John

Hmmm - the Posterior Rille ?

I use eyepieces with apparent fields from 110 degrees to 50 degrees (which is the Nagler 2mm - 4mm zoom in my case) and, yes, the zoom field of view does seem small but it's quite easy to adjust to that even with scopes mounted on undriven alt-azimuth mounts, as all mine are. My "in between" eyepieces in terms of field of view are Tele Vue Delos and Pentax XW's which give you very good optical quality and a decent field of view and comfortable eye relief. With my 130mm refractor I don't use the 100/110 degree eyepieces very much to be honest. The Delos / XW's / Nagler zoom get the bulk of the use with that scope, as they have tonight in fact

I've been through Orion doubles from Rigel to 52 Orionis so far - it's looking good out there ! Alnitak is particularly splendid at 400x

Thanks Paul I've got the 130mm frac out tonight - ideal for lunar exploration !

It's surprising how often that seems to happen !

Well, it's going to be clear, and the scope is out, so why not point a camera at it

I used to use my Vixen 102 F/6.5 refractor on an AZ-4 and it worked very well Nice and portable combination.

Very nice ! There is really not much between these and the Ethos's. I'm sure you have seen the review that I did a while back: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/236613-skywatcher-myriad-100-110-degree-apparent-field-eyepieces/ I understand that optically the Myriad's, Lunt / APM XWA's, Stellavue Optimus and TS XWA's are the same.

Planetary nebulae such as the Eskimo Nebula and The Cats Eye Nebula seem to "survive" under moonlight quite well

Nice idea 😀 Here are my early ones from the late 1980's: .956 inch fitting and all fitted into an old cigar box !; And then where I was 11 years ago: quite a step forward:

For "no motors" you seem to have done very well. Around 10 of the Plato craterlets does not seem such a "disaster" to me

It's a great looking scope John I'm looking forward to hearing how it performs. There has been much posted on these scopes under different brandings over the past few years but little in the way of a balanced and comprehensive assessment. If the performance matches it's looks then the current purchase price looks a bargain

2 inch eyepieces can show much larger true fields than 1.25 inch eyepieces of the same focal length. With the 72ED though I wonder if the 2 inch focuser is mainly aimed at imagers ? Baader likes to give lots of options for use with their gear. Generally these options work well but with the Hyperion 1.25 inch eyepieces removing the lower optic assembly leaves an optical set based on the Erfle eyepiece design which can work well with a slow scope (eg: F/10, F/12 etc) but struggle with edge correction in faster scopes, such as the ED72 at F/5.8. As you have the 8mm Hyperion, if you can get hold of a 2 inch diagonal, why not try it and see for yourself ?

Without the 1.25 inch nose and the optics within it, the Hyperions (except the 24mm I think) become 22.9mm focal length eyepieces but not terribly well corrected ones. As indicated above, the general feeling is that they are best used as 1.25 inch eyepieces.

As I do. As I said, this was the thinking when I was a Mod. Maybe it's changed now ? There is a part of the forum where such suggestions can be made: https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/50-forum-suggestions-bugs-errors-and-foibles/

Sorry I distracted this thread with a picture of a bag of money. It was not mine - my astro budget is practically zero currently. Fortunately I don't actually need or want anything astro-wise just now though 😁 Back (sort of) on topic, there are also refractors around that are termed "Super Achromat" just to add to the confusion: I don't think there is any agreed "industry standard" definition of these terms though, no matter how much they are debated on forums like this

I used to have the TV Gibraltar mount on the ash wood tripod, which I think is a bit heavier duty than the Tele Pod ? The Gibraltar was good with a 102mm F/6.5 refractor but was not anywhere near as happy with my 120mm F/7.5 refractor. It was pretty hopeless with a 127mm F/9.4 achromat on board I'm afraid. Normally I really like Tele Vue products but I found the Gibraltar mount I bit underwhelming really.

Great report - thanks for putting it together I've had a lot of enjoyment from similar low cost plossls over the years.

Very interesting piece of equipment. I used to use one with a Leica ASPH zoom lens to get a wide range of powers, provided that I could remember the different spacer combinations ! The optical element on the VIP is very high quality I think. Baader's modular approach to their products allows a lot of flexibility and opportunity for those who like to experiment

Thanks Peter. These cells have no facility for adjusting the tilt or centering of the elements so it's a matter of using tape or similar as a shim to apply tilt. My issues rotate with the objective. Next time that I feel like playing with it I can get the objective out and try rotating one element relative to the other and see what happens.

But what you REALLY need is 1000 cents ......

I have a similar issue with a 90mm F/11.1 achromat that I purchased last year. It was very cheap and, having tried adjusting the tension and tilt of the focuser, the tilt of the objective, the positioning of the lens spacers and the seating of the lens elements I've had to accept that it was a low cost scope and I've probably got it as good as it is going to be. The star test is a bit out with the diffraction rings skewed a little and brighter on one side than the other. Using the cheshire to test the objective tilt (after getting the optical axis of the focuser properly in line with that of the objective with a laser) reveals two slightly overlapping disks but not that nice fully overlapping image that I would like to see. I've concluded that either the figure of the objective (or one of it's elements) is not that great (maybe some wedge ?) or that there is some inaccuracy in the build and fit of the (plastic) objective cell that I can't get to the bottom of. Every now and then over the past months I've got the thing out and had a play, re-seated the focuser and the objective, even had the objective out of the cell and checked the spacers, etc, etc but I just can't get any further with the thing I suspect my scope is from the same factory that made yours except mine has Celestron branding. The actual performance under the stars is not bad to be fair. It splits quite tight double stars, showed some nice detail on Mars during the opposition, a sharp lunar surface, good white light solar views etc. Not much CA at F/11.1 either. But that star test and the cheshire test niggles me. The pics below are not from my scope but are close to what I see. My cheshire images look like the right hand one and the star test of the scope at high power (200x) is somewhere between the two center ones below. I've kind of given up trying to get things better to be honest It's been quite fun playing around with it and it was cheap ! So I will be interested in any suggestions as well

From when I was a moderator here I recall we did discuss this quite often but the conclusion was that we worried about "silos" developing as is the case to some extent on CN. Maybe that viewpoint has changed lately though ? I agree with the points that Carl has made in this thread re: high end equipment. This is now discussed a lot on SGL whereas there is (or seems to be ?) less emphasis on more accessible / affordable options, which in many cases enable just as much enjoyment to be had. I'm probably guilty of this as well so I'm going to try and do something about that in the way I post

You do need good seeing to make the split - it is a pretty tough challenge and not like a "regular" double star. The distance between the A & B stars is about the same as the gap between Rigel A & B as a guide but the brightness difference is much greater, hence the challenge.

Actually, that does not sound like Sirius A & B to be honest with you This is what the pair look like with my 12 inch dobsonian at 265x: Sirius B appears as a very faint glimmer of light that shines, often intermittently, through the halo of glare that surrounds Sirius A. Sirius A is 10,000 brighter than B.