mine has the cheap ones. 

[TankBall]

i need to know if this is normal. i seem to have a small line in the diagonal prism and it seems to move when i look at it from the side (as seen in the video) i think its due to the prism it has but idk since i never had a telescope before. 

 

[Mak the Night]

1 hour ago, TankBall said:

i need to know if this is normal. i seem to have a small line in the diagonal prism and it seems to move when i look at it from the side (as seen in the video) i think its due to the prism it has but idk since i never had a telescope before. 

 

That looks like an Amici prism diagonal. It gives an upright, non-mirror reversed image. Some diagonals have prisms or mirrors which give an upright but mirror reversed image. I use Amici prisms like yours a lot. I personally prefer them. The line you can see is part of the prism. 

I ordered this William Optics Amici prism diagonal from the US a couple of years ago. The US postal service tracked it all the way to England where I live. Then the Royal Mail lost it at Heathrow airport. It got returned to California then re-sent back to me. After travelling 10 000 kilometres it got damaged and the prism became unseated.

I unthreaded the nose-piece and helical focuser and put them on this diagonal below.

If you can't see anything wrong when you look through the telescope your diagonal should be fine.

[Mak the Night]

5 hours ago, TankBall said:

oh yes thats helps so much. i love getting technical to but when its somthing as new as this it just goes over my head untell i understand it. so with that said i take it "A sky Full Of Stars" more or less shows off the Winter Albireo in the right light (SS from the VN itself)

also what i learn for me is if i use the top of the telescope like a gun sight i can get it on the starts i want to look at around 90% of the time. since i cant seen the get the targer to line up right.

i may look into geting a eyeiece with cross hairs so i can line everything up right before night time. also where did u get your metal handles for your Vixen? mine has the cheap ones. 

You have to synchronise the small finder scope on your Vixen with what you see through the scope when you look through the eyepiece. This is best done in daytime on a fixed object. A distant tree or building will be good for this. It doesn't have to be that far away from you, although the farther away the better.

It's best to do it in stages, preferably with a low powered eyepiece. The 20mm eyepiece you have might be OK until you can get a longer focal length one.

1/ Set the scope up so you can see a distant object looking through the diagonal.

2/ Centre some part of the object in the view. 

3/ Tighten the clutches on the Vixen mount so the telescope wont move until you turn the slow motion cables. I think these are the 'handles' you mentioned. You can buy longer cables from most astronomy stores. The slow motion controls help you track stars or planets. You can't see them move with the naked eye, but they move with the Earth's rotation and you'll need the slow motion controls to keep them in view. Notice the Moon moving on a night. It takes time but it rises and sets. The Vixen mount is particularly good at slow motion tracking, it's why I bought it lol.  You won't be able to move the telescope until you loosen the clutches again. 

4/ When the object is centred in the telescope, look through the finder scope. 

It should have cross hairs. If you can see the object that you have centred in the telescope eyepiece try to get it centre in the cross hairs of the finder. Don't move the scope though. There should be two little plastic screws on the finder scope. There will also be a spring loaded metal button. All you need to adjust are the two small black plastic screws.  This adjusts the finder in the bracket by moving it up or down slightly. When the object you found in the telescope is centred in the finder you are ready to go.

5/ Check between the two, you may have to make a few fine adjustments. It's like setting a gun sight. You should be able to find any object in the finder and it will be visible in the telescope eyepiece. 

 

[Mak the Night]

Oh yeah, I forgot. Don't move the mount with the slow motion controls by pulling on them, you can damage the spigot that connects the cable to the mount. I think Vixen warn you about this. Also there is a rubber pad in the seat of the saddle which pulls off. You have to take the telescope off the mount for this usually. Under the rubber pad are two Allen keys which enable the altitude and azimuth movement to be tightened or loosened. I think there's a YouTube video on this.

 

I know you hate Android lol, but Celestron SkyPortal is a pretty good free app download.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.celestron.skyportal&hl=en_GB

If you have a PC running Windows, Mac or Linux, Stellarium is a good freeware virtual planetarium.

http://stellarium.org/en_GB/

I run it on Ubuntu.

[John]

Amici prism diagonals can show a bright line across the view when viewing bright stars / planets. This is due to light relecting off one of the edges of the prism.

[Mak the Night]

I've never seen the prism roof when using a Mak or SCT. Refractors can be susceptible to it though. It depends on magnification. Under a 100x and it's not easy to see. I saw it once on Jupiter with an Orion Amici prism when I was using a Baader Semi-Apo filter on an ST80 at about 150x. When I changed the filter to a stacked Baader Fringe Killer and Neodymuim it disappeared. Which was odd.

I've never seen it on the ST80 with this 2" Baader Amici prism, even when using a highly unfashionable 19mm Celestron Luminos. The Luminos only gives 21x magnification though.

https://www.telescope.com/The-Advantages-of-Observing-with-Correct-Image-Diagonal/p/106656.uts

[John]

I was thinking of the OP's amici prism diagonal rather than yours.

[Mak the Night]

8 minutes ago, John said:

I was thinking of the OP's amici prism diagonal rather than yours.

I don't know what the supplied Vixen Amicis are like. If Vixen make it I'm guessing it's pretty good though. 

I have a few Amici diagonals. Above, are a GSO, an Orion, an Antares and a modified Sky-Watcher. They're virtually identical with resin bodies. The nose pieces and drawtubes are aluminium or brass depending on which particular diagonal. I'm pretty certain they are all Synta made with the exception of the GSO. They look suspiciously like the OP's diagonal. I also have five metal bodied Amicis (six if you include the borked WO diagonal). Regardless of the price difference between the resin bodied diagonals and the metal bodied diagonals, I can't discern any real difference in view quality.

[Stu]

6 minutes ago, Mak the Night said:

I can't discern any real difference in view quality

Just out of interest, can I ask why you keep 5 or 6 identical amici prisms?

[John]

13 minutes ago, Mak the Night said:

I don't know what the supplied Vixen Amicis are like. If Vixen make it I'm guessing it's pretty good though. 

I have a few Amici diagonals. Above, are a GSO, an Orion, an Antares and a modified Sky-Watcher. They're virtually identical with resin bodies. The nose pieces and drawtubes are aluminium or brass depending on which particular diagonal. I'm pretty certain they are all Synta made with the exception of the GSO. They look suspiciously like the OP's diagonal. I also have five metal bodied Amicis (six if you include the borked WO diagonal). Regardless of the price difference between the resin bodied diagonals and the metal bodied diagonals, I can't discern any real difference in view quality.

I think the OP's Vixen OTA is one probably of the Synta made ones.

[Mak the Night]

2 hours ago, John said:

I think the OP's Vixen OTA is one probably of the Synta made ones.

Yeah, it stands a good chance. The Orion and Sky-Watcher Amici prisms are identical except for 'Orion' being written on one of them, they have aluminium drawtubes and nosepieces. The Antares has a chromed brass nosepiece and drawtube. So a Synta diagonal would make sense on a Synta made Vixen OTA.

The GSO is distinctly different, the dimensions of the housing are slightly bigger and the screws holding the metal base plate are black.  

[Dave In Vermont]

Greetings, TankBall, it's a pleasure to meet you and welcome!

We're here to help folks, like yourself, with questions. So please always feel free to ask any you may have. It's what we do & how we learn. You have a very nice telescope there! It must be a delight on the warm & clear Arkansas nights!

Glad to see you here -

Dave

[N3ptune]

I don't know much about diagonals, i was told by @ollypenrice it's better to look trough my nebula filter then then at it I was concerned about a light film on it's surface only visible from a certain angle and lighting and which was most likely a cleaning fluid film residue. If the views are clear, then everything should be fine. 

Heh.. that was said previously too by Mak the Night anyways. 

Dave in Vermont hello!

[Mak the Night]

On the borked WO diagonal I got loads of fingerprints and smudges on the prism as I tried to re-seat it. Yet I couldn't see them when looking through the eyepiece. The smudges were very difficult to clean. I'd still use the diagonal but the prism shakes loose occasionally. The Bak 4 prism itself is high quality, it might become useful one day.

This one works fine. A couple of years ago I experimented with threading a reducer onto the diagonal itself. It doesn't work lol.

[TankBall]

ya its normal. i was freaking out over nothing, now the next step for me will be to over time upgrade the scope to make it do more and more and someday get something like vixens R200SS Newtonian Telescope (also used in the VN) im also eyeing the Orion 8944 SkyQuest XT6 Classic Dobsonian Telescope. 

[orion25]

11 hours ago, Dave In Vermont said:

Greetings, TankBall, it's a pleasure to meet you and welcome!

We're here to help folks, like yourself, with questions. So please always feel free to ask any you may have. It's what we do & how we learn. You have a very nice telescope there! It must be a delight on the warm & clear Arkansas nights!

Glad to see you here -

Dave

Welcome, TankBall and welcome back, Dave! TankBall, I hope you get the help you need to get stargazing. It's a wonderful hobby! Nice scope you have there, too.

Regards,

Reggie 

[Dave In Vermont]

Vixen eyepieces are some of my favorites! Notable for excellent color and pin-point stars across the field-of-view (FOV).

N3ptune, Reggie - fancy running into you here! Hiya, hiya.

Ho-Ka-Hay!

D.

[Mak the Night]

I've just been looking at the Winter Albireo with my Mak. Found it on Starry Night 7 (Orion SE) as well. Note its proximity to M41 aka the Little Beehive.

 

[N3ptune]

I wonder if I am going to have to wait for next winter to look at winter Albiero again...   My last observation was twelve days ago.. ):

The little beehive, what a great cluster also.

 

[Mak the Night]

Yeah well, we had 80 kph winds last night. Although they blew some of the clouds away. And my dustbin. 

Speaking of Amicis, I only have one of these (above) but I have a pair of these (below).

The 90͒  is an Omegon, I have no idea who the OEM is. Although I could say the same for the 45͒ WO.

[Mak the Night]

And I have a pair of these.

[Stu]

30 minutes ago, Mak the Night said:

And I have a pair of these.

Which scopes are they Mak, and out of interest, why do you have two? Thanks!

[Moonshane]

The thing about his apos it don't matter if it's black or white......