John

Back in the 1980's forums did not exist so rumours of a drop in quality took a long time to percolate though the astro community. Also many who bought scopes had little or no experience of them so simply did not realise that their optics were not as good as they might be. With forums such as SGL and Cloudynights I think the astro consumer is much better informed and information circulates really fast. I don't think a manufacturer would risk dropping their standards today. They would never recover their reputation.

Maybe 300x if its a decent one.

The 9mm and 25mm are a good starting point. You will want to add further eyepieces in due course. There are so many eyepiece choices that you may become more overwhelmed if we start to go into all those. The 25mm and 9mm will get you started.

Lovely moon this evening. I'm enjoying finding crater chains, some of which are also known as catena's. When you start looking for these there seem to be lots to be seen. Notable ones this evening have included Catena Davy which bisects the crater of the same name. This one needs high magnifications and steady seeing to pick out the delicate line of craters between 3km and 1km in diameter. Slightly easier to see is Catena Muller, a chain of 5 craters close to the crater Muller. Another chain is in Deslandres and seems to be unamed but starts a the small crater known as Hell H. Some debate still over the formation of these features. Multiple impacts or volcanic or maybe a mixture of causes ?. Catena Davy seems to be a candidate for multiple impact but the Deslandres chain's origins are not so clear perhaps ? Interesting features to observe anyway I'm using my Tak 100 refractor at 200x - 300x to observe these. Not my images I ought to say.

That's fine. You cannot see stars as more than a point of light no matter how much magnification you use. I was just checking to see that your scope is focused properly. Stars as points of light means that it is.

Just a quick question - what does a star look like when you view it with your scope ?

Your scope is ideal for observing DSO's. You do need to be able to point the scope precisely to the part of the sky that the DSO is located so your finder scope needs to be accurately aligned with the view though the main scope. For finding and observing DSO's your lowest magnification eyepiece, the 25mm, is the one to use to start with. Most DSO's do just look like faint misty patches or blobs though, especially in the Summer months when the sky does not get very dark. A good book to get started is "Turn Left at Orion".

These are often the focal lengths of eyepieces that are supplied with scopes by manufacturers so they make a decent "get you started" kit. You will almost certainly want to add a couple more to them in due course.

That was not really the point I was making Paul

The extent to which eye relief is altered depends on the focal length of the barlow lens I believe - the shorter the barlow FL, the more eye relief is pushed out. It's not easy to find that specification for barlows though. The actual positional change also depends on the focal length of the eyepiece as well I think.

A 1.6mm eyepiece will be totally impractical with a scope such as an 8 inch schmidt-cassegrain. It will produce far too much magnification to show any sort of decent image of anything, planet or otherwise. A 7mm eyepiece would be the shortest focal length that would be useful. The planets do look small with scopes, even at high magnifications.

I very nearly bought one of those from BC&F. And a little later the 6 inch version. So glad that I didn't Perhaps a subject for another thread "Scopes that were so bad you chucked them away" !

Here is a strong candidate https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bresser-8850600W9H000-Junior-Linsenteleskop-50-600-AZ-Pink-Telescope/254668357536?hash=item3b4b6abfa0:g:scIAAOSwq3pfIEue

I think the Halley mania was a one-off (at least I hope so). I believe Meade and Celestron relaxed their quality standards to meet demand. Not sure about other manufacturers though. It will be the dealers that get it in the neck if standards are relaxed though. Our consumer rights are quite a lot better today than they were in 1986, especially if buying online.

If you want to sell them please use the classifieds section of the forum. Thanks

I've already owned one a while back 17mm is now covered in my collection by these two

That's a whole lot of aperture for very few £'s The views will be superb if the clouds allow. Globular clusters in a 10 inch scope look amazing !

A number of factors go into that overall rating - ff the Delos / Ethos were 30% less expensive as the XW maybe they would have got 18/19 out of 20 ? I'll have to have another read and see if I can understand exactly how those scores are derived. Any fluent French speakers around ? It would be interesting to tot up just the optical performance ratings and see what the result is. The surprise for many might be the Tak and Nikon scores. Both those eyepieces get great reviews from those who own them.

These get mentioned in this thread on another forum. Not too positive though. Hope those were atypical examples https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/719533-manual-alt-az-mounts-show-us-what-you-have/?p=10369641

Very interesting. Thanks

I think your exposure needs to be a lot longer (minutes rather than seconds) and then a lot of them stacked to get more detail than you have got.

I believe cyanogen (CN) involved as well, eg: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/05jan_machholz

Quite a nice night here. Comet Neowise is still hanging in there. Once found with 11x70 binoculars it is just about still naked eye visible here tonight, but only just and I don't think I would have picked it out without optical aid to pinpoint it's position first. Nucleus still showing that noticeable green tint which is apparently a reasonably common phenomenon and due to cyanogen gas surrounding the nucleus becoming ionised. I got a hasty snap - nothing brilliant compared to many of the superb shots that have been taken but it will have to do for me tonight

We would all benefit from more reviews that are as comprehesive as that

No problem as far as I'm concerned I do have too much kit, I know that I blame Steve at FLO for "turning my head" towards Pentax XW's - he loaned me the 10mm ! Such a good choice of eyepieces around these days - you probably can't go wrong