John

Sometimes I'm glad that I observe from my garden in the UK even if my skies are not all that dark. A hedgehog or a bat are my biggest wildlife risks !

There won't be much of a difference between the Morpheus and the X-Cell LX's or BST Starguiders. The Morpheus has a larger apparent field of view of course but optically they will all be quite close, especially in the central part of the field of view. I compared the 8mm BST Starguider (£47) to my Tele Vue 8mm Ethos (£500+) a few years back and there was not much difference in performance apart from the massive field of view of the Ethos. The Morpheus are clearly very nice eyepieces though so I'm sure you won't be dissappointed at all. You can start saving for the rest of the series then It's so easy to spend more on eyepieces than the scope had cost !

I wonder how they find that out ???? I just have this picture of some guys in lab coats with clipboards saying to a nervous colleague "Ok, now go in there and annoy the bear while we make notes. After that you can try it on the grizzly"

Thats true Dave. The only plastic things are the dust caps and the azimuth slow motion knob. Years ago I removed a plastic baffle from behind the finder objective which reduced the effective aperture to about 10mm. So now I have 25mm of not very well corrected lens, but at least it has a little light more grasp.

Looking over the scope, the double drawtube arrangement (pictured below) has reminded me of my 1st light with this scope all those years ago. After sweet talking my fiancee over why I had bought the scope, I took it out for 1st light that evening only to find that I simply could not get the thing to focus on anything I had used a similar scope before (borrowed from a friend) so I knew that I should get sharp focus on the Moon and the stars as pinpoints rather than the disks that I was getting. I honestly thought that I had bought a "pig in a poke" and would have to either fake using the thing to keep my intended on side or, worse, admit that I had made a bad purchase and face the wrath Then I spotted the inner drawtube, slid it out a few inches and all of a sudden, things came into sharp focus. Phew !!!! - I was saved from embarrassment !!! I guess this was yesterdays equivalent of todays Skywatcher "both adapters in the focuser at once" problem which crops up quite often. Hoping for a view of Venus at least this evening but there are a lot of clouds about - even unboxing old scopes attracts them

While the step from the stock eyepieces to something like the BST Starguider or Celestron X-Cell LX is quite big in performance terms, the steps after that are quite a bit smaller, especially with a "slow" scope such as and SCT. Some eyepieces are eye wateringly expensive - there are some that top £1K each now. The Morpheus are "middle of the road" in cost terms but seem to perform as well as some that cost twice as much.

Well, its assembled. There is quite a bit of play in the fork alt-az mount but at least it does have slow motions on both axis. I've forgotten how small .965" accessories are ! The finder, while aligned with the scope OK, is poor. I want to try it initially with the original mount and eyepieces to re-capture my early views.

My other half has just reminded me that I bought the scope (used of course) when we were engaged and saving for a mortgage deposit. She thought I was nuts ! - 45 quid down the drain just when we needed to be prudent. If only she had realised then what the thing would lead to ...... That was 37 years ago so the scope was about 20 years old even then. I recall now that the last time that I actually used it was the transit of Venus in 2004. I projected the image of the Sun onto the screen provided with the scope and showed my kids and their friends as they went on their way to school that morning.

Found it quite easily

Inspired by Stu's threads on his smaller scopes, eg: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/353976-three-old-dames-two-doubles-and-one-full-moon/?tab=comments#comment-3854590 I've dug my first scope out of the loft with the intention of seeing if it can still be useful in some way. It is a 1960's vintage Tasco model 12TE-5 - a 60mm F/13.3 achromat refractor. The label on the focuser has the (T) logo and Japan so made by Towa perhaps ? I'm looking forward to getting this thing up and running. It must be 20+ years since I last looked through it. It's nearly as old as I am ! All the bits and pieces seem to be present. I've just got to remember how they fit together !

I think reports of what small, low cost scopes both old and new can do are very valuable, especially to encourage those with tight budgets or with similar scopes stuck in lofts that they can see some good stuff with them and enjoy astronomy I'm going to see if I can find my old 60mm Tasco now. I may be gone a while though ......

I could split Epsilon Lyrae with my old Tele Vue Ranger 70mm. I seem to recall that Izar was very "touch and go" though.

That "loosen the retaining ring and slap the cell all around it's edge" trick is really useful. The scope should be pointing upwards of course but it does help "settle" the objective elements and their spacing. Good thread this - lots of tips for having fun with smaller aperture low cost scopes. Given some TLC and knowing what to point the at, I reckon most scopes can produce some really pleasing results I really must get my old Tasco 60mm refractor out again and feed it some photons.

Here is how it works...... You asked a question in this thread and you got a helpful answer: So you now either "thank" or "like" michael8554's post (bottom right heart symbol in his post) in appreciation. When you post something helpful or interesting then other members may do the same for you. It's as simple as that

You make posts that people find interesting and helpful. There are no prizes. It is not a competition. Don't forget to "like" other peoples posts as well as I have just done with yours

With a 100mm scope, about 100x and upwards will do it. The stars in the 2 pairs are close together though so you need to look carefully to see that they are pairs of double stars. A larger aperture and the easier they are to split.

I've seen the Ring Nebula in scopes from 70mm and upwards. I struggled to see it when I had just a 60mm scope but that was a long time ago and I may well not have known what to look for. It is a small object at low power and easily overlooked. I have seen the Veil Nebula with a 70mm as well but I did need the help of a UHC filter and it was rather faint.

The brightness and extent of star resolution depends on the aperture of the scope. Globular clusters are one target that aperture makes a real difference with. Under a reasonably dark sky my 12 inch dob shows M13 pretty much like this at low power: And like this at 200x (my favourite view of these targets)

My thoughts as well Gerry

Hello and welcome to the forum. You might want to start your own thread with your questions. It's likely to get overlooked tagged onto the end of this old thread.

I would go for the BST Starguiders over the Hyperions in an F/5 newtonian. Here is the range: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bst-starguider-eyepieces.html

None for me. Just observing as and when I can I have all the gear I need (too much really)

Great report Stu ! It was not a DSO night at all here so, after Venus, I had a fine time with my favourite double stars and the Tak FC-100DL. Zeta Herculis included ! By the end of the session I could only see the brightest constellation stars so had little to navigate around by. Delta Cygni was my final stop - the dimmer secondary was only just visible because of cloud obscuration.

The 26mm in that range is the weakest I think. I would go for the 30mm instead.

Does this shed any more light on this topic (see what I did there 😞 https://www.telescope-optics.net/eyepiece1.htm