John

I had a 4.8mm Nagler smoothside many years ago. That and a 7mm T1 were my 1st ultra wide eyepieces. I believe Roland Christen used a 4.8 as his benchmarking eyepiece ? I used to have an Ethos SX 4.7 as well but that's another story !

It does have a mount but you need a stable table top or other flat surface to stand it on.

The Parks GS-5 10mm is the same optically as the Celestron Ultima 10mm and the Orion Ultrascopic 10mm and the Antares Elite 10mm.

I use the Baader Q-Turret 2.25x barlow. Simple design but very nice optics

I use something similar in terms of the phone and holder and have got some pleasing results.

Great report Stu That's a much better pic than I managed to get !

It's usual to check the collimation and perhaps tweak it a bit each time the scope is used. The collimation is also likely to shift a bit in transit. Nothing unusual about that and it does not mean that it is not new !

Still very clear here but I'm a bit tired tonight so I've packed in. Finished by comparing the Cats Eye Nebula and the Blinking Planetary Nebula. The latter was still not really blinking despite using 30% of the aperture that I did last time - I could see the nebulosity surrounding the central star more or less all the time. Perhaps it's darker than I thought out there !

If you don't want to wait up until the early hours for comet C/2020 F8 SWAN, Comet C/2020 T2 PANSTARRS is nicely positioned in Ursa Major tonight forming a triangle with the galaxies M81 and M82 in a low power, wide angle eyepiece. PANSTARRS is currently billed as magnitude 9.1 which seems to match it's relative brightness compared with the two galaxies. The Ethos 21 in the Vixen ED 102 doing the business this evening after those lovely Moon - Venus - Mercury views earlier

That and the Zeiss look like microscope eyepieces to me. I've heard that they can work very well in scopes though and Lomo, like Zeiss, can produce really nice optics.

I think this apparition of Venus and more lately Mercury have been the best that I can recall observing

I caught the 2.1 day old Moon, 3.5% illuminated Venus and Mercury about 8:30 this evening and observed them for about 30 minutes before they dipped behind the hedges. Lovely sight, all three. I was using my Vixen ED102 F/6.5 on this occasion.

Nice to see all three here as well with my Vixen 102 ED 4.5% illuminated Moon and 3.5% illuminated Venus. Slim but lovely.

There seem to be some rumours circulating on another forum that plastic is used quite a bit in these refractors. I know that was the case with the Bresser ones but I would have thought that the ScopeTech ones would use mostly metal / alloy construction. Is that the case ? Thanks.

According to the blurb in the description, these are "Professional Binoculars". I wonder what the amateur ones are like

This guide by Rod Mollise is a free download and provides loads of information about the history of SCT's of all brands. Click the Cat to get it: https://skywatch.brainiac.com/used/index.htm

Very nice. I'm going to try and glimpse Venus again this evening. Might be my last chance for quite a while !

This is the difference that an O-III can make on the Veil Nebula. It is no exaggeration either, from my experience. A UHC does make the nebula easier to see as well but does not have the impact that the O-III does by any means. Worth the price of the filter alone IMHO. For quite a while the Astronomik O-III was the only deep sky filter that I owned. I still find that I use O-III filters more than UHC but I do have a number of each now and an H-Beta for good measure.

A few times over the years I have re-purchased an eyepiece that I used to own and enjoy. Most of the time this has made me realise why I parted with them and that things have moved on in terms of observing comfort, coatings and glass types I tend to resist the temptation these days.

I was not trying to sell these Peter and not trying to make people envious. Just posting some pics of what I thought was an interesting instrument

I'm sure they will perform to the limits of an 80mm aperture unobstructed scope.

What type of Meade scope ? - they have lots of models. The old ones were made in the USA but they have also used manufacturers from Mexico and in recent years mostly the far east.

If the objective is made to a good quality (which I'm sure it is) the CA levels in the F/12.5 would be very low and the F/15 should be visually colour free I would think.

Apparently, the binoviewing equipment can be removed so they can be used singly for imaging. The mount is available separately and is also multi-purpose - a childs swing can be fitted to the top of the arm It actually reminds me of the davits that hold the lifeboat's on large ships. Don't know what the cost is or who the customer was. 2000 kg in total weight (scopes and mount)

I came across some pictures of this professional instrument on the APM website. Not only is the instrument itself extremely impressive but the mount is an engineering work of art as well in my opinion The objectives are a pair of APM / LZOS F/7.5 300mm triplets. Mouthwatering !