John

It was spectacular for around 12 days which is better than any other comet has been for the past 20 years or so. It probably deserves a quiet patch for around 6,700 years to recuperate Congratulations on getting it.

I think looks are the very least of my concerns when choosing an eyepiece.

I found the 10mm Pentax XW a touch better than the 9mm Nagler T6 when I compared them a few years back. I was a great fan of the T6 Naglers back then (had all of them, even the 2.5mm) and I was a little surprised that I found that I preferred the Pentax 10mm XW. The T6's are still lovely eyepieces though. I mention this because of course the XW's and Delos are very, very similar in performance. The Nagler has 12mm of eye relief vs the 20mm of the Delos and XW but I don't know if that is important to you. I expect someone will mention the 9mm Morpheus as well in due course. Oh, he has already ! Anyway, that's my 1p's worth

I don't know what the drives and controller are worth I'm afraid I bought my mount undriven and without a tripod for £100 if that is any help.

Believe it or not, I don't read every post made on here ! Glad you found something useful.

I have one of those GP's. They are very good but not in the same league as the EQ6 in terms of capacity. More like an EQ5 plus a bit. It would cope with the 200mm F/5 for visual observing but I have my doubts if it's up to the needs of imaging with that scope.

Was this visible through the eyepiece ? Where is Morgantown, NV ? (sorry, I'm UK based) If it was an astro object (eg: a comet) it would be effectively at the around the same distance as Jupiter so you would not need to re-focus ?

The photo is way out of focus on Jupiter but the artifact has sharp edges ? I would suspect an optical artifact. We need to know a lot more information about the equipment used and the circumstances of the image (time, conditions, location) etc before reaching a definite judgement though.

I use a zoom eyepiece often but I would not want it as my only eyepiece. I would also want a 25mm - 32mm fixed focal length eyepiece for low power observing with a wide angle of view. The zooms have their narrowest field of view at their longer ends. Depending on the scope I would be using (you have not said what you will be using) I would also want either a good quality barlow lens or a fixed focal length eyepiece of 6mm or shorter to give high magnifications. Of the zooms I've owned (at reasonable prices) I've found the Baader 8mm - 24mm and the Hyperflex 7.2mm - 21.5mm better quality than others I've used. The best quality zooms of all are Leica, Pentax and the Tele Vue Nagler zooms which do match the optical quality of excellent fixed focal length eyepieces but those cost a lot more money.

That handle (the one in the top photo) was actually designed for another mount - the T-Rex alt-azimuth that Kokusai Kohki used to market. As it happens, it does fit a number of other mounts that use the 35mm spaced clamp fastening holes.

The Orion Megavista eyepieces were made in Japan by Carton - a manufacturer with a great reputation.

Some nice ones there: - Orion Megavista (quite sought after and the first that caught my eye) - TMB Planetary 9mm - TAL 25mm plossl - 16mm Konig The others are decent but not outstanding. If those are left overs the others must be pretty good !

Nothing really. It's just a hobby. If its annoying me I stop doing it for a while.

I had one of the non-GOTO EQ6's for a while. Very solid, very, very heavy. If you just want a dual axis driven mount they are quite good (although I don't image) but if you decide to upgrade to GOTO at some stage the motors and controller boards need to be replaced as well as the handset. Some of the old EQ6's around will have been upgraded to GOTO but the owner / seller will know that of course. The older EQ6's are really quite old now though - 15-20 years perhaps ?. £400 seems quite a lot to pay for one of the old, non-GOTO ones.

I can recall another importer of these eyepieces saying that you never quite knew what was going to be printed on them until they came off the boat and you opened the boxes.

I used to own one of those. A really good high power eyepiece and 82 degree field of view as well I believe @mikeDnight owned one as well and thought highly of it.

You have nearly caught me up in post count Gina - and I've been a member for a 5 years longer than you have !

Omegon AZ Baby for sale here (not mine !): https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/propview.php?view=163986 A good photo tripod would do fine. I used to use a Dwarfstar with my TV ranger. Lightest of all I believe and pretty strong:

Here you go. See the post from @cloudsweeper a few posts down the thread:

The star chart will have a scale on it somewhere. Work out the diameter of the circles needed to represent the view that your finder gives using the figures that @Stu has given above and cut them out of acetate sheet or use soft wire (eg: garden wire) to make circles the correct diameter - this will vary depending on the star atlas that you choose to use. There was a thread on the forum recently on doing this - I'll see if I can find it when I have more time.

Thanks for that. I don't want to start having to use a barlow or powermate with the scopes - yet more glass to add to the light path.

Depends on the time of year and the type of eyepiece. Short focal length eyepieces I usually test on tight double stars, bright stars one and off off axis (to test scatter and internal light control), planets if they are around, E & F Trapezium, smaller planetary nebulae that sort of thing. Low power to medium eyepieces I test on bright and fainter galaxies, rich star fields such as the double cluster are good for testing sharpness across the field of view, I usually want to try some more challenging targets because that reveals issues quite quickly. I also try the eyepiece in a range of scopes and under different observing conditions before reaching any conclusions. You can see why the reviews that I used to do for the forum took some time to produce ! I'm always a bit doubtful of conclusions reported when folks "first light" an eyepiece I'm afraid.

I use 6x30 right angle, corrected image finders with my smaller refractors, 9x50 with my larger ones and my 12 inch dobsonian. I also use an illuminated reticule Rigel Quikfinder to complement the optical finder on the dobsonian. You can cut or make templates from acetate sheets or wire rings to represent the size of the finder field on a hard copy star atlas. The PC and mobile based planetarium type software has finder reticules that you can switch on which are useful.

Here is my surprisingly often used Tele Vue Nagler 2-4mm zoom:

The Baader UHC-S was designed for small aperture scopes (smaller than yours) and does allow a wider bandwidth through than a "normal" UHC which makes it more like a broadband / skyglow type filter. The Explore Scientific UHC is would be a better choice but an Astronomik UHC or a Orion Ultrablock is better again. If you come across one, I have found the older Meade 4000 Nebular (that is how it is spelt !) Narrowband filter really quite good (better than the Explore Scientific) in my 100mm - 130mm aperture refractors. These are out of production now but turn up on the used market at quite good prices. The Castell filters have a good reputation for their relatively low cost as well although I have not actually used one myself. As you can see from the chart here the Castell UHC is closer to the Astronomik UHC in it's band pass width and more "aggressive" (therefore more effective) than the Baader UHC-S: https://www.365astronomy.com/castell-uhc-ultra-high-contrast-filter-1.25.html