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Another newcomer and a bit of history

Bridgehouse

By Bridgehouse
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Bridgehouse

Bridgehouse

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Evening all.

Thought I'd post the obligatory newbie thread. 

I was a keen astronomer back in the 90's and early 2000's, and for a variety of reasons I stopped - mostly it was moving to a flat in seriously light polluted skies. Anyway, I now live in the Fens, and the skies are pretty dark here - probably around Bortle 4/5, but more like 4, and a recent visit from an acquaintance re-kindled by desire to start up again. Said acquaintance is a member here @Stub Mandrel and I know him from a rather different forum.. 

However, I thought I'd dive in with both feet and do what every keen astronomer does and get the wallet out. My first scope was a Televue Pronto, and I loved that scope. It had it's limits, but for some reason I just kept going back to it for those quick looks and portability. Back in those days anything else from Televue's range was well out of budget. Anyway, I got to looking at the TV85, and eventually an NP101is came up used on Astromart at a price which was in budget and really rather a lot less than new.

After a somewhat long journey to go and inspect and purchase, it came back with me, complete with new style case, clamshell ring, star beam finder, 2" Everbrite diagonal, Gibraltar Mount, and a few other accessories (including a really rather good Televue Equaliser 1.25" adapter). 

Picked up a Panoptic 24, and since then have been very happily surfing the evening skies on clear nights and being blown away by just how good it is. It really does feel like it's as close to one-scope-to-do-a-bit-of-everything as you can get.

A quick pic:

 

DDC56B23-BBA1-4CA7-9D0A-CBD46E658023.jpg

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Floater

Floater

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Welcome. Hope you have lots of fun with your kit. I’m very happy with my TV 102 and can understand how you feel. 🙂

A word of caution: Watch out for that little white button on the StarBeam - it can get lost and I found it to be the devil of a job to get a replacement. I have now taped over it so it won’t get lost so easily.

(In fact, David Nagler brought the replacement over in his pocket a while back when visiting the Widescreen Centre - to whom I am indebted for arranging that!) 

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Bridgehouse

Bridgehouse

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2 minutes ago, Floater said:

Welcome. Hope you have lots of fun with your kit. I’m very happy with my TV 102 and can understand how you feel. 🙂

A word of caution: Watch out for that little white button on the StarBeam - it can get lost and I found it to be the devil of a job to get a replacement. I have now taped over it so it won’t get lost so easily.

(In fact, David Nagler brought the replacement over in his pocket a while back when visiting the Widescreen Centre - to whom I am indebted for arranging that!) 

Do you mean the knob that controls the flashing/non-flashing red LED setting? If so, you've just made me go check that mine was still attached :D

(It was)

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Floater

Floater

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1 minute ago, Bridgehouse said:

Do you mean the knob that controls the flashing/non-flashing red LED setting? If so, you've just made me go check that mine was still attached :D

(It was)

Yes, I do mean that knob. 👍

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Bridgehouse

Bridgehouse

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1 minute ago, PXR5 said:

Welcome to SGL, thanks for joining us 🙂

 

Sweet scope! 

The 24mm Pan is by far my favourite EP :)

 

I distinctly remember wanting a 24Pan back when I first had my Pronto. 
 

Seemed like an obvious first choice for the 101 and it certainly hasn’t disappointed. 
 

 

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Bridgehouse

Bridgehouse

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3 hours ago, Philip R said:

Hi @Bridgehouse and welcome to SGL. :hello2:

I am another who found the TeleVue somewhat ‘out of reach’… but when you do get one… they’re keepers.
BTW - mine is the Ranger and is over 20+ years young/old. :blob1:

IMG_0675.thumb.JPG.d35db4742dbd9aa1808b501956a0ba0f.JPGIMG_0661.thumb.JPG.1136c5ecc71ad6175b3024391ba0031d.JPGIMG_0734.thumb.JPG.7a13f89a3c7ab5f6dfea068d1d0c1e80.JPG


Now that’s interesting.. you see I’ve ordered a GM811G mount for the 101 to start down the imaging rabbit hole, and I keep looking at the Gibraltar mount and thinking “a nice little refractor would be great on there for grab and go whilst imaging”

Naturally a nice old Ranger would be a great choice for that use case… I’ve looked at the TV60s and they look nice, but a Ranger just always looks so classy…

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Bridgehouse

Bridgehouse

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Posted this in the "postman" thread, but a Nagler Zoom 3-6mm arrived in the post today. Cor, it's small isn't it? Lovely positive click stops on the zoom and looks to be great quality. Looking forward to trying it out with the NP as soon as there's some clear skies. 

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