"Those who talk, walk!" I hereby nominate you, Ray, for President!

Ask Trump if he can spare some Secret-Service agents for protection,

Dave

 

Well, here’s a potential target for a small scope. Venus reaches Last Quarter (maximum elongation) on January 13th.



I should be able to see it at around 16.15 GMT (50.46%). I've seen cloud detail with a 130mm aperture but only the phase is really apparent lower than around a 5" scope.

 

Mak: Are you using Stellarium to make these images with? The one of an orange Martian sky and the above Earth landscape? I haven't played with that function yet.

Dave

 

Starry Night 7 and the Virtual Planet Atlas.



With a little help from GIMP.

 

I’ve just been viewing some targets in Orion. The Orion Nebula, obviously, but also the Little Beehive (near Orion) and a very faint M78. Easy to miss in a small scope but I found it with the 90mm Apex.



I usually try to home in on TYC116-899-1 and HIP27309 at the top of the cloud first for location purposes. It was obviously a lot fainter than this picture, and with no colour, but I could see it with the Apex at 31x, 39x, 50x and 66x. I used Baader Neodymium and UHC-S filters.

 

OK Dave, I've remembered how to view stuff from Mars on Stellarium. First find Mars then centre it and press Ctrl G. That should take you to the Martian surface. You can then change the background to Mars.


You can see Venus and Earth rising in the Martian morning.


Zooming in you can see Australia and the South Pole.



And a waxing Venus.


Above you can see Phobos setting as Venus and Earth rise. I'm running an older version of Stellarium on Ubuntu. Stellarium doesn't portray the Martian sky in the correct colour, it should be red.

 

Thanks, Mak. But I never have used that on Stellarium - yet. After the 0.15.1 upgrades, it has so many new functions/possibles it's hardly recognizable! Wild! Go grab one if you havent already. They really 'went-to-town!'




Off to my files...

Dave

 

I'm OK with v0.12.4 on Ubuntu. I won't run it on Windows now. I haven't for at least five years. The past few upgrades have been a bit of a bugfest. I prefer CDC anyway. Plus I now have Starry Night 7.

 

It's often said that M78 can't be seen in small scopes. I don't have a great deal of LP to my south and I'm 152 metres above MSL on the edge of the greenbelt in a Bortle 2/3 area.



This rendition above (originally a Starry Nights 7 screenshot) and tweaked a bit with GIMP and PhotoFiltre 7 is as close as I can get to what I could actually see early this morning. The nebula cloud in the picture is actually brighter than I could perceive through the 90mm Apex, but with some patience it could be just about viewed. It's interesting that the best views were with a 25mm Plossl (50x) and a 19mm TeleVue Panoptic (65.7x) with a Baader Neodymium filter. Although the nebula cloud could be just about made out with 32mm (39x) and 40mm (31.25x) Plossls utilising the UHC-S. Again, this took considerable patience though and it helps to know what you're looking for. The view with the 25mm Plossl and a 0.5x reducer (25x) was no better than with the longer length Plossls. The ST80 would probably have been the more logical choice of scope for M78. I never really saw it with the f/11.1 Omegon MightyMak even though I could locate the two stars at the top of the nebula. It is a testament to the Synta optics in the 90mm Apex.

 

Looks good. Did the diagonal nosepiece unthread or was it the ST80 focuser itself? As that can actually unthread accidentally. It happened to me when I tried the binoviewer. It just needs to be screwed back in. The focuser set screws are pretty good though and can take some weight. I think you'd have to replace the whole focuser to get a 2" adaptor.

The only problem for me is aiming at the zenith and much lower. If I have the Vixen tripod legs extended long enough to be able to sit and observe the zenith comfortably, when I lower the objective declination the OTA rotates down from the vertical correspondingly raising the eyepiece height.

The solution to this is by rotating the diagonal usually to the right so that the eyepiece isn't vertical anymore. In this way the alt-az slo mo controls are also both still easily accessible and I sit to the right of the scope OTA, not unlike a Newtonian.

This, however, presents another problem. Excessively tall and heavy eyepieces and Barlows can be prone to rotating the diagonal itself. This is why I bought the X-Cel 3x Barlow. Short and light Barlows with small eyepieces like Plossls and orthoscopics work well I find.

To be honest, the ST80 is hard work to get high magnifications with. Although it does it well. If you're viewing the Moon or planets you only need to set it up to view in the plane of the ecliptic anyway. So you can set the tripod leg height low enough to keep the diagonal upright and still sit comfortably. I find sitting and viewing is much better for long periods of observing trying to tease detail out of objects.

 

I've been thinking about doing more double star observing. Ideal for small telescopes and an alt-az. The ST80 should be brilliant at this, although both my Mak's should be capable.



Luckily, Father Christmas brought me The Cambridge Double Star Atlas 2nd Edition (the Vegemite's mine of course lol).



This article is interesting from Sky & Telescope: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obse...ts-to-watch/pretty-double-stars-for-everyone/

 

A lot of the diagonal nosepiece and eyepiece holders unscrew. It's useful if you want to clean the prism surface. The reason why I spent so much on a decent alt-az and the ST80 and the Apex is that they are small but very good scopes for what they are.

As you know, I have a lot of mobility issues too. The Big Cat will be great when I set it up in warmer weather. It will probably take an hour to set up though, let alone take down after a session. At least the GOTO will do a lot of the work and I'll just be along for the ride lol.

Meanwhile I needed a small scope and mount which will enable me to observe from the zenith to the horizon. As I've got more range and dexterity back into my right arm and leg I've been able to use the Bazooka a lot this year. I'm still confined to the plane of the ecliptic or thereabouts though. I originally bought the Skymax as the Bazooka was a handful. When I bought the Skymax my right arm was almost totally paralysed. I also realised that the zenith problem wasn't totally solved with the Skymax though as it had an EQ2 mount. Although it was an improvement on the Bazooka. It was great for lunar viewing and planetary though, so the Big Cat was a logical next step.

Newtonians rarely dew up and the speed with which the Skymax dewed surprised me a bit. You'll almost certainly need a powertank and dew control with the ST80 and finderscope. It does have a built in dew sleeve however, which really does help.

The way I see it, the ST80 solves a lot of problems for both of us. It is light and portable. It should be easy to use on targets from the zenith to the horizon. It is high quality for an inexpensive achromat (almost legendary lol) with manageable CA. Tweaks like filters and helical diagonal focusers can vastly improve its potential. It's good on planetary/lunar, DSO's and apparently for splitting doubles.

 

I have the 19mm Panoptic to use as a finder on the ST80. I do have a 20mm TV Plossl as well. The Expanse have always been considered decent. The 20mm would be a great finder I reckon. I think the 9mm is supposed to be the sweet one out of the series. They're on sale at Amazon now, I'm tempted but I'm a tad put off by the undercut. I very nearly bought a 9mm pair for the bino last year. Instead I went with a couple of 9mm Pants Optics Dead Ducks (William Optics SWAN's lol). Is the drawtube on the Expanse aluminium or chromed brass Ray? I find it easier to insert/extract brass tubes with undercuts rather the aluminium ones as their heavier weight helps. How do you find inserting/extracting it from the WO diagonal? I'm guessing you have to do it with one hand, like me.



The Moon should be approaching First Quarter over New York on Jan 4th, 18:30 local time.




A couple of days before and after and there will be some great terminator shadows.

 

'OOS?' Our Omnipotent Sponsor, perhaps?

Sorry! I couldn't resist!

Off reading our local news. Seems the Russians have hacked our peaceful, little electric company - Burlington Electric Dept. We're off-the-grid. BED is a stand-alone utility that neither draws on, nor feeds back into, the National Power-Grid. When every 'Grid-Connected' electric company crashed a few years ago - blacking-out 1/2 the country - we were sitting pretty! When the National-Grid demanded we throw the switch and feed our juice to them - which would have knocked us off in about 1/20th of a second - we laughed in their faces! No way!

We make our own by carefully burning waste-wood compressed into ultra-dense pellet. 100% efficient with no waste, and our scrubbing technology removes all CO2 from being released. All we put out is pure water-vapor as steam.

Why would the Russians be interested in this? If they asked us, we'd be happy to share the tech. with them (or anyone - we have offered).

Besides - it's cloudy here tonight!

Dave

 

Yes, it appears too shiny to be aluminium lol. I often find them difficult to extract if they stick suddenly half way through pulling them out. Some undercuts are easier than others. I have to use certain EP's mainly with specific diagonals because of the compression ring.

The 9mm Expanse will give 44.4x for a 1.8mm exit pupil on the ST80. Plus, virtually one and a half arc minutes AFOV. From your picture it looks nicely compact for a wide angle EP and it has a 2cm eye lens.

I just couldn't resist pulling the trigger on one. I couldn't find an Orion 6mm, although there are TS Optics and Sky-Watcher equivalents around. I've read that the coatings can vary in quality on some of the non-Orion ones though. The 9mm was supposedly the best of the series from what I've read anyway.

It will be a bit similar to using the 19mm Panoptic on the Bazooka. That gave me about 47x for a 2.7mm exit pupil with just under one and a half arc minutes AFOV. I think lol.

I often wonder about the mark-up on individual eyepieces. The RRP of the combined 10 & 25mm Sirius Plossls comes to £71.05p here. That's well over a third of what I paid for the Apex!

A quick look at Amazon UK shows that the 20mm Sky-Watcher 'Expanse' is about 30 quid, yet its TS Optics equivalent is about £60. I can't find a Sky-Watcher 9mm but the TS Optics version is 20 quid more than what I paid for the Expanse. There's no logic to it. The old adage of 'you get what you pay for' doesn't always apply to astronomical gear. I've seen Celestron Omni Plossls advertised for twice their usual retail value.

 

A wrap of black electrical-tape in the undercut can provide relief. A rag soaked in iso-propyl-alcohol will remove the gum it leaves behind if/when you remove same.

Dave