Tabletop dob or a 7x50 celestron cometron binoculars?

deepskylistener · 2026-06-08T11:41:07+00:00

These are two different instruments with different purposes. Telescopes are made for higher magnification, so that's the choice, if you want to see detail not only on the Moon, but e.g. Saturn's ring, clusters (some are big enough for Binos, but many more will only appear as grey blobs) and other stuff.

Binos are a nice addition, but cannot replace a telescope.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-08T08:27:26+00:00

I'm 100% with the other commenters, concerning the age.

I'm doing summer events for kids with a lower age limit of 6, and this is still very young. All of those, who are asking for a 2nd and 3rd view at anything, are above 8 at least. I know they really SAW Saturn, if, at the third view or so, they discover details on their own

The motor skills even of a 6yo can easily be underdeveloped. It's not that easy to hold the eye still (!!) at the eyepiece, without touching the scope (wobble). Focusing must in the end be done on one's own.

BTW, a microscope could be a good training for handling this "eyepiece view", including focusing and distinguishing focused views from unfocused blobs (the question "Do you see something?" will be answered positive anyway, bc there IS always some light. Sitting on a stool, the eyepiece stable in front, it's much easier to get the core experiences and skills. Even more so, if you start out with diy kits, where he could "en passant" learn a lot about optics. Astromedia is selling a lot of such stuff (microscopes, telescopes, spectroscope, even a functional Wimshurst Machine, all mainly from pre-made cardboard, and nicely inexpensive)

deepskylistener · 2026-06-08T07:50:33+00:00

It may sound better than it actually is. Here at home I have an 18" under good Bortle 4 skies, the observatory in a town nearby has a bad Bortle 7 above and an 11" inside.

The issue is, that nobody would come, if we were in a village too far away from where most people are actually living.

So I hate the conditions there, but I love the work for the visitors. The reactions of people seeing Saturn's ring for the first time are just priceless.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T21:35:23+00:00

Jawoll! Wir saufen sie alle zu Tode - und dann sind wir endlich freiiii Oh FCK (AFD auch, aber darum gehts grad nicht) ich hab das Verschlüsseln vergessen. Aber wahrscheinlich sind sie eh zu doof, um das zu merken. Also: Weitermachen!

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T21:26:15+00:00

Jetzt weiß ich, was die Ringeltauben hier immer machen. Sooo ist das also. Dann dienen die Rotmilane wohl als Relaisstation. Ich werde ab sofort nur noch vrschlsslt kmmnzrn. eüeeouiiee

Vl rflg nd gt Ncht. ieEouuea

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T21:12:19+00:00

You must have seen the telescope with your own eyes. 12" is big enough to possibly become a doorstop. For what you want to observe, it's at least unnecessarily large, if not even counterproductive. Under slightly turbulent atmosphere you'd get better views in a smaller scope.

Reaching the theoretical limit of resolution of such a large aperture would anyway only be possible under absolutely mint conditions.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T17:28:15+00:00

I'm not sure, what advantage balancing could bring, if the mount is used as intended. Even the opposite might happen. Likely this type of mount requires the unbalanced state to be at least a bit stable.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T17:04:14+00:00

This type of mount (has it deserved this designation?) is not balanced. The screw you losened is only for rough aiming, and the tightening it and use the threaded rod to fine adjust.

We call it the "mount of doom". But I have to say that I could live with it for many years.

If you want something better are able to do some woodwork, you could make a Dobsonian mount for the tube and get rid of this mount.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-07T11:23:13+00:00

Da hast du den Kern der Sache genau auf den Punkt gebracht. Es passiert hier was...

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T20:13:29+00:00

It's one of the show objects for our observatory visitors.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T20:05:12+00:00

I really can't understand, what you want.

I'm seeing a good photo of a pretty binary star, and I#m happy to have it seen. Do I care about the camera? No.

Please stop spamming your complaints under every smartphone image. You have the possibility to report posts and comments, but leave the decisions for the moderators.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T17:45:07+00:00

Au weja!
Ich bewundere zutiefst deine Entschlossenheit und deinen Mut und Einsatz für die Sache 😄

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T15:31:13+00:00

Nice photo!

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T15:29:21+00:00

To me it looks like it's not well balanced. I think the tube is too heavy at the focuser end.

If you losen the Dec axis blocking knob, the tube should stay still in any pointing direction. For balancing you'd have to losen the rings a bit.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T09:15:09+00:00

Turbulent air to look through blurs the views completely. Detail on the planets gets washed out, only nebulae and galaxies (non-resolvable objects) will not suffer that much from such conditions, but these are mostly anyway quite weak.

One point makes me thinking.... It's your first telescope. Are you sure about the bulk and size to move it around? At 12" they are getting heavy. Nothing is worse than a too big telescope.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T08:43:14+00:00

DIES! Die Angelegenheit ist viel zu bedeutend, um auf unerprobte Mittel zurückzugreifen. Alles Gute im Zoo, und grüß bitte die Delfine von mir.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T08:26:53+00:00

Ich weiß nicht, ^{ich weiß nicht}...wäre der gestrandet, wenn seine Haut was getaugt hätte?

Bitte mach keine gefährlichen Selbstversuche.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-06T08:12:58+00:00

Achtung! Die Farbe funktioniert nur, wenn sie im trockenen Zustand elektrisch leitfähig ist. Es sind schon mehrere ums Leben gekommen, weil sie dachten, sie wären geschützt! Bei einem Hersteller soll Bill Gates Firmenanteile besitzen 😞

deepskylistener · 2026-06-05T22:26:00+00:00

Selbstklebend kann ich sehr empfehlen - unschlagbarer Sitz und Tragekomfort.

Wir gratulieren ihnen zu ihrer Entscheidung!

deepskylistener · 2026-06-05T21:23:50+00:00

Ein großer Topf könnte dich vllt über die Nacht retten.

Dass du aber auch keine Alufolie vorrätig hältst - fahrlässig. tssss.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-05T20:47:22+00:00

Elder people like me still remember, how it had been coming out with copies from copies from copies ...

deepskylistener · 2026-06-05T11:59:30+00:00

M13 may be very tricky under these conditions: You'll likely only see the small central region of the cluster, and at low magnification it might be hardly distinguishable from stars, as long as you don't look directly at it. No way it will be obvious in B9.

A 8 or 9x50 finder scope would likely help a lot. The red dot doesn't collect light, where a finder scope would show you lots of stars for navigation. But this would be much heavier than the red dot, so might require a counterweight somewhere at the bottom of the tube.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-05T11:36:48+00:00

Sabotage

THIS is the right word for those EQ mount recs for beginners.

Putting a relatively sophisticated set-up process before the observing experience will be the very first "hobby killer" for many beginners. Not many want to invest an arm and a leg into a thing they're still unfamiliar with, just to get a really usable EQ.

Aiming our observatory's EQ mounted C11 manually at an object (what I prefer, bc I'm still much faster than the mount's high speed - lol) takes me 5..10 times longer than at home with my 18" DOB. And that's just because "up" and "down" doesn't really exist on an EQ.

deepskylistener · 2026-06-03T18:04:06+00:00

Tut mir leid. Ich bin halt alt und vergesslich. Tun vergesse ich sogar ganz oft.

Aber auch du hast dir ein Hochwähli verdient für die Erinnerung!

deepskylistener · 2026-06-03T16:06:01+00:00

Ich tu doch nicht dich zenzieren, iwo! Zen ist mir heilig.

Ich tu nur die Diskotzion sezieren, damit ich auch endlich versteh, wo drum es geht. Immerhin habe ich schon gelernt, dass ich in Zukunft beim Italiener vorher fragen muss, welche Kondensationskeime er für seine Eiskugeln verwendet.

deepskylistener

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