Posts Made By: Vincent Bert

I would second the advice to get a barlow and eyepeice combination that would give you around 250X but no more as this approaches the theoretical maximum magnification for your aperature, (an 8mm plossl and 2X barlow will do the trick) I recommend the Celestron Ultima 2X barlow. If you already have a 10mm, then barlowing it will give you 200X but on some real steady nights you might want just a bit more magnification. You can also gain a bit more magnification by sliding the 10mm a little way out of the barlow and then engaing the set screw. It will be great on Mars, the Moon and Jupiter, Saturn when they appear later in the fall. For a good planetary eyepiece you need not spend much money, the Celestron adn Meade Plossls put out fine planetary images. Also, if your scope accepts a 2" diagonal, William Optics has a good one for 99 bucks. A quality diagonal is an important part of the optical train, it accepts 2" eyepieces but will also accept 1 1/4" eyepeices with the supplied adapter. you might also want a good 2" widefield eyepiece, something in the 24mm to 20mm range (41X and 50X in your scope) The televue Naglers are really great, but very expensive. Meade has some nice 2" wide angle eyepieces for a much more reasonable price and they perform very well.

As far as viewing deep sky objects, I hate to disappoint you but they will not look like the photos. At first they will appear to you only as dim smudges but after your eye gets trained by observing these objects, I dont mean just taking a casual glance, but really observing, you will begin to see detail in them. Getting to a dark sky site is a must to get the best deep sky performance from your scope as city light pollution is a real killer of these objects. However, you will get very fine views of the moon and planets, double stars from light polluted skies as they are bright enough that no detail is lost (in the case of planets some folks say it is enhanced) by light pollution.

About the star diagonal reversing the image, most of us just get used to it but you can buy and "erect image prism" that will give you properly oriented views but you will sacrifice image quality as it is not near the quality of a good mirror diagonal.

The color filters will enhance contrast on the planets. For Mars I use an orange filter to bring out the surface detail, and switch to a light blue to bring out the clouds and polar caps.

You have a fine refractor and should get much satifation from it. You will also get plenty of advice from this forum. for reading up on equipment and general observing I recommend going to cloudynights.com and read away. Hope this helps you, and welcome to this great hobby. Also if you have an astronomy club in your area join up, you will get a real education observing with other folks.

It will be interesting to see how that mask works. I'm far from an optics expert, but it would seem to me that if you make 4 off axis holes you would then have the contrast killing effect of one HUGE central obstruction between the holes. The good thing is that its easy and cheap to try one out, I look forward to your report.

Hi Rob. I use a 30mm (46mm field stop, 84* AFOV) EP in my C8 and can view the whole field, no problem. I am also using a W.O. 2" SCT diagonal. Since the 26 Nagler has a smaller field stop than 46mm you should have no problem at all.

I have noticed that in larger scopes, very stellar-like nucleus. Try looking at the M84/86 group with a large scope (over 14 inches or so) the two giant ellipticals have a pinpoint stellar nucleus.

Good question. Is there anyone out there that has compared (side by side of course) the 31 Nagler to the 26 Nagler. I realize the 26 will have better contrast due to the increased magnification but how does it compare in light transmission, field flatness, and off axis sharpness. I also an debating on whether to get the 31mm or the 26mm, the difference in TFOV is not a consideration for me. Thanks in advance.

Borrow someones tectron collimation tools and booklet. The booklet is very important as it explains all the details of collimation. Each step must be followed in sequence to achieve collimation or to troubleshoot what is causing the headaches. Sometimes an out of square focuser can cause much of the problem. You can also make a sight tube out of a plastic film canister for rough centering of the secondary, but a real sight tube with crosshairs is much better. Bear in mind that a simple dot laser is no substitute for the sight tube, IMHO. You can do decent collimation of the secondary and primary with the crosshair sight tube and then fine tune the primary with a cheshire, it may take several iterations to get it right. the sight tube cheshire and booklet are fairly inexpensive and you would also be able to use the cheshire to collimate a refractor. Once you have decent collimation you can fine tune the primary with a star test. Hope this helps.

Here is a close-up of the AN and Servocat. The only "stray wire" I have running around is the for the servocat handpad. The altitude encoder wire needs that little extra slack for the motions of the scope. Time to cough up the bucks for the wireless handpad.

Wow, it looks like you caught some detail on the moon visible in your first image, eventhough it is oblong! Outstanding.

Actually you unscrew the lens on the camera exposing the chip, fit the camera with a 1.25 sleeve sold by various vendors, or you can make one. Then you plop the webcam with the 1.25 barrel directly into the focuser or into a barlow for a bigger image scale. About a 4000mm FL will work good for starters and fair seeing. For example, a C8 (F 10 or 2000mm FL) with a 2x barlow will give you F20 or 4000mm FL.

Aside from the satellite, the image is pretty kewl because its a good representation of what M51 actually looks like in a mid sized scope.