I'm only happy when it rains ...

 

Well, it didn't rain and I got a good 90 mins with the Moon and Jupiter. The GRS was relatively easy to discern with a 90mm Mak. It's funny how Jupiter can often be good to view detail on when it's in the vicinity of the Moon. The Moon was stunningly sharp for a while until I lost the transparency.



Petavius was nicely revealed by the proximity to the terminator and the rille was nice to see.



Also very good detail in the whole Mare Crisium/dorsa was quite spectacular. A lot of detail could be seen in Endymion. I saw Saturn and it's starting to look better.



Images ~ QuickMap and Stellarium.

 

I'm amazed to see the Omegon Mighty Mak 90's available over here now - for a staggeringly cheap price of $219! And $99 for the 60mm.

Dave

 

Over here they are about the same price as the Orion StarMax (around £170 I think).



They're also marketed as the Kasai Pico. I've no idea who the OEM is.

http://www.kasai-trading.jp/PICO8e.html

I was using my StarMax this morning, the MightyMak's good up to about 50x but it's nowhere near the Synta Mak's in build quality and overall performance.

 

I observed the waning gibbous Moon for around 90mins (transit 02:53 GMT) after setting up about a quarter of an hour before transit. At transit itself it had 88.1% illumination, at 27.7° altitude, 400,900km from Sol (Virgo). There were really good periods of clarity when the transparency was at its best. Unfortunately (04:40) it suddenly got misty, probably a precursor to the blizzard lol. Magnifications of between about 90 ~ 140x (90mm, f/13.8 Maksutov) with a long period at the latter were achieved. A Baader Neodymium filter was in the diagonal for the session. Dewing wasn't a problem.



Highlights included: good fine detail on and around Hercules and Atlas with terraces and rilles visible, Mare Crisium and its western cliffs and dorsa/wrinkle ridge spectacularly highlighted by the terminator, Cleomedes, Sinis Amoris, the terraces on Macrobius, Taruntius and its peak and ray/ejecta were quite apparent, Janssen; its rille and surrounding area were all very sharp and well defined.



Jupiter was also quite clear as well and the Galilean moons could be seen in a row off the western limb.



Images from VMA & VPA

 

I don’t think the Olivon/SW’s will do that well in an f/5 refractor. They have all sorts of issues in an f/6.9 reflector as it is. Mainly ghosting, light scatter and EOF weirdness. They might give pretty orthoscopic like views of certain DSO’s though. I use them as high magnification lunar EP’s on the Bazooka. Plus, they don’t Barlow well and would be weighty in the diagonal. Remember you’ll have to set the ST80 up so it’s comfortable to sit and observe when it’s pointed at the zenith.So care would be needed when rotating the diagonal for lower altitudes, especially if you have limited dexterity in one hand like me. I’d give the 7mm a try on some of the easier nebulae though. The 2.5mm Olivon might be good for lunar/planetary though as you will effectively only be viewing a few arc minutes centre of field and anything at the EOF shouldn’t be a real distraction.

The 5mm & 9mm X-Cels should do well in the ST80, I don’t think there will be many problems although you may lose some sharpness towards the EOF.

Both the Orion Expanse EP’s should be good, the 20mm gives you 20x for a 4mm exit pupil, roughly similar to my 19mm Panoptic.

The Luminos may be good for 82° at 40x, in my experience the Luminos can glare on bright objects in a fast scope and displays EOFB. Again, I don’t see this as a huge problem for many Messier Objects at 40x. It is a tad heavy though and accidentally unthreaded the focuser once in my ST80 lol.

The TV ‘Big 25’ will work superbly and will Barlow well. It will give a 5mm exit pupil on its own.

I’m not sure how useful the 32mm Omni will be but it will give very low power sweep views that might be useful as a finder.

 

It would give you 100x, it might be good for lunar viewing with an 0.8mm exit pupil. A lot of detail can be seen on the Moon at around 100x. It's also a good magnification for lunar observation with an alt az mount as RA isn't so rapid. It might be possible to thread a Barlow element directly on the drawtube to give 160x which is approaching the resolution limit for the ST80. Another possibility is that 100x can be good for splitting doubles. So yeah, bring that too.

 

Hey guys, I hope the weather's improving your side of the pond. It's a bit overcast here and gone cooler. I doubt I'll get to see a twilight Venus this evening. Pretty soon it's going to be too near the Sun.

 

Hiya Mak - and anyone else interested:

I know you're a user of Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts) as your primary no-nonsense charting-software, so I thought this would be of interest to you. I, too, have & use this program at times. So I understand it's attraction. And I know you scan this thread daily - so it would get your attention ASAP.

An update to the program has been released. This is quite a rarity! The last version I know of it the 3.1 I have. And now 4.0 has come out from the folks' behind it in France. The release:

Released /0-beta/2017-03-19/skychart-4.0-3575-windows-x64.zip

And the link I have is SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/skychart/postdownload?source=dlp

I'm on their 'Update' list, so it flew into my email upon release. I'm off to install and tinker with it. I'll post if I run into any problems. So 'No News is Good News.'

'Ta,

Dave

 

Trust me on this Ray,

https://www.amazon.com/Orion-10022-...1489930799&sr=8-1&keywords=orion+starmax+90mm

this is the 90mm Mak you want (for a Vixen-style mount). The MightyMak doesn't have the build quality of the Orion (Synta) and they don't focus sharply over around 60x.

 

OK thanks Dave. CDC doesn't upgrade often, I've only known three in several years. Looks like there is a x64 version now.

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/download



I made a clean install on Win 7. If you do that it puts folders in the x64 & x86 Program Files. So I'm guessing like it says on the site you can just upgrade 'over the top'. It seems more responsive than 3.1 on x64 Win 7.



I added these catalogues:

 

Mak - I thought you'd be a bit interested. I have noted that updates of CdC are a rare phenomena. I can't even remember how long I've had - or did have - the Version 3.1.

I installed the Ver. 4.0, and have run it through it's paces - no problems evident. It's working just fine, as I refresh my memory on how to do a few things, like take a good, clean screenshot (got it!).

Ray - I'll defer to Mak on his knowledge of the Omegon. The Orion is definitely a Synta-build though, as is my Skywatcher 150mm F12. I can attest to the solid build and it's quality - which oozes from it's pores!

But as you asked.....

I found it's advertisement in the April issue of Astronomy Magazine (American publication, Mak) on page 9. It says to go to the website:

www.Omegon.com

And for info on the 90mm Dob-mounted Maksutov, enter the 'product number' 48819 in the search field there. It also says: "Shipping starts at only $4.90!" This tells me they don't have an American-dealer set-up to handle their instruments yet. Want to go into the Maksutov business with me? Hmmm..... Do I want to re-locate from the Green Mountains of Vermont to a street-level walk-in storefront in Brooklyn.....? Uh... Umm... Err......

NO WAY!!!

And Mak? As I recall, a bit ago you mentioned you weren't certain who actually makes the Omegon scopes. There's a clue in this ad I've got here in the magazine. It says:

"Omegon is a section of Nimax GmbH. You will find more imformation about our company at www.nimax de. Prices are subject to change and errors are excepted."

That's All Folks!

Dave

 

AFAIK Omegon, AstroShop or Nimax don't actually manufacture anything. All of their products are rebadged and/or rebranded from a variety of OEM's. Omegon are a tad overpriced I think as well.

http://www.omegon.eu/about-omegon/c,9039



I have this 'Omegon' Barlow, it is very high quality, not far off TV IMO, especially for a shorty. TS Optics sell it at least $20 cheaper. It's actually made by Barsta. I only saw the TSO one after I'd bought this!



British Telecom seems to be having problems even finding Nimax lol. My guess is that the Omegon MightyMak/Kasai Pico Mak's are manufactured somewhere in Kunming (Yunnan Province), I doubt they're Japanese or European made.

I haven't really had time to experiment properly with CDC 4.0 yet.

Version 4.0
New functions:

Set the tool bar button arrangement, size and text in Setup / Toolbar editor. Increase default button size.
The tool bar editor allow you to edit the button bar layout. The function is available from the menu Setup / Tool bar editor.
New performance options from menu File/Reset chart and options…
New tool box function you can activate with the keys F1 to F8.
Scripting functions and custom tool box capabilities.
New representation for the Milky Way. This can be activated from the menu Setup / Display / Lines by unchecking “Milky Way - Line mode”.
Updated Solar system information window with more functionality
Plot images for the main planetary satellites
More colour and label options
Update the artificial satellites TLE files automatically.
Option to add a crosshair to the chart center.
Option to add the meridian line with any projection.
Show comet and asteroid hourly motion in the detail window.
Update download URL for asteroids and comets
New observing list Tour function
Add cursor or telescope position to observing list
Add Tcp/Ip connection to the LX200 telescope interface.
Use INDIstarter to manage the INDI server.
New INDI control panel.
Catalog:

OpenNGC replace NGC2000, it is now include with the base version
Use official IAU star name
The following catalog change require to install the new version with 4.0 in the file name from https://sourceforge.net/projects/skychart/files/2-catalogs/
New version of GCVS and WDS catalog
New version of PGC/LEDA with 5 million galaxies
Add index to search planetary nebula by name
Add Sh2 and Barnard catalog
Update the pictures using better coordinates from OpenNGC
Corrections:

Performance improvement with image display
Artificial satellites TLE files can use .txt extension.
Move some menu from File to View and Chart.
Now the program scale the window correctly on high resolution screen. You can set the old behaviour in Setup/General.
No more store the program data location in the configuration file. If you need a non-standard location use the new command line option ”–datadir=”.




Apart from a slight glitch in rendering M42 in one of the drawing modes it's running pretty good.



OK, they've seriously improved the solar system info mode, which was new in version 3 IIRC. NOW I'm impressed!

 

The item from the Omegon-site that caught my eye was the "Omegon Super Ploessl Zoom Eyepiece 8 - 24mm" thing. Misspelling and all is there's, not mine!


Any ideas about this, Mak or anyone? Such as whose it really is? Barsta, or.....? It looks like one from China and re-branded for every company and it's dead grandmother, I know. But the "Super Ploessl <sic>" is drawing my curiosity.

Glad you're finding some gold in the 4.0 CdC, Mak. I'm planning to take my time with it, and read your reports! Please do keep posting 'em!

Dave

 

Yeah, it looks like every other Chinese zoom.

http://www.barsta.com/show_hdr.php?xname=MDA8V11&dname=OPFOR71&xpos=14

It could very well be Barsta.



I think Plossl is pronounced something like 'plert-zal' in German as the 'o' often has a diaeresis/umlaut above it (ö). So the odd spelling may be an attempt to render the umlaut more faithfully into English.

'Super Plössl' is a greatly over used term IMHO lol. It can refer to anything from a really good Plossl to a modified Erfle and even a Masuyama clone. So I think it's become a bit meaningless.

Thanks again for the head's up on CdC 4.0 anyway Dave. Chevalley and the team tend to upgrade every couple of years and I was half expecting an upgrade around now. I usually check every few weeks but this was a nice surprise for a Sunday afternoon.

 

Fixed the rendering glitch, I'd forgotten to run the Scan directory after downloading the catalogue images ... doh!

 

According to my Germanic Languages professor son, you're quite right about this Mak!