WO Megrez 72FD - How to maximise performance

[BabyJo84]

Hey Everyone 👋

I inherited my dad's Megrez 72FD last February, and I just adore the thing. 

However, I have no idea what I'm doing really. 

The kit includes:

The scope

First horizon 8115 mount and stand

Dielectric 45 degree angled lens holder (??lol)

Lenses: I know some of these are packing some value and quality. Are they wasted on a 72mm scope?

Altair Lightwave LER Zoom 8-24mm

Nirvana 16mm

WO uwan 7mm

18.2mm Teleview delite

Star guider 4 elements 3x Barlow

Extras:

An old Nikon Rebel T5 SDLR camera with lens and Nikon ring mount

He also had/has a couple of camera holder attachment thingies and what looks like a really small table mount, the kind of thing you'd see on a Dobsonian which is Skywatcher brand.

I can get some good view with this scope if all i do is swap lenses around.

What I'm not getting is any wow worthy views of planets (they are insanely small with no detail and hard to focus) or DSO's. Even the Pleaides aren't much more than the 5 main stars. This is even at low light pollution levels.

I can't help but feel like I'm just not getting the most out of this scope since all the reviews I read rave about it.

Do I really need to invest in a 100+mm for a good all-rounder or are there accessories I can buy for my Megrez that will enhance its performance?

My dad passed away in Feb and this is a hobby we shared when I was a kid. I've never been able to afford a good set up so I am reluctant to sell this on to raise money for something better due to it's sentimental value.

Thank you in advance!

Edited November 6, 2022 by BabyJo84

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

@BabyJo84 hopefully many better answer will follow, it seems the scope is more geared toward astro photgraphy, ’tis why the planets are small, deep sky will appear dim visually because of its limiting light gathering. The rest I know little on.

[StarryEyed]

There all good quality. Just keep coming here and playing around you'll work it out. 

Your three inch scope will find it tough on the planets as does my four inch scope. You really need an eight or ten inch scope for them. But dont let that put you off having a look.

One of the best views I had of Jupiter was with an 80FD WO five in the morning before going to work its often about when the skies are at their best. Keep an eye out for when the jet stream is out of the way. On an average day the planets look pretty much the same in most scopes.

Stick with it an keep checkung in with Mars from now and over the winter with the 7mm or the zoom and Barlow. 

[vlaiv]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

What you have is rather decent kit.

Only thing that might be worth looking to replace or check out further would be:

1 hour ago, BabyJo84 said:

Dielectric 45 degree angled lens holder (??lol)

That should be diagonal mirror / prism, and these come in several versions.

One distinction is 90 degrees vs 45 degrees (there are few other versions as well - but are far less common - like 60 degrees and such).

90 degrees can be either mirror or prism and is preferred for astronomical observation.

45 degrees is usually reserved for day time / terrestrial viewing - in form of spotter scope, and is usually a prism of lower quality (there are 45 degrees prisms with astronomical quality - but these are really expensive).

What confuses me is term "dielectric" - which is usually associated with mirrors rather than prisms and there are no (as far as I know) 45 degree mirror diagonals available (not even sure if it is possible to make one).

Planetary views might be improved with better diagonal mirror if this one is not very good.

Having said that - observing is a skill that is learned with practice.

You need practice / experience for best planetary views - but also for best DSO views. Some things are even not associated with observing - but still need experience and learning how to deal with them.

To optimize planetary views - you should:

- wait for telescope to thermally stabilize (depending on size of telescope and temperature difference between indoors and outdoors - this can be anywhere from half an hour to few hours). In your case, I'd wait at least half an hour before attempting high power views.

- You need to pay attention to your surroundings - large buildings / roads / lakes - anything that can soak up heat during the day and release it during night - can ruin your views as it causes turbulence in the air.

- Check out forecast for JetStream and avoid it when observing planets. In general - you need to learn to judge how good the seeing is on particular night in order to know what sort of results you can expect. Twinkling stars and transparent sky is not the best for planetary views. Haze in the air and still air is much better (no star twinkling) and so on

- don't get fully dark adapted - you'll get better planetary views if you are not fully dark adapted (unlike DSO observing).

- be patient at the eyepiece, wait for moment when atmosphere calms down and image suddenly becomes sharper

- good focus is a skill - don't be afraid to adjust focus often, to confirm that it is as good as can be. That scope should have dual speed focuser and use that for fine adjustments - do a bit in / out focus to check where you are at. When seeing is particularly poor - you'll have tough time finding perfect spot - and that is normal, anyone will feel the same as image is just dancing around

- If you wear glasses - try observing both with and without them. For simple correction - telescope focus can compensate, but if you have astigmatism or other aberrations, then you'll get sharper image of planets with glasses on

- don't push magnification too high. With that scope - keep it in x100 - x150 range (magnification is calculated by dividing telescope focal length with eyepiece focal length). Sometimes better image (although smaller) will be with lower magnification.

With DSOs - again it is about skill (practice) and patience.

- get dark adapted

- get dark adapted more

- get dark adapted some more

- transparent / windy nights will help you see more

- shield yourself from any light sources even if you are in low light pollution

- use lower to medium magnifications to start (x20-x50) - this will both help you locate objects and detect them. Use higher magnifications only if target calls for those (usually planetary nebulae and sometimes globular clusters).

72mm of aperture does not sound like much (compared to other scopes) - but it can show you plenty, especially from dark location.

[Ags]

I use a similar 66 mm refractor, and the views of planets are very good - of course very small, but with strong color and good contrast. While a larger telescope can theoretically show a bigger image, this is limited by the stability of the air - the so-called seeing conditions. A good planetary combination would be the 18.2 Delite with the 3x barlow, although the barlow might be the weak link in that optical train. With patience there is plenty to see!

Regarding the Pleiades, I often find them underwhelming - other more delicate clusters give a far better show in my opinion. Try point your scope at the Double Cluster near Cassiopeia, or (at a dark site) at the dramatic Messier 31., which will fill the view of even your widest eyepiece.

[badhex]

On 06/11/2022 at 16:55, BabyJo84 said:

Hey Everyone 👋

I inherited my dad's Megrez 72FD last February, and I just adore the thing. 

However, I have no idea what I'm doing really. 

The kit includes:

The scope

First horizon 8115 mount and stand

Dielectric 45 degree angled lens holder (??lol)

Lenses: I know some of these are packing some value and quality. Are they wasted on a 72mm scope?

Altair Lightwave LER Zoom 8-24mm

Nirvana 16mm

WO uwan 7mm

18.2mm Teleview delite

Star guider 4 elements 3x Barlow

Extras:

An old Nikon Rebel T5 SDLR camera with lens and Nikon ring mount

He also had/has a couple of camera holder attachment thingies and what looks like a really small table mount, the kind of thing you'd see on a Dobsonian which is Skywatcher brand.

I can get some good view with this scope if all i do is swap lenses around.

What I'm not getting is any wow worthy views of planets (they are insanely small with no detail and hard to focus) or DSO's. Even the Pleaides aren't much more than the 5 main stars. This is even at low light pollution levels.

I can't help but feel like I'm just not getting the most out of this scope since all the reviews I read rave about it.

Do I really need to invest in a 100+mm for a good all-rounder or are there accessories I can buy for my Megrez that will enhance its performance?

My dad passed away in Feb and this is a hobby we shared when I was a kid. I've never been able to afford a good set up so I am reluctant to sell this on to raise money for something better due to it's sentimental value.

Thank you in advance!

Hi and welcome to SGL! 

Some great advice already. Like @Ags above I have a very similar scope to yours (in fact the specifications for my William Optics Zenithstar 73 are virtually identical to yours, essentially it's a newer version of the same scope).

This scope can and will show you *a lot*, but there are some caveats and some things you can do to help, mostly mentioned in previous answers so I won't repeat the same advice. That said as our scopes are virtually identical I can give a few bits of advice that are scope specific. 

With this scope I don't often push magnification above around 100x but it can go higher than that when observing conditions allow. I have observed the planets (Saturn, Jupiter in particular) many times with it and with a little patience and time at the eyepiece you can see a lot of detail even though the image is quite small. 

Where this scope really shines though is objects like open clusters or other wide-field objects. One of my favourite eyepieces to use with this scope is a 17.5mm so your 18.2mm Delite should give a very similar experience. It's quite low power at 24x and you'll get a reasonably large patch of sky, so star fields, large open clusters and constellations in and around the Milky Way for example will look great. Try just slowly panning the scope around in those areas with this EP in and see what you can find! You may be  surprised how many fuzzy patches or clusters you happen upon. 

You mentioned that you're observing from an area with low light pollution - do you mean overall light pollution or 'local' light pollution?

One way to find out approximately how dark your observing location is would be to enter your observing location into the Clear Outside tool which will show you the estimated Sky Quality (SQM) and Bortle Class. 

https://clearoutside.com/

SQM is more accurate but a bit hard to make sense of initially. The Bortle scale is more rough and ready but can give you an idea. For reference, 9 on the scale is worst - like observing from Piccadilly Circus - 1 is the best, like observing from the middle of the Atacama desert! 

All of that said, even if you are observing from somewhere dark out in the countryside away from large towns or cities, local light pollution is important as well. If there are lights on nearby, especially ones in your line of sight when observing, this can make a huge difference to your experience. 

Otherwise as mentioned there has been some great advice already, so take all that in, keep observing whenever you can and keep asking questions here! People will always be happy to help. 

[SthBohemia]

Tis a lovely 'scope', you would not do much better unless you wished to spend a small fortune on a larger instrument. Regarding the planets, they don't look anything larger than a golfball at 20 metres with a 6" refractor!

[vlaiv]

13 minutes ago, SthBohemia said:

Tis a lovely 'scope', you would not do much better unless you wished to spend a small fortune on a larger instrument. Regarding the planets, they don't look anything larger than a golfball at 20 metres with a 6" refractor!

Are you sure about that?

With 150mm scope - one can go for x150 without any issues.

45" Jupiter will have 6750" when magnified x150 - that is 112.5' or 1.875 degrees.

One degree is 1 meter at 57 meters - or roughly 33cm at 20meters.

1.875 degrees will be ~60cm at 20 meters. Much larger than a golf ball.

[SthBohemia]

10 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Are you sure about that?

^ I sure am, as highest magnification I can goto is 78x due to Gary Russell refusing to sell his EP's overseas and Paul Rini being inconsiderate and dying 😞 Televues are overpriced as are their equivalents and I refuse to buy anything even remotely associated with the Synta company!

PS I don't like barlows....

[vlaiv]

3 minutes ago, SthBohemia said:

I refuse to buy anything even remotely associated with the Synta company!

Don't be so harsh on Synta.

60% of my scopes are made by Synta.

[SthBohemia]

@vlaiv my point to @BabyJo84 being that she has a very good lil scope and upgrading just initiates expense for little else other than seeing a few more points of light and some misty patches of dust (DSO's)...

If she wants to go down that mysterious track (to me, whose understanding of electronics ends with valve diodes and beam tetrodes) I am sure you and others will guide her down the strange pathways of playing 'Picasso with Pixels' (my description of imaging BabyJo).

Jeeeeez Vlaiv, I don't own a mobile phone, let alone know how to use one!

Guess I had better go out and harness the bullock to the plough and tend the corn fields 🙂 

Edited November 9, 2022 by SthBohemia
Edited due to lousy spelling due to intoxication (nuffin new dere)

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, SthBohemia said:

@vlaiv my point to @BabyJo84 being that she has a very good lil scope and upgrading just initiates expense for little else other than seeing a few more points of light and some misty patches of dust (DSO's)...

If she wants to go down that mysterious track (to me, who understanding with electronics ends with valve diodes and beam tetrodes) I am sure you and others will guide her down the strange pathways of playing 'Picasso with Pixels' (my description of imaging BabyJo).

Jeeeeez Vlaiv, I don't own a mobile phone, let alone know how to use one!

Guess I had better go out and harness the bullock to the plough and tend the corn fields 🙂 

Well, my point was that you misjudged the size of planets when comparing to object at the distance and yes, they are small at eyepiece - but not that small.

That is common thing - people are rather poor at judging the size of objects without comparison. It is much easier for us to judge the size of something when it's next to something else that we use as a reference (and there is no reference at the eyepiece unless one is using some sort of astrometric eyepiece with scale).

For that reason - full moon looks much larger when it is near the horizon (and we can use terrestrial objects for comparison) then when it is high in the sky.

Another interesting thing is that full moon has the same apparent diameter as Jupiter when viewed at x40 magnification.

We can see detail on the moon when it is full and we just look at it with naked eye - but almost everyone would say that Jupiter is not worth looking at with such small magnification and that no features could be seen.

 

[M40]

Hello BabyJo84 and welcome to the site. As vlaiv says, you have some good kit there so don't look to move it on unless you have to. Lots of points well covered above so thought I would point you in a different direction.

Have you tried bolting the camera to the telescope yet? I have a similar camera and using a similar sized telescope, by bolting the camera to the telescope and taking either a single shot or a series of pictures using an intervalometer you will get surprisingly good results. 

An intervalometer is a cost effective small device that plugs into your camera that enables a series of timed pictures; you may have this built into your camera settings, so worth checking. The intervalometer also has a remote shot facility, well worth using this as it will reduce shake on your mount. You also have the option of using a great free or low cost piece of software called BackyardEos (I think the UK equivalent of your camera is an EOS1200D but do check). Lots of very good info on youtube for backyardeos that will help. All the best.

[davehowat]

If I remember correctly,my first view of both Jupiter and Saturn was with a small 3 inch scope ,back in the dark ages ie 1970/1. I was so blown away with what I saw that I looked at the front of telescope as I thought my dad had put a small grey sticker of Saturn on the lense. I then spent many hours just moving the wee scope about ,looking at these small grey "fuzzies" didn't know what I was seeing was the Andromeda galaxy etc .. it's never going to be the Hubble deep space but Tbh I have now spent 50 years looking at the fuzzies .hope your journey continues 

[BabyJo84]

On 09/11/2022 at 09:06, badhex said:

Hi and welcome to SGL! 

Some great advice already. Like @Ags above I have a very similar scope to yours (in fact the specifications for my William Optics Zenithstar 73 are virtually identical to yours, essentially it's a newer version of the same scope).

This scope can and will show you *a lot*, but there are some caveats and some things you can do to help, mostly mentioned in previous answers so I won't repeat the same advice. That said as our scopes are virtually identical I can give a few bits of advice that are scope specific. 

With this scope I don't often push magnification above around 100x but it can go higher than that when observing conditions allow. I have observed the planets (Saturn, Jupiter in particular) many times with it and with a little patience and time at the eyepiece you can see a lot of detail even though the image is quite small. 

Where this scope really shines though is objects like open clusters or other wide-field objects. One of my favourite eyepieces to use with this scope is a 17.5mm so your 18.2mm Delite should give a very similar experience. It's quite low power at 24x and you'll get a reasonably large patch of sky, so star fields, large open clusters and constellations in and around the Milky Way for example will look great. Try just slowly panning the scope around in those areas with this EP in and see what you can find! You may be  surprised how many fuzzy patches or clusters you happen upon. 

You mentioned that you're observing from an area with low light pollution - do you mean overall light pollution or 'local' light pollution?

One way to find out approximately how dark your observing location is would be to enter your observing location into the Clear Outside tool which will show you the estimated Sky Quality (SQM) and Bortle Class. 

https://clearoutside.com/

SQM is more accurate but a bit hard to make sense of initially. The Bortle scale is more rough and ready but can give you an idea. For reference, 9 on the scale is worst - like observing from Piccadilly Circus - 1 is the best, like observing from the middle of the Atacama desert! 

All of that said, even if you are observing from somewhere dark out in the countryside away from large towns or cities, local light pollution is important as well. If there are lights on nearby, especially ones in your line of sight when observing, this can make a huge difference to your experience. 

Otherwise as mentioned there has been some great advice already, so take all that in, keep observing whenever you can and keep asking questions here! People will always be happy to help. 

This is fantastic thank you and thank you to all who responded!

I do have another question:

The SQM number. The higher it is the better? Or is it the lower the number the better?

I live in Lancashire so I'm going to make the most of the clear sky forecast tomorrow and head put to my local Bortle 4 area, equipped with my kit and all the great advice from here.

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, BabyJo84 said:

The higher it is the better?

Yep.

You can use this map to get rough idea what the SQM is like at your observing location:

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.74&lat=53.6966&lon=-3.2837&layers=B0FFFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFFF

Here is handy conversion table between bortle / SQM and other types of sky brightness estimates: