Posts Made By: Dmitri Kulginov

I would never buy a premium scope and then star test it.

Are you strange to curiosity?

I should mention that I originally posted a very similar message to this on Cloudy Nights, on a thread on the new William Optics Ferrari telescope, and the thread was “moved temporarily for review” by a moderator. It has not reappeared yet.

Now this tune sounds familiar. Their moderators are rabid, as well as the Takahashi moderators on this forum.

Dmitri

Before our La Palma trip, my experience with spiral structure in galaxies was very limited. I had seen two (sometimes three) spiral arms in M33, sometimes the arms in M51, and a hint of arms (more of a dark space between the arms than the arms themselves) in NGC 2403 - all with my C8. Once at a star party, I saw sprial structure in M51 and M101 in 18" Obsession quite clearly. I thought that that was more or less all one could see visually - maybe an arm or two more in some spring galaxies.

At La Palma things changed. The arms of M33 were not only seen clearly in Portaball, but also showed a lot of detail. I could clearly see the arms of M74 with some effort. NGC 7449, 1365 and 1300 showed their bars along with their spirals - something I had never seen before. M101 appeared as a beautiful face-on spiral, and M51 had bright chords of light in its two arms. NGC 6946 had two arms at low power, but at high power it looked like a propeller with 4 or 5 arms - extremely impressive! NGC 2403 had not only the dark spaces in it, but also two strongly curved arms. Finally, IC342 had one long ghostly arm and I could see that it rotated counter-clockwise.

I became so fascinated by sprial galaxies, that Inge labelled my condition as spiral desease - a new malady for amateur astronomers besides the familiar refractoritis and aperture fever. Today I'm heading for my dark place, I'm curious what kind of sprial structure I can see armed with my new experience. And I'm eagerly waiting for the spring with its hords of galaxies!

Dmitri

No.

Dmitri

David,

Any paraboloid will reflect light radiated by any tube.

No paraboloid will reflect all light radiated by any tube.

Tell us what your requirements really are, and we might be able to help.

Dmitri

I specifically compared 24mm Hyperion and Panoptic in my F8 refractor some week ago (on Double Cluster). Edge correction is good, but not as good as in Panoptic.

Eye relief is much longer in Hyperion, but I find it to be rather a problem than an advantage, as you can see a lot of things around the eyepiece, and the view is less immersive. Some blackout was also seen. Cupping my hands around the eyepiece eliminated these two problems.

For $100 it's a very good eyepiece, but Panoptic is still somewhat better.

Dmitri

That's beautiful! With a larger aperture/dark sky this cluster looks like a rose, and you can see it here. The Rose Cluster.

Dmitri

If your scope is less than 8", go for UHC, otherwise buy OIII and enjoy the Veil myth! You can buy H-beta for Horsehead and California later. UHC might help with the Pleiades (it's a reflexion nebula), but dark sky and low power will help more.

Dmitri

Randy,

You still haven't told us what telescope you have.

Dmitri

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=552754&poll_id=&news_id=&page=3

Dmitri

Very nice, Dennis!

One thing that I find strange: my visual impression of the comet in 4" was somewhere between your two images, and your visual sketch was rather like my view in 7x50 finder. (I did spend some time with this wonderful comet.)

Dmitri