Society for Popular Astronomy

Baz

It is a Russian made Tal telescope. They have very good optics, and sell for peanuts second-hand.

While a Thrush will eat insects, it is not their main preferred source of food. If a Thrush is having to resort to eating lots of insects, then this is an unsuitable situation for the species. My family has been involved in agriculture for the last 150 years, and the biggest effect that we have seen...

End plugs can be found at the bottom of the page on this link.

http://www.scopesnskies.com/cat/astrono ... ieces.html

Alastair McBeath wrote: Of greatest UK-observer significance perhaps is that I've had two reports of a brilliant Leonid fireball at 05:47 UT on November 16-17,

I think this was the same fireball that I observed and imaged.
I remember looking at my watch a few minutes later at 05:55 UT.

Paul

Units with the Super Polaris mount were £1450 in the mid to late 80's.
By the early 90's the price was £1750.

I also have several Prinz telescope and have found them to be quite decent little scopes. Most if not all of the Prinz Optics gear was made by Towa or Kenko. A little letter circle on the focus mount will indicate which firm made the scope. Usually the grease inside the equatorial mounting will have...

Andrew

If you have a 2x Barlow with a detachable lens, then you could take the lens off and use the tube as an extension, just to see if you can reach focus.

Hi Peter Really pleased to see that you enjoy the views with the vintage Watson. I also use some vintage long focal length refractors and find them excellent instruments. Recently with a 3 inch f/15 scope, I managed to pick out 3 (and maybe a hint of a fourth) craterlet in Plato. If your Watson is f...

Andrew

I've used these along with the old Vixen and others.
The weak point has always been the battery holder /switch,
which always goes belly-up.

I use mine for drift alignment.

I spent several years searching for Supernovae with a large reflecting telescope, but never actually got to see one. I sold the scope and went back to small refractors, since then I've managed to observe two supernovae from the U.K. with a scope of 4 inch aperture. I seem to remember that the bright...

Hi I've seen the William Optics New Style Megrez 90 APO Refractor which looks nice, but then wondered about the Meade Series 5000 ED Triplet APO Refractor and now I've looked at about 10 other options and have no idea! Your thoughts, opinions and advice are all welcome. Thanks Justin Justin I use o...

brian livesey wrote:We can only wonder what the consequences might be for the earth environment when Betelgeuse goes supernova. Will our planet be bathed in lethal gamma radiation?

According to this source, the answer is no, but will still make a great sight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse

Both scopes will show the same view in the eyepiece, so I guess it comes down to which colour scheme and mount you prefer. Whichever unit you go for, do make a careful check of the lens collimation. I have now had to tweak several of these units to get the very best out of them. In spite of the scop...

Last year I was nearly tempted into buying one of these:

http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/cel ... d3714.html

It is a nice little scope, and a review can be found here:

http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1678

Is it possible to go into the 660x magnifications, Hi Scott Yes, you can reach 660x, but with your telescope the view will be total mush. The following magnifications are taken from Sam Brown's book on telescopes, are can be used as a guide for a telescope with a 64mm objective. Messier objects and...