You laugh now - but just wait until we find a way to dump all our industrial-waste onto Mars, stuff it's atmosphere with CFC's, and give it a 'greenhouse-effect.' Then it'll be every bit the 'The' chosen site for 'Raves' and, hopefully, political-rallies. One Way tickets.

Antarctica? Of yeah - didn't they find the ice-cube named that bobbing about in the Puget Sound?

Dave (who may, or may not, be kidding)

 

Well, if they don't improve on the technology most of the waste will never reach Mars and will probably explode on the pad.

Apparently Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. I bet tomatoes grown on Venus are huge.



I think this is a test of the proposed UK spaceplane.

 

Venusian Tomatoes? Watered with dilute Sulfuric Acid - Yum! Yum!

Sell the pulp as Spicy, Imported Tomato Ketchup & Drain-Cleaner!

That would hit the spot. And remove it, too.

Dave

 

Oh sorry, this is the Skylon video ...



Dan Dare or what? Beat that Roscosmos lol.

I forgot about the sulphuric acid rain on Venus, I'll have to get a lead umbrella made if I visit. So Alan Bond had better get Skylon flying soon or I'll have to go by Thunderbird 3.



Weather's looking decidedly unpants, might get a crack at setting Mars & Venus with the ST80. Probably won't see much but the phases should be apparent.

 

I caught a twilight Venus (11.3° altitude, Sagittarius) and Mars (19.5° altitude, Capricorn), but with the 90mm tabletop Mak looking out of an open window at 40x, 53x and 83x (25mm Vixen NLP, 19mm TV Panoptic, 12mm Celestron Omni Plossl).



Venus was very bright as usual and I tried a variety of filters, finally stacking a #56 Light Green and an ND96-0.6 to get a better look at the phase. An 80A on its own was pretty good though and took the edge off the glare well.



I could see the Martian phase at 53x and 83x. I used my old but newly customised 12mm Omni Plossl to view Mars at 83x, not expecting much. I mainly wanted to see how its new smooth brass drawtube fared in a diagonal with a compression ring. I used my posh WO 45° for convenience as the targets were so low and I was in an upstairs room.



The weird thing is that I thought I could see detail on Mars. I suppose 83x isn’t a particularly low magnification, but it’s half of what you’d expect to see planetary detail at least. It was fleeting but I thought I could see dark ‘albedo’ like patches in the Xanthe Dorsa region and elsewhere (shown above). Although it was probably an optical illusion. Unless Dejah Thoris was signalling me from the canals ...

 

Sounds like your eyes have become well-trained in discerning fine detail without consciously trying. Good trick! Those ST80's never fail to hold surprises to us! I recommend these wonderful, little, scopes to any and all takers.

Your 'Pal' in SGL is busily moaning & groaning about a spelling-error in an ad for a "Fully mulltogoated Barlow..." I suggested he get a 'Long-Eared Goat' so he'd have something to hold onto him by.

"Da-A-A-A-A-Dee!"

The Evil-One

 

I was viewing Mars with the Omegon Mak. I dunno about fine detail, but there definitely seemed to be these fleeting glimpses of something, which I certainly didn't expect. The 'somethings' did indeed seem to vaguely correspond to the dark areas in the VPA picture above showing the surface of Mars facing me at about 16:30 GMT.

Omni 2x Barlow, 15 & 12mm Plossls now seriously cleaned & revamped with new drawtubes, eyeguards and a new Barlow element. Just right as a lightweight combination for the ST80.




Mind you, previously I spent half an hour cleaning that old Omni. I'm not so sure the Omni series are GSO and may be Synta. They might be GSO, but they do seem to have a slight edge on other Celestron GSO Plossls. Or it could be my imagination.

Hmmm ... my 'pal' gets everyone else's goat, it's about time someone or something got his. lol

 

Ah - your 90mm Omegon Maksutov did this deed. Well in terms of contrast and definition, a Maksutov and a refractor are often considered pretty much equals to one another. And as a Plossl only boasts 4 lens-elements, that likely helped. I would also try on an Orthoscopic, too. I'm not familiar with the Omni family myself. Most of my Plossl EP's at this point have the green-lettering of TeleVue® on them. Aside from one Meade and a custom 'Super-Plossl' that's 2" and 50mm by Gary Roberts. Which is quite nice. Hard to get one now, though. Seems Gary' source of super+++ grade microscope glass-elements from Japan has dried up. So it appears we're late to the 'party.' Rats!

Have you checked out the Virtual Planet Atlas before? It consists of most of the very high resolution images from the various missions to Mercury, Venus, and Mars. All the same stuff it took me over a solid day to assemble on my own from NASA and other websites - all neatly sewn-up for people without needing to clear one's schedule. Here's the most recent version on the net:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualplanet/

From SourceForge - probably the safest place to find excellent FREE astronomy-software without bugs and viral cling-ons.


Well, I'm off. Back to reading the funeral of my Nation, er - I mean Yahoo News commentary.....

Dave the White-Knuckled

 

I acquired the Omnis before my TV's. I have a really nice 15mm Antares 'Plossl' although it's actually a Masuyama clone. My Omnis are a tad customised. The 12mm Omni doesn't compare badly to the 11mm TV Plossl and the 15mm Omni has a longer eye relief and a bigger eye lens than the 15mm TV. They'll be OK on the ST80 at low power anyway. I tend to use ortho's for high power. My 16mm T5 Nagler and 19mm Panoptic are good wide angle EP's on the ST80 but I'm wary of them in a Barlow as if the diagonal rotates it's not always easy for me to catch it in time. The Omni trio will be OK for more extensive field testing anyway and when I feel more confident with the whole set up I'll introduce better quality EP's.

I've been using VMA for a few years but VPA is recent. I get the binaries directly from the homepages.

 

Have you tried an Antares Twist-Lock? Much cheaper money than the Baader Click-Stop - or whatever it's called - and just as good. I find these of help with heavy, lop-sided loads like diagonals and some of my giant eyepieces.

Dave

 

I've seen them Dave. I might have a closer look one day.

 

I don't think you should have many problems with the larger eyepieces Ray. I'm being careful with what I put into the ST80 focuser at the moment as it is an unknown factor. I've been experimenting and have discovered a convenient tripod leg height that enables me to view at the zenith and lower elevations. For lower altitudes I can turn the diagonal to the right and sit to the right of the Vixen mount which makes turning the alt and az slo mo's easier to reach slightly. Unfortunately, with the diagonal rotated it can be more prone to accidental rotation or pulling out altogether. So I'm trying to minimise weight and height of eyepiece combinations at the moment. To be honest, for most DSO's you'll only need to achieve magnifications in the range of around 30x to 60x anyway.



I had another butcher’s at a twilight Venus and Mars with the 90mm Mak. Again, Venus’s phase was easily discerned at 31x and 53x with stacked ND and #56 Light Green filters. Mars’s phase at 19.9° (Transit) was also pretty easily seen. I decided to view Mars at 66.6x, 83.3x, 133.3x and 166.6x. Predominantly to test the newly cleaned and customised Omni EP’s and Barlow.



Like last time, at 83.3x and higher I thought I could fleetingly discern a dark mass roughly in the centre of the visible disc. It was most apparent at 166.6x (12mm Omni Plossl plus 2x Barlow). I had a Wratten #11 Yellow-Green filter threaded into the eyepiece as I was viewing Mars. The dark mass tracked across the FOV with Mars so I don’t think I’m somehow seeing the secondary or baffles in some way (which I suspected). I think it’s a good possibility I was seeing the Mare Erythraeum area as it is actually visible to me at the moment. The entire mare area does look like a dark mass in the centre of the target as in the CDC picture. I'm pretty certain that's what I'm seeing. You could hardly call it detail, more like a splodge, but all credit to the 12mm Celestron Omni Plossl. They can be bought for around £22-23 new here now. That's pretty good value.

 

It's cold out you can tell by the frost. I can open this window, the sudden rush of heat outwards doesn't help but it's OK for a bit of indoor astronomy. I just wanted to catch a twilight Venus and Mars again lol.



I've got some new reading material.



It is interesting. The author has a website: http://philippughastronomer.com/

I believe he often uses an ST80, maybe we should let him join our ST80 club ROTFL!

 

Sounds like a plan to me! Let's do it - send him an invitation to AstronomyConnect at least. Ask him if he'd like to take a look at the place - a quiet & peaceful haunt with intelligent people, who make a lot for ST80's being great instruments that won't result in bankruptcy!

Looks to be a nice book. Now I'm tempted! Rats!

The only eyepiece I've fed to my ST80 that disagreed with it was my custom-built 2" 50mm Super-Plossl (which gives 8X) from Gary Russell:

http://www.russell-optics.com/

If Gary has any left. His supply of super-fine lenses, which were from Japanese super-fine microscope-makers, seems to have dried-up. Last time he updated me. I've fed 2" 32mm and 38mm EP's to it without any negative effects. And it likes my older-Orion-USA Silver 40mm Plossl without qualms for 10X.

Dave Frankenstein

 

I got to test the 'Frankentron' yesterday as well.



Basically a 17mm Celestron Plossl married to an Omni Barlow draw tube, making it 10.6mm. It seemed OK.

In the book Mr Pugh claims to have used two scopes predominantly; A Skymax 127 and an ST80. The main eyepiece he used was a Sky-Watcher 32mm Plossl combined with an Antares 2x reducer. This gave 24x (I calculate 23.43x lol) for an increase in FOV of about 1.7x to 1.8°. The same 32mm Plossl/reducer combination gave his ST80 a huge 7° FOV for 6x.

If my maths is right (which is debatable) that gave the 32mm Plossl/Skymax 127/reducer combination a 5.4mm exit pupil. This would be 12.8mm on the ST80!

Do you have any experience with reducers on Mak’s/SCT’s Dave? I was under the apprehension that they worked well for AP but had limitations with visual. I’ve read that they may be difficult to achieve focus with EP’s above 25mm.

I’m not sure where he was placing the reducer either. I think he was threading it into the eyepiece. I thought the logical place would be into the diagonal or perhaps the visual back. I’ve considered it for with my 102mm Skymax, effectively halving its f/l to 650mm and giving it a focal ratio of 6.3. That’s still not as fast as the ST80 though.

I don’t care what many claim but IMO a 4“ (102mm) Mak wouldn’t be as efficient as a 4“ refractor for DSO’s, even if the Mak had a reducer. A 5“ (127mm) Mak plus reducer would probably be much better and possibly close to a 4“ refractor in ability to observe faint fuzzies.

I think I’ll stick to the ST80 for the fuzzies lol. I may consider a reducer though.

 

For me, the ST80 will let me see a lot of DSO's that are difficult with the Skymax and the Bazooka. It's just a pity I had to spend nearly 600 quid on the mount/tripod lol. The 102mm Meade looks pretty easy to manipulate though. The Skymax is nicely small and compact, but with a focal ratio of 12.7 it just isn't practical for DSO's. If you have an Android phone/tablet there's a good freeware app called Deep Sky that shows all the Messier Objects. I hope your arm heals quickly Ray. Take care.

 

Hey Ray? Have you heard the news about the insane DEA trying to outlaw Kratom - a tree that grows in Southeast Asia and long used as a natural pain-medication? I use a bit of it when my neuropathy is making like difficult. My specialist/rheumatologist gives me codeine, but I hate taking it. And the Kratom works much longer, doesn't have all the hideous side-effects of opiates, and is basically a better choice for me. It also shows great use in getting people off hard opiates, including heroin, and keeping them off. My doctor also will sign-on if I'd needed to try cannabis for my pain. Figures the boneheads would try to outlaw the Kratom, as well as their laws against medical-marijuana, which fortunately now are under orders to keep their paws off that one again. I won't try the cannabis as the Kratom is doing an excellent job - for now. But if...

You might talk about trying it with your physician. It can't hurt you to try it. In for the short-term use until you're healed-up and no longer pained, it can be a Heaven-sent pain-reliever. It's available over the internet. I'd be happy to give you a link & review on the folks I get mine from. Totally reputable and above-board folks. Not far from me, and quick response-time from next-door to me, in New Hamster - er... Hampshire.

You'll love the ST80, once you get it delivered. You're already quite advanced in using a good achromatic refractor, so virtually nil learning-curve involved. I greatly enjoy suggesting these to anyone wanting an easy-to-learn, grab & go, high-contrast telescope that ideal for so very many things - from giving views through in outreach-work, to beginning astro-photography on brighter cosmic-goodies, and video-observing in near rear-time with & without computers.

It also wins a prize as a great telescope for kids, rather than trying to teach 8-year olds how to use and service reflectors!

Feel better -

Dave

 

I got to see Mars, Venus and a setting New Moon yay!