How much power can you use with a small telescope

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Reviewer

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Many customers ask what is the highest power they can use with a telescope..Sadly some shops on line and high street etc do offer small telescopes with unrealistic magnifications of 500+. This will make the image totally unusable and make the unlucky buyer lose interest in astronomy very quickly.

For most small telescopes up to £100 I would recommend 2 or 3 eyepieces with powers in the 20x , 50x and 100x range. This will give a sensible choice of magnifications for a variety of uses from wide field star clusters to looking at the Moons around Saturn. Image shows the Skywatcher SWA Planetary eyepieces

Many (but not all) budget telescopes come with Kelner, Ramsdon, Modified achromatic eyepieces as standard. I would recommend upgrading to a set of plossls if budget allows.

Ostara plossl eyepieces can be purchased HERE from Northern Optics

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North Lincs Astro meeting . February 2016

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Reviewer

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For the North Lincolnshire astronomy society meeting on Monday 1st Feb 2016 we had a workshop evening, with 3 different demonstrations going on at the same time. This gave the members a chance to mingle and chat at their own leisure while picking up some tips at the same time.

The workshops included telescope collimation by Paul Cotton, setting up and balancing a mount by Steve Berry and polar alignment by Charles Thody

These workshops have been popular in the past, and I,m sure they will be used again in the future

For details on the North Lincs astro society visit their website HERE

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Helios Rapide 8×32 binoculars review

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Reviewer

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The Helios Rapide 8×32 binoculars come with some impressive specs for a sub £50 set of binoculars, including open hinged body, nitrogen gas filled and multi-coated optics.

They come in an attractive and strong outer box showing the binoculars. Opening up the box, you are greeted by a very stylish semi-soft nylon case. This has no strap, but does have a belt loop.

Take the binoculars out the case, and the first thing you will notice is the lack of lens caps. To many people this is not an issue, but thought I,d mention it..Despite weighing just 450g they feel extremely solid and well built.

After twisting the eye cups out, I had my first look through them. False colour in the centre of the view is quite minimal..Colours are very clear and sharp with a lack on internal reflection aiding contrast .With these having BK7 prisms, they are not as crisp as 32mm binoculars with phase corrected BaK-4 prisms , but saying that they are £49 binoculars, not £149

Close focus is 4.5m metres, so bare this in mind if you are doing close up work. As always, I like to test with glasses on. With the eye cups twisted down, I found I could get the full view. Eye relief is 14mm

So summing up, if these were £150 binoculars, I would be critical of 4.5m close focus. But as they are £49 binoculars, I would say they are excellent value for money waterproof binoculars (I tested in cloudy conditions) for a sub £50 set of binoculars, Build quality and specs are as good as they come

Click HERE to purchase from Northern Optics

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Ostara comfort binocular strap long version

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Reviewer

 

ostara-comfort-binocular-strap-x28-long-version-northern-optics

At approx 122cm long this strap is slightly longer than our standard version The Ostara comfort strap is an ideal replacement strap that is of a much higher standard than many nylon straps

Helps make long observing sessions much more comfortable

Buy here Ostara comfort binocular strap long version.

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Image of M35 and NGC 2158 taken with a Celestron Travelscope-70

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Reviewer

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This lovely image of M35 and NGC 2158 was taken with a Celestron Travelscope-70 and a Canon 1100D at prime focus on a Skywatcher HEQ5 mount.

Single 8 second exposure at 6400 ISO. The RAW file was sharpened and adjusted in Digital photo professional to reduce the orange sky glow.

As always, we recommend using live view for focus..For such a basic telescope, we were very happy with the colours brought out in the stars. NGC 2158 was a bonus that I was not expecting from such a small and relatively inexpensive telescope / spotting scope.

The Celestron travelscope-70 can be purchased HERE

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North Lincs astro meeting. 7th December 2015

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Reviewer

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A record turnout of around 30 people met at the North Lincolnshire astronomy society on Monday 7 th December 2015 for the regular monthly meeting.

We were given a fantastic talk by guest speaker Paul Money about Meteors and their origins. The highly informative and entertaining talk was enjoyed by all.

Special thanks to Sarah and other members who contributed to a Christmas buffet and  “nibbles” that HAD TO be finished off before anyone could leave

For more info on the North Lincs astro society click HERE

 

 

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How to connect an SLR or DSLR body to a Celestron SCT telescope

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Reviewer

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To connect your SLR or DSLR camera body to a Celestron SCT telescope you will need a Celestron #93633-A t-adapter + a compatible t-ring. To attach to the telescope, simply remove the visual back from the OTA and replace with the T-adapter. Then screw the t-ring on to this..You can then attach the DSLR camera body to the t-ring in the same way as a camera lens.

As no eyepiece is used, this is what we call prime focus photography , and is the preferred choice of most imagers

SCT t-adapter / t-ring bundles can be purchased  HERE from Northern Optics

 

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Which T-ring or T2 mount for Olympus SLR and DSLR cameras

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Reviewer

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Unlike Nikon for example who have kept the same t-rings  for many of their current DSLR cameras, Olympus have a range, that have changed over the years. So you need to be sure you are buying the right one. Hopefully this guide will help

For older film cameras such as the OM-1 , OM-2 etc you will need the standard Olympus mount that is still readily available

As Olympus turned digital, the 4/3 mount was introduced to work with modern crop sensor cameras. Though the older OM lenses can still be used. The 4/3 t-rings are designed for cameras such as the Olympus E-500 , E-510, E-520 etc

Lastly as the current range of Olympus compact DSLR cameras, you need the micro 4/3. This compact design means it will not work with older lenses. As well as the current range of Olympus cameras, Micro 4/3 also work with many Panasonic cameras. If in doubt, ask your local dealer for advice

T-rings, T2 mount can be purchased from Northern Optics HERE

 

 

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Moon image through Tal 4 inch refractor by Northern Optics. 18th November 2015

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Reviewer

moon 18.11.15b

The image of the Moon to the right was taken by Northern Optics using a Canon 1100d prime focus through a Tal 4″ refractor ..Rather than use stacking software, I took a series of images in RAW file and picked out the best.

The image was taken at dusk, using about 80th second at 100 ISO. Images were sharpened in Digital photo professional, where curves were also adjusted to darken the background sky and to bring out more surface detail. The stamp tool was used to remove dust bunnies

The image was finally cropped to get a more close up view

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Celestron Travelscope-70 image of the Double cluster

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Reviewer

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The image of the famous Perseus Double cluster to the right was taken by Northern Optics using a Celestron Travelscope-70 prime focus with  a Canon 1100D.

Expsoure was 10 seconds at 6400 ISO with the Travelscope-70 on a driven Skywatcher HEQ5 mount. A combination of light pollution and a mount not properly polar aligned were the two main factors for keeping the exposure relatively shirt to reduce star trailing and noise

But for such a low cost astro photography set up I think you will agree the results are good. Focus was done with magnified live view. 10 seconds is plenty of exposure time to show faint stars with a multitude of colours

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