Show us your smallest scope!

[City9Town0]

I did use the 'barn' at work, and very rarely the 'outhouse'... but we left the 'shed 'alone!

Apologies for thread drift.

Edited February 28, 2022 by City9Town0
Drift... unspecified unit.

[Realtimedoctor]

Not sure if this counts! 

But you didn't mention what small is, so here is my spam! Lol

If you look closely, there is a smaller scope attached to it as well 😂 😂 

[Astrobits]

Well, this is a very small scope with built-in erecting prisms.

In the flat configuration it gives telescope type images ( upside down etc):

while folded it gives correct images:

It is an 8 x 21 monocular.

Nigel

 

[Alien 13]

I have one of these...

 

Nice microscope too 😀

Alan

[Louis D]

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

I have one of these...

 

Nice microscope too 😀

Alan

I had one of those from the 70s as a kid.  I wonder what ever happened to it?  Plastic singlet lenses made for some very distorted/chromatically smeared views as I recall.

[Debo]

Got this little beauty a week ago off Ebay, for not too much money 😉

It's a 60mm Carton which I've never heard of before, the build quality is superb and looks almost brand new. I haven't tried it under dark skies yet but I sure it's going to be good. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Debo

[spacegalaxy]

35 minutes ago, Debo said:

Got this little beauty a week ago off Ebay, for not too much money 😉

It's a 60mm Carton which I've never heard of before, the build quality is superb and looks almost brand new. I haven't tried it under dark skies yet but I sure it's going to be good. 

I am pretty sure it will be a beauty on deep sky (Widefield!) 😉

Clear nights

[plyscope]

Here is my little TV60 along with an early William Optics 66SD.

[Peter_D]

Smallest is a Tasco 9VR 60mm refractor. Very nice Vixen optics from the mid 1980s.

Lightest OTA is a Bresser Pulsar 80mm Mangin Cassegrain. It is mounted on a really well built alt-az mount.

[reezeh]

On 27/02/2022 at 19:54, mikeDnight said:

I've always had a love of small refractors and started my astronomical adventures over forty years ago with a Prinz Astral 60mm. I can't remember all the details but it was sufficient to ignite my enthusiasm which has lasted ever since.

They're actually great little scopes. They'll split epsilon Lyrae, which for a 60mm refractor is about as good as you can expect.

I had / have one  (gave it to a friend, tried advising him on how to focus with it but he hasn't a clue.  Even linked the YouTube video on that to him) He has kind of offered to give it back. I'm short of house room but when I can accommodate it I would love to have it back. All I'd need to do is get a 0.956 to 1.25 adaptor and I can use my newer eyepieces and diagonal from my Celestron gear 

[Dave scutt]

Really do need to get a grab and go,this is my smallest at the moment 

[mikeDnight]

2 hours ago, Debo said:

Got this little beauty a week ago off Ebay, for not too much money 😉

It's a 60mm Carton which I've never heard of before, the build quality is superb and looks almost brand new. I haven't tried it under dark skies yet but I sure it's going to be good. 

That's a seriously beautiful scope Den. Carton is a very highly regarded brand and quite a collectable. Well done on finding it. Some of us would give their right arm for a vintage beauty like that. 

[spacegalaxy]

14 hours ago, Peter_D said:

Smallest is a Tasco 9VR 60mm refractor. Very nice Vixen optics from the mid 1980s.

Lightest OTA is a Bresser Pulsar 80mm Mangin Cassegrain. It is mounted on a really well built alt-az mount.

The look of the Bresser scope..... It looks amazing! I wonder ho it performs on major planets and double, and are those setting circles on the mount? This scope with its mount just looks elegant

Starry nights!

[Peter_D]

1 hour ago, spacegalaxy said:

The look of the Bresser scope..... It looks amazing! I wonder ho it performs on major planets and double, and are those setting circles on the mount? This scope with its mount just looks elegant

Starry nights!

Thanks! It's actually not great on high magnifications because of its large central obstruction. I tend to just use with low power magnifications - it came with a 25mm Kellner and I use it with this mostly. It also came with a tiny finderscope which is nearly unusable - I found a plastic RDF holder that just about fits on it. The scope's views were really mushy when I first got it - collimating it really improved things.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Peter_D

[niallk]

My lil' Lunt!

Small is beautiful 

[LDW1]

80mm, f3.8 with 31.5mm, 92° widefield focusable ep, on one of my Porta II's.

 

Edited March 4, 2022 by LDW1

[AstroKeith]

This is my digital finder. 50mm f/1.8 lens produces a 4 degree fov. 

Remarkably good image quality for a £50 lens

[Mircea]

Well ... I have witnesses I was provoked  ...  ''show us your smallest scope'' !

Below is my singlet refractor D=15mm F = 330mm , so F/32.

It have a fixed magnification of 9x.

The tube and lens ''cells'' are made of cardboard.

It sound ridiculously small but there were many such telescopes in use back in the days.

The famous French astronomer Lacaille used such a one foot refractor of 15mm aperture in his voyage to study the Southern sky.

My mistake was to choose too small a magnification. The one prescribed by Huygens for such a telescope is 22x.

What can be seen with such telescope ?

I attach two drawings, of M37 and M41 as seen with this humble instrument.

 

Mircea

[jjohnson3803]

50mm RACI finder with helical focuser.  Takes interchangeable EPs and actually has decent optics.  This is my uber grab-n-go.

 

[Astro Noodles]

The magnificent Askar FMA135. 

A 6 element Petzval design. 30mm. 135mm focal length, F4.5 astrograph.

Comes with eyepiece holder so can be used for visual.

1.25" filters screw on the front.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Astro Noodles

[badhex]

Posted this scope before but was trying out the APM 24mm UFF in my 50mm finder in the day recently to see how it performs. The answer is very well! 

 

[etsatlo]

On 04/03/2022 at 08:09, AstroKeith said:

This is my digital finder. 50mm f/1.8 lens produces a 4 degree fov. 

Remarkably good image quality for a £50 lens

Oh very interesting. What's the name of the lens + adapter if you don't mind me asking?

[AstroKeith]

2 hours ago, etsatlo said:

Oh very interesting. What's the name of the lens + adapter if you don't mind me asking?

The lens came from the PiHut. Its a c-mount and came with a 5mm cs-mount spacer.

The ASI120MM-S camera comes with a 42mm to c-mount adapter.

[RT65CB-SWL]

Posted elsewhere...

    

Edited June 9, 2022 by Philip R

[jjohnson3803]

6 hours ago, AstroKeith said:

The lens came from the PiHut. Its a c-mount and came with a 5mm cs-mount spacer.

The ASI120MM-S camera comes with a 42mm to c-mount adapter.

Intriguing!  So you do like 5-second stacks on a laptop to use it as a finder?