Posts Made By: Ron Bee

I'd like to thank everyone for contributing to this thread. At first, I thought it was a no-brainer post; boy, I've learned so many things from this thread! I can't even begin to tell you guys how much I appreciate your participation.

I promise to let you know if I hear back about Escalente. The author of the S&T article was kind enough to reply to a nobody like me. Escalente was actually his professor and his teacher! The scope was a 110mm Zeiss refractor (not exactly 4-inch ;-). The book has probably been long out of print, but I got an invitation to look at his copy if I'm in Mexico City ;-)! Super. Though I won't be there anytime soon, I promise a follow up post after I get there, umm,
maybe during Mars opposition as it'd surely be better position down there than here, wouldn't you say?

Ron B[ee]

Indubitably ;-), it would be a small refractor, BOB (even better a semi-apo or an apo). Makes no mistake, the difference between a fast achromat and an APO is very noticeable in terms of sharpness, contrast and crispness. I'd say if terrestial is your main desire, 102mm is too large :-(. I used my TV-102 for viewing the varmint (squirrels) 50 ft away peering into its teeth crunching on a nut, ships on the ocean 50 miles away, cars on the bridge 45 miles away, July 4th firecracker 40 miles away (look neat - like a fully resolved but colorful globular clusters), etc. But 4" aperture is too large and **overkill** to be *primary* terrestial scope. I'd think something like a TV Ranger/Pronto, TV-76 or TV-85 would be perfect if ($$$ or $$$$ is not an objective). Tele Vue makes green tube presuming for birders to hide from the birds ;-). Also, in the day time, over long distance (like 50 miles ;-), the ground heat makes even moderate magnification unusable (say above 73x). At night, it's a lot easier to get above 110x!

BTW, these small refractors makes decent moon and planetary scopes, oh solar too with filter, even on many bright DSOs.

Ron B[ee]

>The need for aperture really hit home during the spring
>and summer of 2001 when I was trying to observe Mars. Even
>through the ETX90’s long focal length, Mars looked like
>the head of a pin. There was absolutely no way to make out
>any features (even if they had been visible through the
>planet’s unexpected dust storm). Reading that Mars would
be at

Hi David,

Although larger aperture will certainly resolve more details, perhaps something was wrong with your ETX90. **Very small** aperture with *large obstruction* is also not very ideal for planets. Albiet Mars is small, high quality small aperture such as a 4" APO can show a wealth of detail near opposition; it was much larger than a "pin head" ;-). I had some incredible view of Mars usually at 176x and above and a few excellent nights at 293x with my 4" TV-102 APO when the teeny Syrtis Minor was seen! Others with a 4" Tak FS102 and 4.1" AP Traveller reported last year of many fine detail views (one observer through a 4" Vixen achromat could see even more than I did - ah, but he was quite experienced with Mars whom I learned a great deal from). Seeing the rare dust storm slowly obscuring the feature was a treat, like seeing less and less contrast ;-). With Mars, I've learned that practice is essential to get as much as you can comes opposition. That is, start early when Mars is around 8 arcsec small and keep looking and learn to identify features (even Syrtis Major is easy to see with Mars this small). Observe **often**; I've observed several times in one night and thereby increased by astro-casino odds of catching steady seeing. Also, learn to use filters as various features get easier to see. Next year, I even plan to try out some sketching hopefully maybe 1% as good as Eric Jamison's fine sketches as sketching help focusing on details.
http://home.fiam.net/ericj/

Good luck on your quest for your scope. If it's Mars you want see and a 6" APO is out your budget (out of mine too :-(), you may wish to look at the 6" Mak Newt like the MN66; it's highly optimized for planets. At any rate, you want to be primed and ready after 2003, Mars won't be as big until the Star Trek NG 24th century!

Ron B[ee]

No idea, Gary! If you can give us the focal length of your scope and the focal length of your Radians, we can figure it out for you. Also, does the binoview have a 2X barlow built in? Or you can figure it out yourself with this tools (for the lazy type like me ;-).
http://www.atmsite.org/contrib/Prewitt/fieldOfView/

Ron B[ee]

Ah, Inge, back from the extended Pisces fishing trip. I'm so glad as now I can continue to read your reports! An a very nice first report for the season it is.

Indeed, you're absolutely right; IC 2149 is a great target for a small scope! In fact, the mag 11.3 central star is within reach of a good 4" refractor. BTW, the PN can be seen without filter as well, just need to pump the magnification ;-).

Ron B[ee]

Hi Mary,

This is not correct. Magnification can help increase the
contrast by darkening the sky background on DSO. So the
using the same eyepiece, the longer focal length of the SCT
will yield higher magnification and thus **seemingly** gives
a better view. But if you use a different eyepiece on
your Dobs to reach the same magnification as the SCT, you'll
see a very similar view.

Ron B[ee]
PS Now, we've save you some $$$ trade-in to be apply to gasoline to go to darker sky ;-).

I cured my craned neck from using my old 6x30 finder with a TV Starbeam finder. It's mounted near midpoint of my OTA and I can see the red dot from the eyepiece position! Near the zenith, the little flip mirror does the magic ;-).

So think of the Starbeam as the neck cream (umm that's a rhyme ;-).

Ron B[ee]

Well, Debbie, the TV-102 Light Cup would like to take up the "Guru" challenge. It's nastily low and in the bad polluted part of my sky. Please do wish us luck ;-).

Ron B[ee]
PS Thanks for the tips.

Anthony, I have a 5mm Tak LE eyepiece and you can't go wrong with! Afterall, we would believe that Takahashi designed its eyepieces for the Tak scopes, right ;-)? It's very light, bright, high contrast, and sharp. Its 9mm ER is just about the limit (for me) and its 52d FOV is serviceable. But the !@#$%^&* rubber eyecup...

Now, may I introduce the Tele Vue Radian eyepiece with the revolutionary Instadjust eyecup?

Last but not least, there'a an old saying: "if you feed the best eyepiece to the Tak APO, the Tak APO will cough up the best view for you" ;-). (You can also substitute the "Tak APO" with "Tele Vue APO", "AP APO", "TMB APO", All Prodigious Optics, etc. ;-). Oh, don't forget that TV Everbrite (or AP Maxbright) diagonal; it's the whole optical train you know ;-).

Ron B[ee]

I fear ladder myself, Mark ;-). A 4" APO would make a nice companion to your XT8. But why not consider **high
quality** (APO is quality)? What I mean is have you thought about a Zambuto like the object of desire 8" or 10" Portaball?

Ron B[ee]