Posts Made By: Bob Clift

Three pairs of parfocal Leica 30mm diameter microscope eyepieces (FLs 10mm, 16mm and 25mm) with focussing adjustment, for the price of a pair of the cheapest Naglers. Have I been silly and got things that aren't particularly well suited to the job? Despite an interest in astronomy since always and a degree in astrophysics this is my first telescope, and my line of reasoning behind choosing them over trad astronomy EPs didn't get much more sophisticated than 'An eyepiece is an eyepiece is an eyepiece, innit? Mmmmmmmmm, Leica. Mmmmmmmmm, cheap. Ish.'. That, and finding out that their current list price is nearly £2k.

Only used them up to now with my ickle 700mm f8 telephoto lens (pretty happy with the views of my lousy suburban south east UK skies so far, GRS and Cassini divn remain elusive however), the telescope fairy left an 8" Schmidt-Cass OTA outside my door this morning though This also explains why it's now cloudy and raining :C

.....my new (to me anyway, it's very old) Celestron 8" SCT needs collimating, what with USA to UK shipping etc.

Problem: None of my allen keys, imperial OR metric, fit the collimation screws. HEEEEELP!!! (I did look close to see if the hex holes been bashed or bent, they haven't)

/goes off to look for a blushing smiley

Another question regarding SCTs, the inside of the front corrector plate is FILTHY, can I remove the front cell to clean it? (oh, and the allens holding the front cell on ALSO don't fit any of my keys)

Nice. Very nice indeed. Thanks to a combination of small scope and almost permenant __really really lousy__ transparency and seeing here in SE England the best I've ever seen in my (admittedly quite short) observing experience is glimpses of the NEB and SEB. And what's this GRS thing everyone keeps going on about? ;-)