Visual Observing

I haven't observed for a while now thanks to clouds, work, and other crap so even though the moon was almost full tonight was going to be the night to do so regardless of conditions and even if I had to fire up my multi megawatt orbital weapons death star laser platform located in an undisclosed location somewhere in orbit, set it for wide beam, and burn any clouds right out of the sky passing aircraft be damned.

It was also an excuse to try out the Televue Ethos EP's ...

Tags: celestron 8" edge, ethos, sct, televue

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Visual Observing

I was out last night after taking the C11 back to Celestron (I live close to their HQ) the previous week because of problems with the optics. I found that after cooling it and dealing with some problems with my finderscope I just did not enjoy looking through it. The views were brighter, I could go deeper, and the things I was looking at were "bigger" (note the quotes) BUT... For the most part I wasn't viewing I was cursing. Cursing that it hadn't cooled, cursing the weight of the CGEM, ...

I am getting more serious about Astrophotography (AP) and was researching a good AP scope to hone my skills on. My budget for the OTA was $1,000 US or under. So this eliminated the high end super scopes like the Tak, AP, Televue, etc. I wanted a fast scope at least f/6.5 and one with a nice wide field. I also wanted one where I wasn't having to piece together a whole farm or extra parts. Lastly I wanted a scope that I could also use as a grab and go and solar observing one. The contenders were the ...

Tags: es 80mm apo

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Visual Observing , Lessons learned, technical and pro tips , Astro Photography

I have been looking into the addition of binoviewer's to my kit and wanted to use them in both the ES 127mm and the C11. I also wanted to use my existing ES EP line up to save a bit on costs. And I wanted to use as little correction (barlowing) as possible.

I started out with the Baader Maxbrights and after testing with the BV's and their 1.2x glass path corrector (GPC) I found that without using a T2 diagonal and possibly a 1.2x GPC and most likely a 1.7x GPC they would not be able ...

Tags: binoviewer, es 127, explore scientific

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Explore Scientific Eye Pieces , Visual Observing , Lessons learned, technical and pro tips , Equipment

Had to miss the scheduled star party tonight due to family obligations but decided well after dark to go ahead and setup the ES 127 on the CG5.

Started out by aligning the finderscope to the scope via Capella which was interesting because the finder scope on the ES held pretty true to it's alignment even after removal and storage in the case.

Tried alignment and things were... well... off. So I did the old factory reset and reprogram on the CG5 and it was back to performing ...