John

A 6 inch reflector (even an F/5 one) is likely to be unsteady on an EQ2 mount but will be very solid on the dobsonian mount.

The Skywatcher 6 inch dobsonians are F/8.

24 minutes ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

Sorry chaps, what does the term on axis mean from a viewing perspective

The central part of the field of view.

On axis, most of today's eyepieces do pretty well.

I like Pentax for photography but that goes back to 35mm days !.

It was a Pentax XW 10m that first showed me that there were (slightly) better eyepieces around than Tele Vue Naglers. I had a set of Type 6 Naglers back then and FLO loaned me a Pentax XW 10mm to compare with the 9mm T6 Nagler. I found myself slightly preferring the XW, rather to my surprise and it was a more comfortable eyepiece to observe with.

I still hankered after ultra-wide views though and then the Ethos came along. Sharper, whiter views than Naglers and 100 degrees as well. Right up my street

I just have the one Nagler now - the mighty 31mm.

Delos are great eyepieces and so are XW's. So are Ethos and so are Morpheus and a number of others. Eyepiece choice is very personal though and stuff like ergonomics etc come into the decision at this level more than pure optical performance I reckon.

8 hours ago, Stardaze said:

..... Would you miss the additional FOV in the dob? 

Yes 

When I was working it was difficult and I had to be disciplined about when I packed in, especially when I had to be up early to travel the following morning.

Since I retired in 2011 the hobby has become much easier to pursue even though the disposable income to pursue it dropped a bit !

Since 2011 my grown up children have moved out to homes of their own as well which has had some benefits in terms of storage space and lights on around the house late at night. Still miss them though

1 hour ago, F15Rules said:

My one and only Berlebach product..

..spreader tray, from Astroboot some years ago. Sadly, the ED103s and Vixen GP are no longer with me, sacrificed on the altar of getting my FS128 in 2017.. but I still have the tray on the home built wooden tripod shown above..

Dave 🙂

I got my Berlebach Uni 28 from Astroboot. I recently bought the spreader stopper from an SGL member so I don't tend to use the wooden tray much.

Your tripod looks great Dave

2 hours ago, markse68 said:

... been using the bco 6mm but at ~500x and the small fov you don’t get long after it settles before you have to nudge it again. The wider fov would be useful.

My 6mm is the Ethos, which helps with a longer drift time.

It's an actual thing. It is called an ionized trail. They can be detected by radio astronomers as well as being seen visually.

32 minutes ago, Craney said:

I would have said Venus.

 

I agree. Venus.

3 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Perhaps contrast is the term I’m looking for rather than transmission, John. The performance difference between between the orthos and widefields is quite noticeable to my eyes. Do you find your Delos more effective than Ethos when looking at the fainter objects?

Not really Neil.

I used to have a number of good quality ortho's which I felt would compliment my wide fields but after many comparisons I came to the conclusion that the wide fields showed the full range of astro targets just as well as the orthos did (to my eye anyway) and I was not too keen on the eye relief, small eye lenese and narrow fields of the orthos so I let them go to new homes. I do still have a Fujiyama 4mm HD ortho but very rarely use it now. 

The nearest I have to an ortho now is probably the Nagler 2-4mm zoom.

"Your mileage may vary" as we should always say on these matters

I don't think there is much difference in light transmission between an ortho and the top quality multi-element extra wide angle eyepiece - maybe a % or two. This is not going to result in a difference that can be detected visually I believe - a 10% difference in transmission equates to 0.1 of a magnitude difference which is apparently the smallest difference that experienced variable star observers can detect.

There maybe other factors at work though ?

A driven alt-azimuth mount will track objects as you view them.

A GOTO driven alt-azimuth mount will, if set up properly, will find objects as well as tracking them.

They are accurate enough for observing and planetary / lunar imaging but not for long exposure deep sky imaging.

Hope that helps.

I agree with James

"Mak the knife" because it's so sharp ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksutov_telescope#Gregory_or_"spot"_Maksutov–Cassegrains

Perhaps I should call it "Spot" ?

Thanks for that link. That's what your £120 is buying you with the Scopetech Zero then

The AZ5 has clutches I think so that one is not of interest.

Anyway you have ordered the Zero now and I'm sure you will love it with your little Vixen frac

3 hours ago, AdeKing said:

I have recently been pondering picking up another used Mak, but was looking at a 127 rather than the 90 or. 102.  Mainly because I have 3x 102mm Fracs already and figured the 127 would give a reasonable aperture boost, though not as portable as the 90mm.

 

I've owned 127mm and 180mm  maks for a short time but I've never used one of the little ones. I have refractors from 100, 102mm, 120mm and 130mm but I was attracted by the sheer cuteness of the 90 mak

Just now, Deadlake said:

Defeated by wobble/nudge test, certainly takes longer to recover in review on YouTube pitted against Scopetech Zero.

Do you have a link to that ?

I'd be interested to see it

I don't own / use a Vixen Porta II which is why I used the "?"

What scope are you intending to put on your Scopetech Zero ?

Saturn and Jupiter are just to low for my 12 inch dob to get onto due to "clutter" around that horizon from my back yard where I do 99% of my observing. So while they are down there I'm using my refractors of 100mm - 130mm which seem to be doing rather well when the seeing is good - an ADC can't help with poor seeing as has been mentioned before in this thread.

Mars will be within reach my my 12 inch dob but may be high enough from here that an ADC is limited in what it can achieve.

If these devices are helping improve the views for others, that's good and it is interesting reading about their exploits with them

If you order enough from Barsta you can have your name on them !

7 hours ago, Deadlake said:

Any other mounts with those features?  

Vixen Porta II ?

https://www.vixenoptics.co.uk/Pages/porta_II_mount.htm

The EQ5 is the Vixen GP clone. The EQ 3-2 is a clone of the Vixen Polaris.

The mount in the picture looks like an EQ3-2 / CG4 / Skyscan 2000 (and older name for it)

I've seen these with about a dozen different brandings on them. Unless you are really OCD it makes no difference at all of course

I can actually post something in this thread now - my little 90mm gregory maksutov-cassegrain