John

Looking at photos of the bottom end of the zoom, the 1.25 inch barrel and the chrome flange seem to be a single piece ? I would guess that the whole thing would unscrew from the black body of the eyepiece but presumably it won't budge ?

Meade used to have a TeleXtender which I think is the same thing.

Nice work Gary ! The Celestron version of the AZ-3 is called the "Heavy Duty Alt-Azimuth Mount", a title which caused me to smirk a bit I have to say Good to see that it's tripod can be put to good use.

All quite true. I use my 31mm Nagler with my Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 refractor and the Lumicon O-III filter to get the whole of the Veil complex in as well - one of my favourite Summer sights I was just pointing out that some people do use and enjoy the mighty "terminagler" in their SCT's and really enjoy that experience even if it is not the best value for money when bought solely for use with such a scope. The 31mm Nagler costs the equivalent of $800 here. I got mine for much, much less by buying pre-owned. The ES 30mm 82 would produce pretty much the same effect in the SCT and costs considerably less of course.

Sorry if we have delivered too much info. It is a complex subject On other forums threads on this topic have run for months !

Thinking back (it was a long time ago that I owned an SCT) I don't think I used it much on nebulae apart from the small bright ones and not with filters. I can see that the longer focal length eyepiece would produce more effective exit pupil when using O-III or UHC filters.

40mm plossls (the NPL is a plossl) don't show any more sky than a 32mm because of the restriction of the 1.25 inch barrel. For wide field I would go for a 30/32mm plossl or the 25mm BST Starguider which shows nearly as much sky. It's not the best of the Starguiders but should work well enough in your F/8.3 and F/7.5 refractors.

I'm sure you will like the ED100. I bought a blue one when they first came out and loved it. It replaced my TAL 100 RT, also a fine refractor telescope

Lovely images Victor - thanks for posting them I was really surprised and impressed with Comet Neowise when I saw it back on the 6th July with my 11x70 binoculars. I guess I've got used to looking for faint patches of light with a difficult to discern shape but Neowise just looked so "comet-like" that I stared in disbelief for a while. We have had clouds here since then but I'm hoping for more observations here over the coming days as the weather improves.

I've not used a Meade zoom. They seem to have gone through different designs over the years. At one point they were very similar / the same to the Tele Vue / Vixen 8-24 zoom and pretty good. Other incarnations have been more mediocre. Worth some more research to find out just what you are buying with this one to be sure that you are not paying a premium for an otherwise quite ordinary zoom. Sorry I can't be more help on that one. Never been a real Meade fan to be honest with you

Google threw this up: http://www.specola.altervista.org/alterpages/files/BrochureTelescopiMARIOSPADA1991.pdf Looks like it might be a heavily modified Celestron SCT but I've never heard of them until now.

I don't know the Tel Vue 8-24mm zoom internals (it is the same as the Vixen LV 8-24 zoom) but here is a Baader 8-24mm zoom strip down which might give you an idea what to expect: https://roslistonastronomy.uk/be-afraid-be-very-afraid-baader-8-24-zoom-lens-stripdown I did another zoom a couple of years back and they are complex and fiddly things mostly because of the sliding mechanisms which are greasy and use tiny nuts and bolts. There are 7 glass elements I think, as well.

Hi and welcome to the forum ? What were you trying to see ?

It's the same but under different branding. This zoom is available under quite a few branding and at quite varying prices ! I picked the lowest cost that I could find because I was not sure how it would be but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I can think of at least one member here who uses the 31mm Nagler in their 8 inch SCT and gets superb results.

The most basic type that you can buy is an achromatic doublet - 2 lens elements. This would be your "standard refractor" Nobody makes or sells a single element (non-achromatic) refractor. The next step is an ED doublet refractor which uses a low dispersion glass element to reduce markedly the amount of chromatic aberration visible. The next step is a triplet which if well executed can reduce chromatic aberration to virtually zero. Within each of the above types there are a range of qualities available and a wide range of pricing. The more expensive ED doublets can be somewhat more than a low to mid cost triplet for example. The major advantage that the reflector has is that the cost per cm of aperture is a lot, lot lower because there are less optical surfaces to figure, polish and coat. There are plenty of threads on the forum discussing the merits of the various scope designs. In my view they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Thats probably why many of us end up with a variety of them !

If a 3-6 Nagler zoom popped up at a decent price I might be tempted to get the pair

I have one of these: And one of these: I like them both and use them frequently. They probably get more use than the other eyepieces I have because they are so flexible. I've also owned a few of the Baader zooms (a Mk II and a couple of Mk III's) one of the low cost Skywatcher 8-24's and the very expensive Leica 8.9mm - 17.8mm ASPH zoom. I would not want a zoom as my only eyepiece but I've certainly found that they are very useful to have in the astro "tool box"

I use one of these zooms quite frequently for lunar, planetary and double star observing. Not the widest field of view at the long end but image quality is good. I use a 2.25x barlow with it but my refractors are shorter focal length than your 127mm mak-cassegrain is so on it's own the zoom gives you 70x - 208x: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ovl-eyepieces/hyperflex-72mm-215mm-eyepiece.html A touch over your budget but a lot of flexibility !

Congratulations on the scope. What barlow do you have ? Just don't want it to be the "weak link" !

Great set Jeremy I've ended up with a 2 inch case and a 1.25 inch case as well. Bit extravagant I suppose but they are all absolutely essential tools of course

I've tried binoviewing quite a few times but each time I've just not got along with it. I can seem to merge the images OK but I find it easier to pick out details when just using one eye. Maybe I'm similar to Don in this respect ? My latest attempt to get into binoviewing is shown below. 130mm triplet refractor which is binoviewer ready, ie: can reach focus without the need for an extender element or barlow. The setup worked wonderfully but I still found myself preferring the mono approach Shame really

Too much choice these days: FPL-53 or Fluorite Glass ? Carbon Fibre or Aluminum Tube ? Smokey Bacon or Cheese and Onion Coatings ?

Another thread which amply illustrates how the "your mileage may vary" adage applies to eyepieces Perhaps we need an eye assessment service to advise which eyepieces are likely to please before purchase. Rather like being fitted for a suit !

I had the Fullerscopes 20mm 82 degree for a while recently (maybe the same one ?). I don't know the scope that you were using it with but I found the edge of field astigmatism really distracting in scopes of F/8 and faster. It would be OK in an SCT or F/10 or slower scope I think. I would have thought that the Baader zoom would have been a betrer corrected eyepiece even if the AFoV was nowhere near as wide ?