Posts Made By: Garry Johnson

It all depends on what you want to see and how much you want to spend. A white light solar filter is pretty inexpensive and will show you sun spots, faculae and granulation. An h-alpha filter, like the PST, will show you a whole different world, flares, prominences, spiculae and faculae but there is a huge price difference. A very large full aperture white light solar filter probably won't cost you more than $150 or $200, if you have a small refractor the cost will be well below $100. On the other hand the least expensive h-alpha filter (the PST) will cost you $500 and the cost just gets higher and higher going all the way up to $10,000 and beyond.

I'm pretty sure the Radians will perform well at f/4.3 especially since you will have to use an OCS in front of the binoviewer in order to reach focus in your dob.

I haven't used Radians in a binoviewer yet but if you want a ton of different opinions you should post your question in the binoviewer forum.

I know this doesn't answer your question directly but you can get the exact same thing from scopestuff for 88.00 shipped.

I have seen many different green laser pointers and they have all performed identically.

I personally wouldn't spend an extra 50.00 for the Orion brand.

I live in the heart of Los Angeles, so I can certainly relate to your situation. The only filters I have found to be effective at all FOR ME are the Orion Ultrablock for DSO's (nebula only) and the Celestron/Baader Contrast Booster for planets.

From what I understand, UV and IR filters reject or block the UV and IR rather than transmit it.

Isn't this a scary looking snake, my pet milksnake (algerhiss).

and 2 more females...

I'm not saying that the spider vane wasn't the problem in your case, but I have honestly never noticed the same problem with my 8" dob. I wish I could offer some kind of explanation for why you couldn't see it but I have absolutely no idea. I do find it very strange though because I know from reading your previous posts and looking at your excellent sketches that your observing skills are very keen. Please let us know if you figure out what happened last night and be sure to try again and see if you have better luck next time.

I observed Io slowly emerging from behind Jupiter 2 nights ago with no problem.

The general advice I have heard repeated many times is that for the biggest "WOW" factor you should move up 2 sizes (from 6" to 10" or from 8" to 12"), but if it were up to me I would probably take the 10" dob over the 12" dob due to my personal preference with portability. I couldn't see myself lugging a 12" dob down the stairs of my apartment very often but your circumstances might be much different than mine. You also mention wanting to mount Orion's 80mm guide scope refractor on top of either of these dobs. A lot of people do this with short tube refractors but I don't think Orion's guide scope at f/11.3 would be a very good choice to mount on top of a dob. It's focal length is 910mm which will put the eyepiece very near the ground on the XT10 unless you have the refractor extending way past the open end of the dob's tube (which might cause some balance problems). I don't know the focal length of the celestron 12" but I imagine it's not too much longer than the Orion and you might run into a similar problem. Besides, f/11.3 is not going to give you a very wide field of view either. Have a look at Orion's short tube 80mm, I think it will serve your purpose much better.

It is definitely made with Flash. If you right click on the page (using Internet Explorer) you will see the words "About Macromedia Flash Player". I used to design websites but don't have much time or patience for it any more. If you are interested in learning flash, I recommend checking out a program by coffee cup software called "Firestarter". It is a heck of a lot easier to use than macromedia's version and a heck of a lot cheaper as well. The free trial version of firestarter used to be fully functional with no time limit, they just inserted their logo watermark into all your projects until you register and pay for the software. The website address is:
http://www.coffeecup.com/firestarter/