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TS 72mm first light


Stu

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I’ve been hovering over the Buy button on one of these for a while, and finally took the plunge when a mint condition used one  showed up. It arrived yesterday (as posted in the ‘Postman’ thread :)), just as described; a very lovely, chunky ‘nuggety’ scope, very solid and well engineered. It put me in mind of a more modern TV76, and is just the kind of thing I really enjoy owning.

Three main attractions for me. Optics, compact design with the sliding dewshield and the lovely R&P focuser.

Hush you say, this is an observing report! Well, an impromptu meeting in the pub with Gavin and one other member of our club saw my little scope sitting on the table whilst we had a drink. At around 10 I think, we had a look at the skies, and once equipped with glasses ;) could actually see that there were stars, and it turned into a very nice clear spell for an hour or so. The 72 was easily mounted on my Giro-WR which I had just put on the tripod from my AZGTi. This proved a little wobbly and I will use the Gitzo in future. First minor problem was finding balance. With a 24mm Panoptic in a Tak Prism, the focuser is wound out a fair way, and even pushing the Dovetail as far forward as possible in the clamp still left it slightly rear heavy. I had to use the clutch tension more than I would like so do need to resolve this somehow.

I had no finder on the scope, another thing to sort, so I was again eyeballing along the length of the scope and then panning and starhopping. Not the best, but managed a fair few targets. Mars looked impressively crisp using the Nag Zoom at the low to mid range. Some faint dark markings on the surface showed through, but higher power seemed to lose the contrast on these. Saturn was very sharp, a lovely view with Titan visible. Two bands in the belts showed up, not a Cassini night though.

Moving on to DSOs, and bear in mind the skies were probably around 19.2 or 19.3 say, Mag 5 ish. The Milky Way was just barely visible through Cygnus which in itself is an achievement for these parts. The green we observe from has a fairly decent southern horizon, and the Teapot was visible above a handily placed area of shorter trees. I picked up M22 quite clearly, nothing much more than a fuzzy blob, but good to see. M92 and M13 were similarly easily found and showed a little texture, largely due to their higher altitude I suspect.

I was expecting the Double Double to be fairly easy pickings, and so it turned out. At x86 it was a clear, if tight split, and ramping up the mag gave a very satisfying view. The optics on this scope appear to be as good as I was hoping for, essentially colour free and presenting this target as four lovely bullseyes, crisp and clean. Mizar and Alcor were similarly satisfying, one of my old favourites.

At this point, a bank of cloud began to creep over the trees to the South. I had just picked up the star cluster that marks M8 and wanted to see if I could pick up any nebulosity using a UHC or OIII filter. By the time I popped back to my car and returned, the cloud bank had obscured M8 and it bacame a race against time to pick off a couple more targets.

So, the Veil with a 72mm scope under suburban skies with poorly dark adapted eyes? What do you reckon? Well, even without a filter I could dimly see the Eastern Veil, after panning across from 52 Cygni. Popping the UHC filter in improved the contrast, and made the Witch’s Broom faintly visible. The OIII seemed to darken the sky background further and I felt improved the view further. Whilst basically a faint curve of grey light, the Eastern Veil did show some slight texture. The Western part was clearest through 52 Cygni where it is narrowest and brightest. The broom area itself was very faintly visible. This was all with the 24mm Panoptic and does show that these filters are useful even in small scopes. I suspect the 30mm ES will be even better with its larger exit pupil. Balance will be even more of an issue to be sorted though.

Finally I spotted M31 as a familiar grey oval but the cloud quickly stopped play for the night, the NAN having been covered just before I got to it.

Gavin had his 60mm frac nearby, with NV fitted and the two best views of the night were definitely M8 with M20 and quite extensive wider nebulosity visible and then the North America Nebula. Quite remarkable views for such a small scope under very average skies.

So, very happy with the little 72mm and am looking forward to having it with me for quick observing sessions wherever I may be. Under a dark sky it should be very nice indeed.

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Very nice, Stu.

I had a very similar Altair-branded 72mm a few years ago that was built like a tank and sounds very similar to your TS72. Nice little scopes but I'm sure I recall having similar problems balancing it. I think I ended up having a dovetail running back under the focuser so that I could move the whole thing forward rather than having to rely on the small amount of movement through the rings. In that picture it looks like you could do the same by placing the rings at one end to the dovetail and having the other end project backwards towards the focuser?

 

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Nice report Stu, I didn’t realise you saw all those targets while I was ogling Sagittarius...

I concur - your TS 72mm is a great scope. Impressive views you got of the Veil. I have also had balance issues with my 72mm TS so got this dovetail which sorted it out.

My favourite time of the year to observe - nice to be standing around, chatting and observing without freezing my poor little fingers ?

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Just now, GavStar said:

Nice report Stu, I didn’t realise you saw all those targets while I was ogling Sagittarius...

I concur - your TS 72mm is a great scope. Impressive views you got of the Veil.

My favourite time of the year to observe - nice to be standing around, chatting and observing without freezing my poor little fingers ?

Tee hee, the ‘Stuoto’ was working well, quietly zipping around finding stuff. Will be nice to have a bit more time to spend on the targets next time.

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24 minutes ago, Stu said:

Just saw the comment about the Dovetail, I think I have a longer one around so will give that a go. Thanks

You may find it a bit awkward to use if you just replace dovetail. I'm having trouble with my TS80 this way - it can't be moved in all positions on AZ4 - focuser knob hits mount head at some high Alt positions.

I think better solution is to leave small dovetail on and bolt it down to a longer one instead of just replacing. This way focuser and scope will be "raised" somewhat (further from the mount attachment) and that might help. It does add a bit of weight to setup but it can help in certain situations.

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7 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You may find it a bit awkward to use if you just replace dovetail.

Thanks for the idea, will have a look and see if I need to do this.

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21 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You may find it a bit awkward to use if you just replace dovetail. I'm having trouble with my TS80 this way - it can't be moved in all positions on AZ4 - focuser knob hits mount head at some high Alt positions.

I adjusted the rings so that the focuser was on the other side (and vertical) to my az gti Mount - it works fine for me this way.

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1 hour ago, DRT said:

Very nice, Stu.

I had a very similar Altair-branded 72mm a few years ago that was built like a tank and sounds very similar to your TS72. Nice little scopes but I'm sure I recall having similar problems balancing it. I think I ended up having a dovetail running back under the focuser so that I could move the whole thing forward rather than having to rely on the small amount of movement through the rings. In that picture it looks like you could do the same by placing the rings at one end to the dovetail and having the other end project backwards towards the focuser?

 

Thanks Derek. Somehow managed to miss your post. Good idea which I will try out. I want to keep the weight down as much as possible so this might be a good option.

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@Stu, I was browsing the Altair Astro website earlier today and noticed that their latest incarnation of the 72ED has some interesting little "Stand-off blocks" between the rings and the dovetail to allow the dovetail plate to clear the focuser when extended back to assist balance. these might be a good way of keeping the weight down but I'm not sure if the sell them separately. Perhaps worth asking?

https://www.altairastro.com/Altair-72-EDF-Refractor-Deluxe-CNC.html

 

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Very nice indeed Stu. I'm sure the ED72 will serve you well!. Nice report also BTW.

I've re discovered small scope observing this year. I like many others always get/have aperture fever, but there are many nights that a big setup can equal a big pack away after a short time at the EP!. I'm just loving how capable these small ED scopes are!. They seem to cut through our seeing issues like a hot knife threw butter. And at a large array of magnifications as well making it a multi target telescope.

This year I've only had the 5" frac out once, the 8" newt has not been out at all!. My ED70 10/12 times on the EQ5 so far.

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Nice report. I picked up the Altair one open boxed from Wex.  There’s nothing like a big scope to make you appreciate a lightweight grab and go set up that you can be using within a minute or two.  Haven’t tried the veil yet, so congrats fir getting that in yours. 

Chris

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Have added a findershoe and lightweight finder, plus have bolted an ADM Dovetail onto the standard one to try to help solve the balance issue. Would like to find a lighter weight solution, it feels like the ADM weighs as much as the scope! ;)

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On ‎16‎/‎08‎/‎2018 at 09:30, Stu said:

I’ve been hovering over the Buy button on one of these for a while

I know that feeling?

Nice report Stu and it's preforming well, nice objects with a 72mm

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just a quick update on this one. I used the TS again on Saturday night, and played around with a few different eyepieces. With the longer dovetail I managed to find a decent balance even with an ES 30mm 82 degree hand grenade! It still gets a bit back heavy when towards the zenith but the Ercole handles this with no problems.

Looking through the ES was a less pleasant experience though; welcome back (not!) field curvature which has been pleasantly absent in my life since the last time I had a small, short focal length scope. I found it quite distracting, and as a result would probably limit use of this eyepiece to narrowband views of nebulae such as the Veil. In comparison the 24mm Pan was pin sharp, a much more pleasant experience and still giving a very nice 3.78 degree field of view. The 30mm is useful for its larger 5mm exit pupil though, so may still get used under a dark sky.

Had fun looking at the near full moon as you may have seen from the phone pics posted elsewhere, won't bore you with them again here.

I played around with the 3 to 6 Nag zoom, and it worked very well, right the way up to highest power, x144. Saturn was above neighbouring houses but still looked pretty sharp at that power. This will be a fun scope to use I think :)

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