russ.will

Great little Barlow, but as I have an ES FE, I don't really need it. Excellent condition and it will be posted in a bolt box. £22 posted to mainland UK. PayPal preferred.

Basically, this is a WO badged Stellarview F50M/TS 50 mm angle finder with 90 ° -amiciprisma - 1.25 "-helical extension. It's the one so well reviewed by Astrobaby. The crosshair eyepiece is the TS Optics 20mm cross eyepiece 1.25 "- 70 ° ERFLE - Self-focusing The illuminator is also TS. That's a £235 finder. I'm asking £150 inc shipping to mainland UK. I will consider selling the rings, but they are a monolithic type with a Meade/Bresser/ES foot I imported from the States, for a fair bit of money, as I didn't like the wibbly screw together types. These would be £50 posted, or £40 if bought with the finder.

Sold to Garry.

Mint condition Farpoint 1.25" laser collimator and Cheshire eyepiece kit. Comes with mirror center spot mask and three remaining center spots. £55 posted Paypal only.

Ooh! Interesting and some very positive comments from TV users too. Near 100deg AFOV and 20mm eye relief? Are we seeing a paradigm shift where the pupil starts to push past the master? Let the dust settle and we''l see where this bottoms out. Russell

I'd compare it to my C100 focuser, but I'd have to track down the recycling centre it ended up at! Russell

They may be good, or they may not, but Bresser seem to have come up with a new [Crayford?] focuser across the entire range. I dunno what the Newt focuses were like, but the old frac focusers, whilst able to hold pretty much anything, were a bit agricultural in operation - read patience was required! Single and dual speed variants seem to be available, but I can't tell if it's possible to upgrade from one to t'other, yet. The interesting scope is the "new" 8" F6 Dob. I say new, but the OTA ( bar the focuser) and indeed the tube rings are all as before; read nicely finished with GSO mirrors, so par for the breed. No, it's the fact that at a princely £333, it comes with a relatively compact Dob base (again, compared to the budget breed) that has, wait for it, decent sized Alt bearings. Who'duv thunk? Better still, because these bearings bolt up to standard tube rings ( just add dovetail and off you trot on an EQ mount) faffing about with counterweights is negated. You simply loosen the bolts and slide the the OTA up/down to rebalance. The Alt bearings appear to have the same surface material as my old ES Dob did, so it should work very nicely. The base also breaks down for transport and because it has metal threaded inserts, they won't strip the threads. I don't know how quick it is to do this, but it at least seems you won't end up with bolts spinning in chip board dust. I've no idea what the bundled "LED finder" is, but I assume it's the same item as bundled with the ES Dobs, which is best described as adequate. The reason for this assumption is because it seems to me that the Bresser plugs the gap under the smallest ES 10" truss Dob. Given that there is no existing 10" or larger Bresser OTA to give this treatment to, I think this is a reasonable assumption. All the same, nice to see a new addition at the budget end that offers a sound mechanical difference for it's existence. Russell

Nor mine, but it just seemed to be one of those sensible (and free!) suggestions that can't possibly hurt, if it's practical. Russell

Don't fit Bob's Knobs. They may make collimating easier, but with their little squishy plastic tips, collimation will be required much more often - They're a self fulfilling prophecy. +1 on a focal reducer. I'm pretty sure the Antares 0.6x will work, as it doesn't correct for coma. The Edge HD and Meade ACFs are coma corrected anyway. The massively expensive Celestron item [may] only really have an advantage when imaging in terms of field curvature at the focal plane or some such. PM me because I have a spare Antares you can have for postage to have a look see. Use the scope before looking into Crayfords. From the few SCTs I've used, mirror shift can vary from being a real pain in the butt (moving a subject from one edge of the FoV in a 20mm EP) to barely noticeable as it is with my LX200R. Finally, store it pointing upward. The primary mirror slides on a grease covered tube. You don't want a lump of that falling on your secondary because it got a bit warm one day. Russell Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

But it shouldn't cross thread and Jam. My 1.25" Rev did and TH replaced it under warranty. This one has been flawless. Russell

You see Televue? THAT's how you do a dual 1.25/2" barrel and NO undercut. Russell

What focuser is that and where (if you had to) did you get the adaptor?Russell

I thought it was 120mm clear diameter between the lens spacers? I didn't measure mine, but I'm sure an American said it on an interweb forum, so it must be true.

I don't think you will be disappointed. It shows a hint of colour, but when you point it at something dull, the extra aperture makes itself felt in a way that is far more beneficial. Russell

Having experienced the before/after results of a professional collimation of both a Achro doublet and an Apo triplet, I would not say you are being paranoid. I'd say refractor collimation was mandatory, but I would also include the diagonal as part of that requirement. In either case, that which comes out of the box, may be close at best, but the magic is in the optimisation of the complete system, accounting for simple things like compression rings not quite gripping orthogonally. Russell