Some very interesting, and virtually unknown & unheard of in the Untied Snakes, information on these, Mak. Very nice indeed!

I used to have a huge load of Plossl's too. And one year, when I bought my 5" F/9.3 Achromatic Refractor from Meade, Meade had a special-incentive for free - all of their Plossl's in a shiny silver box. And the rush was on in the used astro-market to get rid of them. So I put them on Astromart. I sold them, as a complete-series. Along 100's of the other Case-O-Meade Plossls offers. And I pulled 90% of my others Plossls in the days to come - as soon as I'd gotten better EP's to cover the range F.L.'s Plossl EP's I had from all over the corporate-map. Orion's, Celestron's etc.

Astromart rocks!

http://www.astromart.com/

And they have some great articles and reviews of all sorts of astro-goods, from the generic to the utterly bizarre. Now they charge $15 a year to use their classified-marketplace - to sort out thieves & spammers & robots. The users are encouraged to write-up reviews of sellers & buyers to further sift-out nitwits and liars. Works fantastic!

Thus the only Plossls I kept were TeleVue® and my rare Orion-branded 40mm Highlight (silver-tube). Which was made in limited quantity and has utterly excellent optics. Orion had few of these, at a time it took awhile for word to spread, and these sold out like lightning. If you ever find one offered-up: POUNCE! Like a Jaguar! Or have me take a look to verify it's the real-deal. Not to worry I'd grab it from under your nose - I'm sure you know that's not my style.

My brain hurts over here. We (the American people) were all told of our president's latest hit: He's firing scientists in government entities like the US Department of Agriculture and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and ordered the one's still there to a federal gag-order, They are not allowed to divulge any word on things he don't like: The climate-change data or that pouring poisonous waste into our drinking-water supply and aquifers can harm & kill us. Have a glass of mercuric nitrate! Yummy! Yummy! No mention of climate-change can ever be told under his rule. Or you'll go to prison for years!

Off to sulk, but never to remain silent -

Dave

 

Oh yeah, I forgot, we have different names for everything over here. We often call stuff by its original brand name. Not unlike 'Hoover' which can even be a verb nowadays.

So, in the UK virtually all locking pliers are 'Mole' grips. Carpet knives, which I believe you refer to as 'box cutters' are usually called 'Stanley' knives here as they were mostly manufactured by the Stanley company.

We also tend to use 'spanner' for 'wrench' and 'Allen keys' rather than Allen wrenches. In fact, 'wrench' is predominantly a verb here. In the UK if you use the phrase 'throwing a spanner in the works' it's like saying something has been deliberately or inadvertently sabotaged (like Windows 8 lol). In fact I believe the word sabotage itself is derived from the French noun for a clog reputedly often thrown into machinery by Luddites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locking_pliers

With my disability I find the chromed brass draw tubes easier to insert/extract from focusers and diagonals possibly due to the fact that they're slightly heavier. I thought that if I could remove the drawtube from the 6mm Celestron Plossl I could clean the field lens properly or at least salvage a decent drawtube. Unfortunately the bloody thing's a tad stubborn. As I'm getting more range, dexterity and strength back into my right hand I periodically try to unscrew the drawtube. The last time I tried (with the aforementioned Mole grip) I managed to wrench off and tear the eyecup. Luckily I have spare ones lol.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the new trend for aluminium drawtubes even if they're smooth without the undercut defect. They are lighter, but I'm still not totally a fan of them. They just don't always seem to insert or extract as smoothly as the brass ones. I'm guessing the aluminium ones are cheaper to mass produce. I was hoping the drawtubes would be smoothies with the 10 and 25mm Sirius Plossls included with my StarMax. The 10mm is smooth but the 25mm has an undercut. They are both decent eyepieces (Synta I believe) but it limits what diagonals or focusers I can put the 25mm into.



The 15, 10 and 8mm Vixen NPL's in my revised grab'n'go case all work in anything and the 12.4 and 6.4mm Meade Plossls are smoothies. I think they're all brass drawtubes.

 

I'm fine thanks Ray. Sorry to hear about your sciatica. Vixen SLV's seem to be on sale everywhere. I can get a 9mm for around the equivalent of 100 USD here. It's only going to give you 44.4x on the ST80 though. A 6mm might be more practical as a higher power 50° FOV.

I've been thinking about magnifications: http://astronomyconnect.com/forums/threads/1-4x-magnification-rule.3581/

 

Ouch! Ray - sorry to hear that's decided to pay you a visit! If I was on L.I. I'd come feed you some Kratom and some food as well!

You know - Jello is actually good for nerve-pain. It's one reason they have it on menu's in hospitals. I fed it to a Raccoon that came to me for help after it broke a metatarsal in her front paw. She broke land-speed records in healing-up and re-joining her tribe. I'd had her mending at my place for about a week. Audubon told me to expect the mend would take several weeks!

Sciatica bites!

Dave

 

My health is relatively good at the moment, well, apart from being partially paralysed on the right side of my body lol. I'm really tempted to get the 5.5mm Bresser 60° as I got first light on the 14mm as stated in the Bresser 60° Plossl range? thread. The 5.5mm only has a 7mm eye relief though, so it may not suit you well Ray. Talking of WO diagonals, I cleaned the prism (more or less lol) on my well travelled one and re-seated it with some new shims I made. It seems to work fine. Which surprised me.

 

04/02/17. First Quarter Ascending Moon, 17:00 - 19:00 (Transit 18:40) GMT, 56.4% illumination, azimuth 334.6°, altitude 48.2°, 369,932 km distant (Pisces). Conditions ranged from quite clear to hazy thin cloud to clear again and eventually degenerating into fairly heavy cloud. Telescope: 90mm Orion Apex, alt az mount. Baader Neodymium filter in (Amici prism) diagonal. Eyepieces: 25mm Orion Sirius Plossl, 19mm TeleVue Panoptic, 15mm Vixen NPL, 14mm Bresser 60° ‘Plossl’, 12.4mm Meade Plossl, 10mm Vixen NPL and an 8mm Vixen NPL giving magnifications of 50x, 66x, 83x, 89x, 100x, 125x and 156x.



I started with the 25mm Sirius Plossl as it was technically still daylight and 50x is good enough to check overall transparency. Detail was good though and as it got progressively darker I increased the magnification to 83x and then 89x. Occasionally I would have to drop back down to 83x or even 66x. After transit there was a prolonged period at 100x and 125x. For a short while I even managed a clear, bright 156x but eventually conditions deteriorated again.



Highlights include superb terminator detail in the Caucasus and Apennine mountain ranges, Conon was very easily discerned, Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel were clear with much internal detail. Arzachel’s central mountain was very apparent as were its walled terraces. Albategnius was quite striking with the steep slopes of Klein dramatically shadowed. Deslandres, Hell and Lexell were all quite prominent and I even got a hint of Clavius and Rutherfurd further south.



An interesting surprise was just how contrasted the Pallas crater and general area north and west of the Sinus Medii were. I almost imagined I could perceive 'Wallwerk’ the lunar city Franz von Gruithuisen believed he could see in the 19th century. When the terminator catches some of the area just right it does indeed give the impression of walled cities or ancient ruins.



I got a chance to really test the Vixen 10 and 8mm NPL’s. I spent a lot of time at 125x with the 10mm NPL and it easily holds its own with a TeleVue 11mm Plossl or the 10mm Baader Eudiascopic. The Vixens were a tiny bit brighter and sharper in contrast compared to the Meade or Bresser Plossls to my eyes, although there wasn’t much in it. I also thought I could detect a tiny bit of edge of field colour with the Bresser 60° ‘Plossl’ although it performed superbly. I got brief low power views of the phase on Mars and Venus when I wasn’t observing the Moon.



Franz von Gruithuisen had some imagination, that or dodgy optics, probably one of those plastic Sky-Watcher Barlow giveaways lol. I think I can just about see the Wallwerk car park, or is it Walmart, maybe Tesco lol?

Images by the VMA, Starry Night 7, Google Earth and GIMP

 

It depends on how much eye relief you need Ray. Some people who wear eyeglasses can observe without them. The 8 and 10mm NPL's are pretty tight. They also have a permanently raised eyeguard which limits how far you can put your eye near them. You may just get away with the 10mm.

The weather can only get better! Saturn is rising early morning now and should be good in only a few weeks. You've got Jupiter to look forward to as well. Spring will come soon enough.

I wouldn't over tighten the rings holding the ST80. It can distort the OTA if you do. I think I had mine a bit tight on the Sky-Watcher and that may have contributed to the focuser screw problem. Just tight enough to hold the OTA safely should be fine.

 

Saturn will reach opposition on June 15th, I think.



This is it now from my position at 06:30 GMT.

 

I know how you feel, it's cold and miserable here too. My dad always reckoned that we tend to follow any bad weather in NY. So, I'll be riding that huge blizzard soon enough. lol

The difference is when it snows in NY the city deals with it. Three millimetres of snow here and the entire UK grinds to a halt! ROTFL

 

The cold can critically raise my BP as I can't move fast. We've just had some powdery snow, where's the Gulf Stream when you need it lol? It's supposed to keep the British Isles warm! Without it we'd probably be like Iceland or something.



Even worse ... it's stopped me seeing the comet.

 

You'd need to grow a few volcanoes in the UK, Mak - if you'd want to be like Iceland. Otherwise, you and the rest of Europa would be a solid block of ice.

By the by, Comet 45P has lost it's tail. I'm calling it the "Bob-Tailed Comet" nowadays.

Dave

 

Or listen to Bjork.

Bloody typical. I blame Bjork.

 

What! Repeat: WHAT was that??

Sorry if this 'dates' me - but I've never heard of that thing before now! Are my ears deceiving me - or was that an example of something so atrocious it would turn any/everything into a block of ice?

I could only stand about one minute before I hit the OFF-BUTTON. HARD, TOO!



I FEEL STRANGE...

 

I think it's chill out ambient or something, Bjork, of course being Iceland's biggest rock star. She's now officially more famous than 'I've started so I'll finish' Magnus Magnuson. Although I'm guessing you have to be from the UK to get the Mastermind reference. I've never really been into Bjork myself, she may be part elf.



OTOH I used to rehearse in the same studio as these girls, that was back in the 90's though. They're a bit older now but they were always great fun.

 

The "Elf" reference I can believe. The Iceland folk's do believe in these critters. I've actually read quite of bit of Icelandic mythology some years ago. Forgive me - I was in Harvard at the time and dealing with a 1,000 nuts!

That dive does have the best research-libraries though. Wherever I go, including private individuals, I always read the bookshelves - to see what level of background I'm likely to encounter.

"Always keep one bad habit. This way, if you ever go toe-to-toe with the Good Lord, you'll have something to bargain with.*"

Dave


* by Samuel Clemons - aka - Mark Twain