I don't know anything about Towa scopes, I found this on You Tube though.

 

Woah! Those vid images certainly are encouraging! I may take it out tonight to see what it can do, although, the one in that vid is a few steps above mine. Thanks Mak!

 

If you could use it with a diagonal it might be interesting. The doublet is probably decent quality. I don't know about the eyepiece though.

 

Yeah pity that, but it is what it is. Still, it's fun to have something to drag out in daylight and make the neighbors suspicious!

 

Yeah, it's worth it for that alone lol.

 

Those old 'Japanese binoculars' are actual Carl Zeiss Jena binoculars. In the early 1960's my dad bought them off some bloke who had bought them new a few years before WWII started in 1939. He told my dad that he used to watch daylight Luftwaffe bomber streams with them on their way to bombing the industrial Midlands. He also claimed that he could see RAF fighters dog fighting German fighter planes miles up in the sky with the binoculars.

They're not bad for astronomy. They are wide angle 8x30. The lenses are uncoated but the views are crisp, bright and well defined. The wide angle aspect really sets them apart though. The body of the binoculars are metal and they aren't light like more modern models. The Moon looks quite detailed at 8x and Venusian phases can regularly be perceived. I find them good for sweeping star fields and the Milky Way. Due to the limited range and dexterity in my right arm I find binoculars difficult to use now though.

 

Thank you for posting the photo's, Ziggaro! Paydirt! It's a bouncing, baby Carton "Towa!"

Why can't I get this Pdf. to load...?

I'll be back...

Okay - this means that little Towa-branded scope has the same basic pedigree as a Unitron or Edscorp from the 1960's! That was a great gift from your neighbor indeed! An old neighbor of mine gave me a 60mm Japanese telescope when I was around 11. And that fueled my fire for pursuing astronomy from age 4 to now.

My 60mm had but one eyepiece - a 12.5mm Huygens - which was .965" as was it's 90° diagonal. I would scare the daylights' out of my parents every clear-night by climbing out a window in the attic of our big, old house in the woods and ascend upwards with scope & tripod in hand. Setting-up with on side of the little tripod on one side of the ridge atop the roof - the other over the other side of the ridge. And there, laying on my stomach on the sloped, shingle roof, I uncannily found Jupiter in my first try on a bright 'star!' It's equatorial-bands and four Moons leaped from the eyepiece! This was pure serpendipity:

At age 4, my parents took me to the Boston Museum of Science. I don't know why - they hated science - but I went to the planetarium there in 1964. I was thrilled! And that night I had a vivid dream about Jupiter. It ended-up with Jupiter floating in my neighbor's little fish-pond in their backyard! Something 'clicked' and soon I learned to read - my first set of books were the Encyclopedia Britannica Aardvark to Zygote - and I devoured all-things-astronomy. Then to our well-stocked town-library just outside of Boston.

I remembered that dream (today, too) as Jupiter flew from the Huygen's EP. The first celestial object I'd ever seen through a telescope.

To keep themselves from going mad with worry of my nighttime forays to the roof, I requested an Edscorp 3" F/15 refractor - far too big to get through the attic-window with - and my wish was granted. It had the worst equatorial-mount made on Earth, but nothing dismayed me - and armed with charts and books - I taught myself how to star-hop my way around the sky. Epsilon Lyrae (the famous 'Double-Double') became a favorite sight - which I split with a nudge over 180X from my 6mm Ramsden eyepiece - 187.5X. Pinning away for an orthoscopic or 10, I was hooked!

Thanks for posting those images! Look what my neighbor's did to me!

Dave

 

Yeah, I think if the Luftwaffe had been more successful Goering would have probably repatriated the binoculars lol. He had other problems apparently though ...




... these mainly lol (Wikipedia).

 

Great story! I still have the full set of Enc/Brit. including the huge atlas, in the original wood cabinet that my parents bought in 1957. That atlas (naturally) has the world as it looked then- up to a post war map of partitioned Germany. Even with access to the Net, I still refer to those books now & again.
My earliest memory of the heavens is laying on my back in the ultra-dark yard of my Grandpa's farm, watching for Sputnik, Explorer, and later- Telstar. < Those babies were huge news back then!

 

I've just (17:15 GMT) been observing Venus with the naked eye, the Carl Zeiss binoculars and a 90mm Mak (f/11) at 40x.



With the naked eye, after only a few moments, the phase can be perceived. I do have some experience in doing this though, plus I live in a Bortle 2/3 area 152 metres above MSL.



The phase is obvious through the binoculars and the Mak.

Edit: I can see Mars with the naked eye now (17:40 GMT), I can't detect Martian phases with the naked eye. It can be perceived at 40x.

 

That little Mak looks like fun! Do you often view thru the window?

 

It's an Omegon MightyMak (also marketed as the Kasai Pico) I have no idea who the OEM is. It's OK but it isn't in the same league as the Synta-built Mak's (Celestron, Sky-Watcher, Orion and Levenhuk). The main problem seems to be collimation above about 60x. I just can't get a sharp image above that. I've more or less replaced it with the Orion StarMax which I can mount on a Porta II with a Vixen Hal heavy duty tripod (below).


Unlike the Omegon Mak, the Orion Mak has a dovetail enabling it to be mounted into a Vixen mount on the left of the dovetail ensuring the finder shoe is at the eleven o'clock position.



I've been known to view through the window, although usually an open one as the double glazing doesn't do much for the image quality lol. I only use the Orion Mak outside and with the Vixen Porta alt-az and an Orion 6x30 RACI. The Orion's Synta-made little Dob mount is now used for the Omegon Mighty Mak. I just took the dovetail assembly off the dodgy Omegon Dob mount and put it on the Synta Dob. By turning the Omegon Mak 'upside down' I can mount it on the right of the Synta mount and the finder shoe is in its natural one o'clock position.

The Omegon was a bit of a disappointment really. I originally bought it to use with a small garden table. My plan was that I could then take rapid advantage of any decent weather with a grab'n'go type set up. The tabletop Dob would enable looking at or near the zenith easier and the f/11 MightyMak would be faster than most 90mm Mak's for some of the brighter DSO's. Unfortunately my garden bench is a bit wobbly and the small portable round table I bought exploded as I was trying to assemble it. I was expecting more durability for fifty quid lol. I eventually gave it my neighbour. She's fixed it and thinks it's a great drinks table, so at least somebody's got some use out of it. I got way too excited about the Mars opposition last year and reasoned that I could set up my 130mm Sky-Watcher Explorer. In 2015 I'd really persevered with practising setting up the Explorer on its EQ2 and 3kg counterweight all with my left arm. Although it could be done, I could only really view the plane of the ecliptic with any comfort.



This, of course, was perfect for a low Mars and I started leaving the mount in the garden covered with a tarpaulin and just carrying the OTA out when I observed. My right arm had made progress from total paralysis to enough movement to cradle the OTA as I placed it into the rings. As you can see (above) the RA slo mo is in a convenient position for me to operate with my left hand. The EQ mount itself is low enough from SE through transit to SW for me to operate easily. I discovered rotating the OTA in the rings was possible for me now as well as either my body or my right arm could steady the OTA. Target acquisition in the ecliptic using the clutches wasn't so bad either, although the RACI definitely helped.



Getting slightly back on topic. On July 6th 2015 I spent hours trying to set the Explorer up with one arm. I did it and was going to take it down as it was just a disability practice session. It was a beautiful and hot summer's day. I decided to leave it out to acclimatise and wait for Venus and Jupiter to start to set in the twilight. I had to stand to observe, but I was rewarded with a crescent Venus and I saw Jupiter's GRS! I could quite plainly see Venusian cloud detail at 150x with an 18mm AH orthoscopic combined with a 3x TeleVue Barlow. I've often seen Venusian cloud detail and the GRS before, but the icing on the cake was seeing Io slowly occulted.

 

At about $63 I should think it would be! I appreciate how you augment your posts with pix, thanks.

 

Yeah, the picture on Amazon looked OK.


I've learnt my lesson anyway. A picture can say so much more sometimes. This picture says: 'crappy exploding piece of rubbish' to me now. ROTFL

 

Ah, this is why I haunt "antique" (second-hand) shops! Try B4 you buy! Well, gotta go have my cigar early today- I'll be up at 4am, heading to my dark site to hunt 45P! Good day sir!

 

Yeah, you're right, caveat emptor lol. Good luck and Diwrnod da to you too sir!

 

Ho- I'm not quite a-bed yet- Spent a relaxing hour with a fine hand-rolled & a glass of bourbon and now I'm having a meal of grilled mahi-mahi (why do they feel the need to say it twice?) and oriental rice. BTW, I went out this afternoon to try to view the sun through my little 90 & a film-filter; NO detail, just an orange disk. I found it hard to achieve focus. I'll try again since I'm certain this scope + a 32mm GSO should yield a decent view? Mebbe I need a cardboard sun-shield?

 

Well, it's Saturday here now. I don't know about mahi-mahi but you're making me think of cod and chips lol. I don't know anything about solar observing, but there's a lot of specialist equipment to have a butcher's hook at.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/solar-filters.html

https://www.telescopehouse.com/solar-observing/solar-accessories.html