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Thank you for posting this video, Tsula. Very nice sketch of the Ring Nebula.

I watch a lot of videos to support my many interests and hobbies. I think I enjoy your videos the most. Very informative not just on the topic, but also the minor stuff that most of us wouldn’t consider ahead of time such as what you mention, the weight. I was gifted an amazing 10” LX200 mounted on a fork. It is very heavy so it got me exercising and lifting weights again as an added bonus. 😂 Please keep your wonderful videos coming. Would like to see what you’ve done with LX200 since I just started to learn about astronomy and telescopes and planning to do astrophotography soon.

hindsight is 20/20 now we know why they were dropping items.

Thanks for another great video Tsula!

thanks for the video, i dont think i ever tried to find it. iam just happy just looking at the nebula itself but nothing wrong in trying something new, cheers

Great video!

Another great video! Very educational and entertaining. Thank you!

Don't let your dear mother's precious gift to you, haunt you. These things happen in life. You persevered ! I built my 8x10 roll-off-roof observatory from scratch with parts from Amazon and the local lumber supply. It's nice to wake up at 5:00 A.M. to view Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky. Everything is going in just a few minutes. And when I'm done, roll the roof back and lock the door. Same for late at night. Go from observing to under the covers, dreaming of the stars, in just minutes. You know exactly ! Spoiled we are! So glad to have found your channel Tsula!

I share your enthusiasm Tsula! My G11g is my lifetime mount! It carries my scopes and big cameras flawlessly through the skies ! I am glad to see you use German EQ mounts for visual. It's now considered old-school by the youngsters. These are photo-visual multipurpose mounts. They are flexible for all kinds of astronomy related projects. For visual they often don't have the ergonomics of a fork mount, like your LX-90. Still, they are a joy to use. Periodic error is very good. Go-to accuracy is excellent. The Losmandy support and parts are just a phone call away, and American made. I like that!

I couldn't see it in my 12" SCT from a location at 9,000 ft of elevation in the Valle Grande, NM under Bortle 3 moonless skies. I'm extremely skeptical of anyone who claims they can see it in an 8". A good test for anyone who claims to be able to see it is to have them describe all the nearby stars. There's a 13th and a 14th magnitude star very close by, if they can't see them, then they can't see the central star either.

The Ring has a bright 13th magnitude star adjacent to it. Your sketch shows it, but you have also plotted several fainter stars near the nebula, which I see in my 13.1 Dob. These are ~15th magnitude. The problem is that the central star is embedded in the gaussy center of the ring and on the edge of visibility for the aperture used. Good seeing, dark skies, and atmospheric transparency are important. Being near the zenith provides the best view of course. You saw it very well despite no central star. I enjoyed your sketch very much, as well as this well produced video. Thank you.

I love your videos and your sincere appreciation for these objects. I find the ring nebula beautiful and I’ve never tried for the central star, so thank you for the inspiration! I’ll try this week with my 17.5” dobsonian. Also - is that the same Stellarvue SVX90T that your friend is still letting you use in the video?

Interesting video

one of the first nebulas i managed to find when i was a kid

I am going to try at great lakes stargaze with their giant 28 inch telescope in a bortle 3 this weekend. I will also try for stephen’s quintet.

thanks

The magnitude limit of my telescope is 14m, oh well. But I tried and of course have seen the Ring Nebula. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Absolutely love your videos! I have a 12” dob and have never seen it. We rarely have great transparency simultaneous with great seeing here in the Great Lakes region. The nebula itself though is one of my favs.

It’s not easy finding stuff up there.., and there’s no failure, just a delay of time. Good reason to set it all up again though! Good video!

Ironically this is the 1st deep sky object I had seen some years ago in my 12" DOB. Just photographed it again a few nights ago. Absolutely one of my favorite deep sky objects. Central star in photos easily. Unfortunately visual is a no go here also.

Very nice video which coincidentally interrupted my viewing of ones devoted to Amazon's second season of THE RINGS OF POWER. 🙂

I had a 6 inch refractor, it was great on planets. Wish I had kept it. It was a Celestron. I would think the 12 would out do it easy.

Hi Tsula, I just love your energy and enthusiasm for this hobby and find it really inspiring! If only I had skies to match yours….currently clouded in on all sides so will have to be patient and add the ring nebula to my ever growing list of targets to see! Someone mentioned in the last comments it might be difficult to get spare parts for repairing Meade telescopes. I have just sourced some chips to repair a declination drive and a new control panel, so parts are available for now. Schematics can be downloaded easily online, so you can make sure exactly what you need for your repair. Hope this is helpful…Here’s to dark skies….Please!!! 🤗🌙

Great video Tsula! Could you recommend some nebulas that are similarly to the ring nebula, bright and easy to find and see with a small telescope (in my case, 4") and manual mount?

Fantastic tsula i appreciate your content!

SCT’s are softer than refractors viewing wise and imaging wise, besides comparing with a Meade which is known to be inferior to Celestron

Hi Tsula. Thank you for the video. The refractor has no central obstruction and so, is less affected by the seeing ( the light in the first ring of the Airy disc is only 7% of the total light in the disc ). At high magnification, it's necessary to observe in good seeing conditions with SCT and his central obstruction that increases the % of light in the first ring. Sometimes, there will be a merging between the first ring and the central disc. Perhaps, refractor could be better according to these considerations. Clear skies.

Very good vídeo! I prefer refractor.

thanks for sharing your story

how far away is the town from you? and how big is the town?

Did you collimate the 12” the night of this recording.

Nice video. I'd like to add that even though the Skywatcher is a big refractor, it is still an "average" refractor. You can get better / sharper images from higher-end triplets or doublets with better glass (FPL-53 etc.), and they do not have to be even so big (5", 4.5" or 4"). These scopes can handle "more than 2x aperture in mm" magnifications much better. Cheaper scopes like this SW tend to get softer if you push them so much. Simple physics... worse glass. Don't get me wrong on the price.. it is possible to get awesome 4" APO for the price of this 6". It will be sharper and lighter. Eyepieces + diagonals count as well (there are better choices like Baader BBHS prisms, something like Takahashi TOE or Vixen HR eyepieces etc... Just remember that the output of any optical chain strictly equals to it's weakest member).

Frac is definitely sharp, but an SCT with double the aperture needs to be collimated to perfection, and the 6-inch would struggle. Trust me, I had my 9.25" Celestron versus a 6" frac, and my SCT was as sharp as the frac. The frac was perhaps a hair sharper due to the fixed mirror cell, as there is no slack. I can for certain, say the frac has better contrast but the SCT is a little brighter and this where filter comes in to eek out those details with the SCT.

I am a long time planetary observer. During the 1990s I had read a very interesting article in a sky and telescope magazine about how good does a telescope mirror have to be in order show fine detail on the planets. Two veteran planetary observers participated in the experiment. Both these observers compared two 6 inch telescopes and found that on Jupiter there was very little difference between a 1/4 wave mirror and a 1/10 wave mirror and that both came very close to the performance of a fine apo refractor of the same aperture. At about the same time I did an experiment of my own on the affects of the loss of contrast due to the central obstruction on a reflector. I used an optically excellent 10 inch Newtonian reflector with a 1.83" obstruction. Under extremely good seeing conditions I placed a 25% obstruction over the center of the spider followed by a 33% obstruction. looking for the finest detail on Jupiter I was unable to see any difference in detail or contrast between an obstruction of under 20% and an obstruction of 25%. However with the 33% obstruction the contrast soften just a tiny bit, at the limit of vision. Given this I fined it very hard to believe that a 6" apo refractor could outperform a 12" schmidt-cass telescope on the planets, all else being equal. There must be something wrong here. Differences in eye piece quality, thermal effects of the large 12"mirror, who knows? All I know from my own experience is that a well made 10" reflector will knock the socks of an optically excellent 6" reflector.

It was a great comparison, one I've been looking for, but the main channels aren't covering. I've noticed that refractors are in a different price range, more expensive. Does anyone know what refractor is needed as equivalent to an 8 inch SCT?

Just looking at your video samples I thought gee wiz, my cheap as chips Omni 102 achromat at 220x does pretty well after all.

Tsula you're GREAT!!! just found your channel. I have lots to comment on but have to go right now. Will comment at length later. Thanks.

Great video, a lot of astronomers have similar beginnings, I first saw my Partial Solar Eclipse in 1968 as a young teen then Apollo 8 later that year..Still a Solar Astronomer and imager now but love visual too

I own the Orion Paragon mount and have it set up with 70mm binoculars. The main shortcomings are that it only works well within a fairly limited range of motion above and below the ecliptic. For example, it doesn't allow for pointing near the horizon to view Scorpius or Sagittarius without tipping the tripod forward. Also, anything positioned higher than about 45 degrees above the horizon becomes uncomfortable or requires tipping the tripod back to view something like Hercules, at least from my location at 48 degrees North.

No doubt, these are both good equatorial mounts. My preference is for the Losmandy GM8, for a few reasons. I'm familiar with the operation of my G11T Losmandy, so no learning curve to get up to speed with a new mechanical and electronics system. I especially like the clutch operation of the Losmandy design. Also, there is the question of future parts/service availability and upgrades between a U.S. manufactured product vs one made overseas. I was able to upgrade the stepper motors with a servo system and an improved Gemini 2 electronics package on my G11, along with upgrading the stock RA with a Titan RA axis, increasing the payload capacity of the mount. After comparing the EQ6R with the GM8, I've decided to order the Losmandy mount for applications requiring better portability. Other upgrades for the Losmandy GM8 that I've made on my G11 are improved clutch knobs, toolless bolts for attaching the equatorial head to the tripod, a pier extension, 7, 11 and 22 lb. counterweights instead of just one size fits all and a GPS. The Losmandy website has all kinds of modifications and upgrades for their mounts, unlike what is offered by offshore manufacturers. I have an older Celestron mount that I also upgraded with GPS. It's now practically worthless because the computer thinks that the alignment stars it is pointing to go through the Earth to Greenland, China and Botswana. 😄

Nice video, thanks for your time and analysis! Do a collab video with Ed Ting sometime, that would be fun!

It seems like Saturn isn’t solid. Wow. Thanks for the video

Now do the comparison on a faint object like orion. The 10" will beat the 6" everytime

Well l enjoyed your video very much, thanks. I must admit that you went through a lot to give a demonstration. I like your accent also but one thing really stands out is how cold it is where you live. Being a very young 78 plus in years l moved to the country of Panama to do my stargazing and love it even though l live in a city with all the wonderful bright lights at night. I also compared the M-C 6” to a 80mm APO refractor telescope on ships in the Bay of Panama and found the M-C to be very suitable compact telescope. With the refractor and 30 mm eyepiece l see the entire ship and in the M-C scope I am inside the ship. Because l on the lazy side my choice of optical tools now is 12 by 36 mm optical stabilized binoculars. As a side note I also have a 6” refractor scope which l used only twice and sits in the closet. Too big to mess with and when l went through customs they thought it was a cannon. Clear skies.

i was out tonight with my old 4.5 inch tasco reflector....old enough to be made in japan, i have some decent eye pieces as far as .956 go and the views of jupiter and saturn are comparable to my 8 inch cassagrain only much smaller. orion nebula looks really good and cause the magnification is half, i can see the whole thing, on a good night i can just make out the trapezoid.....just. i think there are benefits to the smaller scopes. like you said its all about the eye training

It's a no brainer, the 12" every time if the seeing supports it

It seems that the planets are inherently bright to begin with so small aperture refracting telescopes with no central obstruction does well. Agggh makes me think I need more than one kind of scope:)

I once heard of an article in 1985 Sky and Telescope by Roland Christen where he compared a 5 inch non-apo triplet refractor with several mirrored scopes including a 20 inch dob. He looked at a moon transient of Jupiter. He said that when the moon reached the lim of the planet it became lost in all of the mirrored scopes including the 20 inch but in the refractor it was clearly visible. The article ( or I should say Roland) said that the mirrored scopes do not have the contrast that the refractor does. I thought this was very interesting but could not find the article to read it myself. Also, the other day I had my TSA 120 out at 300X and thought I could see the Cassini division but it was so faint I am just not sure.

Fantástico Saturno la astronomia es bella

It's always a wonderful moment when you check the weather and see clear skies all night:)