John

Antares is a nice one to split as well - possibly harder than Sirius, depending where in the word you are observing from.

It was my 12 inch dob that first showed me Sirius B, quite a few years ago now, when the separation was less than 10 arc seconds. It took a lot of sessions to get that first split but since then I've done it many times and more recently with my smaller aperture scopes. It never seemed an "easy" thing to do though, even with 12 inches of aperture. The seeing conditions had to be really steady and Sirius relatively clear of the surrounding rooftops with their heating plumes during the time of year when Sirius is well placed (of course 🙄)

I had to let it go earlier this year 🙁. We have 2 lively grand children here often now and refractors can be tucked safely away but a 12 inch F/5.3 dob invites lots of attention, inevitably. I had a good decade or more with the scope though so I can't really complain 🙂

Powermates are simply superb. I've not used them for imaging but for observing they just get out of the way and you only see the boosted magnification. I have owned many barlows and a couple of ES and Meade Telextenders but, IMHO, the Powermates set the pace for others to try and follow. And you pay for that, of course. The barlows that I've used that might compete with a Powermate in terms of optical quality are the Baader VIP barlow and I believe the Baader/Zeiss barlow is very, very good as well. But barlows do impact focal position and eye relief whereas Powermates (and Telextenders) either do not, or do so less. Ditto with vignetting when used with some longer / wider eyepieces.

Orion Optics dobsonians are quite a bit lighter than the chinese made ones. My OO 12" F/5.3 weighed about the same as a chinese 10" F/5. It was pretty easy to put out and pack away. Not quite grab and go but about as close to that as a 12" scope can get !

It certainly looks like a refractor telescope in the hard case - maybe a 127mm Explore Scientific triplet refractor like this: ?

I was impressed with the 3 that I tried: Vixen SLV Eyepiece Report: 6mm, 12mm and 20mm - Member Equipment Reviews - Stargazers Lounge There was some talk of internal light scatter from a lens retaining ring in an early manufacturing run but I can't recall which FL that was 🤔

It's off topic but there is / was I R Poyser: IR Poyser – Telescope Makers | Makers of fine Brass Telescopes in the traditional style And also we had Moonraker Telescopes: Moonraker Telescopes - Home And, again in the past, Skylight Telescopes. All niche instruments, I guess. A topic for another thread perhaps ?

I used to have that set - with the T6 13mm instead of the T5 16mm. Because my scopes were shorter focal length than the C8 I also had the T6 7mm, 3.5mm and for a time the T6 2.5mm but that did not get much use. Very fine eyepieces in my opinion. I don't wear glasses and found the eye relief OK for me. Others may vary in that though.

Your rough ones are around 10x better than my finished works Mike 👍

Jon Issacs posted these thoughts last year on the CN forum: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/888547-question-regarding-30mm-eps/?p=12895994

Al Nagler kindly loaned me this a few years back to trial - I must give it a go sometime, when I'm feeling strong 😉 (I should have posted this in a months time !)

They are a bit special - it feels like a little "event" just carrying it out and putting it in the scope ! 😁

Cracking eyepiece, those TAL 25mm's 👍 Best stock eyepiece ever supplied with a scope I shouldn't wonder.

Lightweight 70mm setup this evening because of the uncertain conditions. In between the clouds the scope showed some nice views of various targets in and around Orion, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Ursa Major. In particular I was pleased with a nice display of the 3 stars of Beta Mon at 105x, M81 and M82 showing clearly at a paltry 14x, Rigel's companion at 100x and I even managed a glimpse of NGC 2903 in Leo so that is around 30 million light years away. The 70mm F/6 ED objective seems well figured. Although the Pup stayed in it's kennel (quelle surprise !) Sirius showed some nice diffraction rings and a clear airy disk rather than the blaze of light that you sometimes get. Looking forward to taking this setup away to dark skies later in the year 🙂

Uncertainty over the conditions tonight has led to a very lightweight approach. I can carry this 70mm setup in and out with one hand 🙂 In between the clouds, the views are rather nice 👍

I tried all the Vixen SSW's a few years back. They were good but had some flaws particularly with regards to eye positioning and outer field performance I thought. Your mileage may vary of course 🙂 Vixen SSW Ultra Wide Angle Eyepieces: Review - Member Equipment Reviews - Stargazers Lounge

I had the ES 24 / 68 before I had the Panoptic 24. Not a lot between them in all honesty.

This is the Messier list from the Deep Sky Corner website: Messier Catalogue / Object Descriptions | Deep⋆Sky Corner (deepskycorner.ch) Clicking on an object gives observing tips, finder charts and illustrations of many can look in an eyepiece as well as the more spectacular images.

Quite a while back I had an LS50 with the FT upgrade. My 1st experience of FT focusing excellence. The original helical focuser was also supplied but that looked rather basic to say the least.

At least that old mantra "low cost / wide field / sharp across the field in fast scopes = pick any two" is to some extent being challenged by some of todays eyepieces.

Many years ago, when I had F/10 scopes, I indulged my taste for ultra-wide fields of view with these Japanese made Widescan III eyepieces. I really enjoyed them at F/10 but the outer field became distorted at F/8 and they were not very nice at all when I tried them in my newly aquired Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 - astigmatism galore !!! The design is still around through chinese clones but I believe their behaviour is just as unruly in faster scopes than F/10 🙄 Around that time I also invested quite a lot in the 13.8mm, 18mm and 24.5mm Meade 4000 SWA eyepieces, again Japanese made back then. These proved nice at F/10 (doesn't almost everything ?) but the edge sharpness fell apart once you got to F/8 and faster. Given their cost and that they were being touted as Panoptic rivals, I was pretty disappointed in them as my scopes got faster.

When I have owned cassegrain type scopes (not Mewlons alas) I have felt that they had the potential to show excellent star definition, sharpness and contrast but the designs, with their relatively large central obstruction, needed to be accurately collimated to enable this. Even small misalignment of the mirrors can scrub a noticeable edge off performance. There is a well known web page somewhere illustrating this but I can't recall where just now. I know that the Mewlon secondary obstruction is not quite as large as an SCT's or the primary as fast but they are still instruments with relatively large CO's and relatively fast (F/3 ?) primary mirrors so I would think that accurate collimation is still quite important to getting the best from them, as is cool down of course. I've read quite a few reviews of the 180 and 210 Mewlons (I may well be interested in one someday 🙂) and I think they all mentioned both the need to tweak collimation following some initial slight concerns with the quality of views and to allow quite long cool down periods, depending where the scope has been stored prior to observing. Once these issues had been addressed the reports are consistently of excellent performance I'm pleased to say 🙂

My choices are usually either Tele Vue or Pentax although lately I've added the excellent Svbony 3mm-8mm zoom to my 1.25 inch selection and it certainly seems to keep pace with the more expensive brands in that set. These are my 1.25 inch options: 24mm Panoptic, 19mm Panoptic 14mm Delos 10mm, 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm Pentax XW Svbony 3mm=8mm zoom Nagler 2mm-4mm zoom I'm very happy with this set now - mostly bought from the used market to make the £'s go a bit further ! I don't wear glasses when observing and I'm comfortable with eye relief down to around 8mm but a little more is nice. There is some focal length duplication within the set so it could be reduced in number - I am a bit of an "ocularholic" 🙄

I know Skywatchers but I've not actually seen a Saxon or a Bintel over here in the UK. Looking at the photos of them, I would day that the Saxon was identical to the Skywatcher, probably made by the same manufacturer, Synta. The Bintel looks to me to be a GSO made scope so the same as the Stellalyra branded dobsonians sold here by First Light Optics: StellaLyra 12" f/5 Dobsonian | First Light Optics Plenty of discussions on the forum along the lines of Skywatcher vs Stellalyra / GSO. Generally, optically they seem to be equal but the GSO made scopes seem better equipped.