John

I guess about a week. It's getting close to the conifer hedge at the W end of our property by the time it is easily visible now so I'll have to start finding it a bit earlier I think.

I owned the ES 24 / 68 and then got a 24 Panoptic. Very little in it in terms of performance, maybe nothing much of the time. I just wanted another 24mm Panoptic though, after selling one a few years back and regretting it

I've got an old Fuji Finepix S5800. I've been meaning to try it out for eyepiece projection images of the Moon etc.

This one tonight. I ought to have been consistent with my labeling though .....

Yes, I have the 10mm, 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm Pentax XW's. I love them

Smaller aperture, quality optics, seem to be able to do a better job in cutting through the seeing than larger ones.

Used to have the 3mm and 4mm Radians. One I liked and the other I found gave rather odd stray light issues when used to view the Moon. I can't recall now which was which They were replaced by Pentax XW's in my eyepiece case.

With the long refractor, you need them !

One thing I would add is that I use the 21.5mm-7.2mm zoom + Baader 2.25x barlow combination a lot for high power observing. The optical performance of that is pretty good - it gives me a 9.5mm - 3.2mm zoom. Probably not quite as good as the Nagler 3-6 would be but pretty close and for about 30% of the price.

Mine is even smaller !

Not with a mobile phone, I'll bet !

I guess we will have to stop advising newbies that very high magnification is not going to bring any benefits ? But then again, with entry level scopes and inexperienced eyes, perhaps that is still sound advice ?

So all these media reports of "see the comet this weekend" are, as ever, for the UK at least, a bit misleading https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1282729/comet-swan-how-to-see-watch-green-comet-swan-uk-flyby-tonight

Zhumell are made by GSO who became notorious for weak primary collimation springs. My Meade Lightbridge 12 had the same mirror and cell. I uprated the springs, went for "Bobs Knobs" to replace the stock ones and stopped using the locking screws and things improved. You could see the mirror cell flexing as you applied the locking screws which was not good ! Orion Optics put a sticker next to their locking screws that advises "finger tight only". I've gone for "don't use at all unless transporting" instead.

Mine is the simple, older type, and does a great job. Small mass as well. Orion Optics scopes are good but do depreciate quite quickly and, having had some issues with the company on smaller matters, I was happy to buy a pre-owned one for that reason as well.

The Nagler zooms have 10mm of eye relief. A 6mm ortho has around 5 mm.

I guess I'd better get a mak

Comet C/2020 F8 Swan is currently in the constellation Triangulum. Not above the horizon until the early hours as far as I know.

I didn't own both at the same time so I suspect it was more that I was going through a period when I wanted more AFoV and a larger eye lens than the zoom offered. Maybe I've "grown up" a bit since then I think the performance of the two is pretty much identical.

Meade used to use those on their refractors (metal rather than plastic). The Baader shoe should fit OK but you will have a couple of other holes to plug. Of course the original mount for the Celestron Illuminated RACI might well also bolt on there OK but you would need to put something between the base of that and the scope tube to stop the mount denting the tube.

What a great review Matthew I've owned a couple of the 3-6mm Nagler zooms and currently I have the 2-4mm version. For some odd reason I didn't take to the 3-6mm ones but now I really love my 2-4mm. They performed consistently well though so perhaps it's me that has changed ! I didn't think that I would use the 2-4mm that much but my refractors seem very able to soak up high magnifications so it's used practically every time I have a refractor out and reasonably often with my 12 inch dob as well. If a 3-6mm came up I might be tempted again - there is something about their form and function that is very appealing What drew me to these zooms was an old 2004 Tom Trusock review where he compared the 3-6mm with TMB Supermonocentrics. The latter did just about beat the Nagler zoom for planetary observing but it was very close I seem to recall and that made me think that the zoom flexibility (which is seamless of course despite the click stops) pulled the overall verdict back towards the Tele Vue, even if not all the way there. Remarkable 5 element design that Al Nagler managed to come up with. Here is Tom's review for any that are interested: https://www.cloudynights.com/documents/tmb2.pdf

Fortunately my 12 inch Orion Optics dob is a bit smaller / more compact than the 12 inch dob that I owned previously (a Meade Lightbridge 12) so my other half thought it an improvement. Either that or she gave up at that point ! I have told her that I might bring the society 18 inch back home for a while ...... now that would take up some room !

That is the one that I have.

I have one of those with my T-Rex mount (also an EQ6 fitting mount). Works very well except that it's a fiddle to attach to the mount - the top plate of the extension has to come off to get to the bolt. I think the answer is to leave it bolted onto the mount all the time but I'm reluctant to to that because I don't need it all the time

I'm sure you were grinning a lot on the inside Matthew - I certainly would have been