John

Another set of free downloadable ones here. Down to mag 10 stars and mag 14 DSO's:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/deep-sky-hunter-atlas.html

The 6.2mm eyepiece will max out the scopes capabilities on it's own most of the time  - that's 242x !

Much observing is done at the low to medium magnifications.

Venus definitely looks better when observed with a fair amount of light still in the sky

Jupiter does as well !

I should have mentioned that 7.2mm-21.5mm - it's the one that I currently have as well !

2 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

You might have just sold me on the FT there, John.

Sorry

19 minutes ago, Neil P said:

Hi

it is one of the original TMB 115 CNC classics. 

Excellent

I have a TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet. The one with the Kruppax 50 tube.

Hi (again !) Matt,

Our sponsor, First Light Optics, has a range of bags which might be worth a look:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescope-bags-cases-storage.html

Hi Matt,

These days, zooms work pretty well and their optical quality is almost as good as fixed focal length eyepieces.

The downside with them (most of them anyway) is that at the longer focal lengths, the field of view is quite narrow. This widens out at the shorter focal lengths though.

The Celestron and Skywatcher (and Seben) 8-24 zooms are quite good quality and all the same item as far as I can see. The cheaper 7-21mm ones are not so good though.  The Baader 8-24 is very nice but a lot more expensive. The Skywatcher Hyperflex zooms are pretty good as well.

With your scope I can see the attraction. I might want to compliment the zoom with something like a 30mm fixed focal length eyepiece for low power wider views than the zoom can provide.

Cheers,

John

I had a Feathertouch on my LS50 and it was superb. I also have one on my 130mm triplet refractor with similar results. I like Moonlites and use those on my 12 inch dob and ED120 refractor but the Feathertouch is a noticable step up in all respects. I wondered what the fuss was about until I got to see and try a Feathertouch. Fabulous devices. I wish I could afford to put one on all my scopes.

3 minutes ago, mikeyjm26 said:

Newbie question, does this have 2 finders?

Yes - an optical 9x50mm right angle, correct image finder and a zero magnification Rigel Quikfinder. A very effective combination

23 minutes ago, mikeyjm26 said:

I found a 8" Bresser on eBay that is brand new for just less than £370, it seems like a good deal.

For the sake of £19 I think I'd prefer to buy from a reputable dealer that has good pre and post sales support such as First Light Optics.

That assumes the scope you are looking at is this one:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bresser-telescopes/bresser-messier-8-dobsonian-telescope.html

16 hours ago, LottJT said:

Thanks for the heads up. I did actually enquire but the seller said they have are no longer selling due to lack of interest. That confused me a little if I'm honest as I'm interested but it's obviously their choice. 

I've queried that with the seller. Hopefully they will confirm one way or another ASAP.

4 hours ago, Neil P said:

I have been a forum lurker for a while and thought I would make my first post here. I echo everything everyone says about this mount, it just exudes quality. I have a number of alt/az mounts and this is head and shoulders above them all. It may not have the absolute capacity of the APM az/maxload but I am not sure it is that far behind and the presence of the slo/mo controls make it so much nicer for me to use.

The attention to detail is fantastic, I love that you can screw the counterweight bar into the 2nd saddle. It is the little things that make this mount a joy to use.

The nexus dsc is a perfect partner for it as well, I have never used one before and it is so easy to use and very accurate. After the 2 star alignment every object was very close to the centre of the fov in my Binoviewers.

Lovely setup (mount and scope)

What scope is it by the way ?. Clearly a LZOS objective but which one ?

The only filters that I use are O-III and UHC filters which enhance the views of nebulae. Oh, and special filters when observing the Sun in white light of course.

I have owned and used moon and planetary filters (coloured and specialist) a number of times over the years that I have been observing but, for me, they did not bring any benefits over observing without a filter.

I still keep a moon filter for when doing outreach if someone feels that they would like to use one. Even with my 12 inch scope though, I don't use a moon filter.

So by all means try some and see if they work for you (others will make recommendations I'm sure) but they are not a mandatory part of observing kit in my opinion, unless you wish to observe the sun in white light when they a suitable filter MUST be used of course.

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Yep, should be good to try. What’s the CA like? I guess it’s similar to the Telementor which is heavy on Venus but actually pretty well controlled everywhere else.

I thought maybe I had some Huygens eyepieces with the Vixen FL102 but I just checked them out and they are 0.96” Vixen Orthos, might be quite nice but I would have to refit the original focuser to use them. Might do it just to give them a go, or might be easier to buy an adaptor.

The CA levels are pretty low. Venus looked very nicely defined at 133x and was surprisingly good even at 200x. Some CA fringing the edges of the crescent but really not distracting.

Those old Vixen Or's are quite nice eyepieces - I used to use them with a Vixen 102M achromat. A lot better than the Huygens ones I got with the Tasco.

I find that applying magnification reduces the brightness of the moon. I don't use a moon filter even with my 12 inch scope. I do have one though in case anyone else wants to use it when I do outreach sessions. They don't cost much to have in the bottom of the eyepiece case after all.

A bit more magnification is what I find works well at teasing faint DSO's out of my moderately light polluted sky. If I can get that AND have a large true field, well that just seems ideal to me

If you can find a copy of the S&T Pocket Sky Atlas I highly recommend it. I use it all the time during my sessions with my 12 inch dob. I have the more detailed Interstellarium for further reference but the Pocket Sky Atlas is with me as I observe.

30 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

....I do like the look of the ES tele-extenders, and they are at a great price for the 1.25" version.

 

I was loaned the ES 2x Tele-extender for a while. It was very impressive for it's price. Practically the same performance as the Tele Vue Powermate but at a somewhat lower price.

I've owned and used quite a lot of barlows and tele / focal extenders. The only one I have now is the Baader Q-Turret 2.25x barlow which is pretty good optically though rather plain and simple in build / finish terms.

25 minutes ago, LottJT said:

I also have an Orion XT8 dobsonian and am looking to upgrade from the stock eyepieces. Living under bortle 6, maybe 7 skies means this thread is really relevant and useful. I was planning on going for a couple of BSTs but I've seen you say good things about the 82° Nirvanas so, based on your advice of going higher mag complimented by wider FOV, I think I'd be better off going for the 16mm for DSOs. Before I part with my money I just wanted to check that it would be decent (I say decent as I'm being realistic with the sub £80 price tag) at f5.9, I think you have experience of the Nirvanas at f6? Any advice would be much appreciated. 

The 16mm Nirvana would work well at F/5.9 I think. The extreme edges of the field of view might not be 100% perfect but the majority of the field of view will be very nice. They are very good value currently for an 82 degree eyepiece.

Here is a Tasco model that I had not come across before - it is a rebranding of the wonderful Vixen 102mm Fluorite refractor. Not sure how many came out with Tasco branding on them but there were one or two other Tasco scopes that were made by Vixen so at some time the two companies much have had an agreement of some sort.

3 minutes ago, Supernova74 said:

Anything from China with no well know brand name I would avoid like the plague to be honest there are some good alternative clones of Exsplore scientific eyepieces and some good exsamples are at opticstar under there own brand name and I can imagine thay wouldn’t sell rubbish not only thay are the Meade distributors for the uk thay got an reputation to look out for also.myself personally I would stick with established Well know dealers and on the plus side if you ever try to sell a well known brand like Televue,Exsplore scientific,Meade,etc get a good chunk of your money back 

To be fair, Maxvision branded eyepieces have been well known on here for a few years now and have a great reputation for good performance and excellent value.

18 minutes ago, Stu said:

What magnification can you get to with the original eyepieces John? I’m sure you will have more luck with modern ones though.

I had a choice of 64x, 133x or 200x Stu. Simple Huygenian type - 2 elements in 2 groups !

Mind you, F/13.3 fracs are not too fussy.

A cloud free night, a stable mount and a modern eyepiece / diagonal and the results may well be different

Edit: my earlier post should have read thin cloud cover rather than tin cloud cover. Doh ! 

16 minutes ago, Lockie said:

... If I remember rightly you just check for any difference between the fresnel rings in and outside focus, but is there any thing specific to look out for?

You need good seeing for these to be clear:

In broader terms, scopes that have a reasonable degree of under or over correction seem not to be able to support higher magnifications.

I could not do it last night with my old 60mm refractor. I could see it was a double star - a sort of peanut shape. Each end of the "peanut" had a different tint to it. Just no dark line separating the two. The conditions were not great (tin cloud cover) and the scope 50+ years old with the old .965 inch eyepieces used being of the same vintage.

It did give me nice splits of Gamma Leonis and Gamma Virginis though.