John

I started out with a refractor smaller than those. I would have given my right arm for an 80mm ! My old (1960's) Tasco 60mm had good optics (Japanese) but a wobbly mount and poor eyepieces. It still showed me lots of things including a few of the brighter galaxies. More than enough to get me hooked on the hobby !. I still have it up in the loft.

This 2 inch 28mm 82 degree eyepiece has appeared on the TS (Germany) website: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p2757_TS-28mm-UWA-82--2--High-Perfomrance-Eyepiece.html Looks like the re-working of the Nirvana 82 degree 1.25" eyepieces has now extended to the 2 inch 28mm as well. I've used the older design (also used to be sold as the William Optics UWAN) and it was a very good 82 degree low power eyepiece. The drawback with the old design was a very wide dish shaped eye cup (face cup !) which took some getting used to. The revised eye cup and the taper to the top barrel section of this new design should prove easier to use I think. Price is good as well, for an eyepiece in this class. This is the old design when I tested it alongside my Nagler 31 and the Pentax XW 30: This is the new shape 28mm / 82 :

Low cost / wide angle / well corrected across the FoV in scopes faster than F/6 = pick any two. I've owned the Revelation / GSO super wides in 30mm, 42mm and 50mm. Fine in an F/10 but the star definition in the outer part of the field of view falls apart quickly when the scope focal ratio gets below F/8 or so. The 32mm Panaview is better and the 30mm Aero ED better again but still have some issues. Probably liveable with though.

Due to enthusiasm, I'm sure

I've observed a couple of quasars - the brightest is in Virgo so well placed at the moment. Here is a good piece on those: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/12-quasars-for-spring-evenings/ Just a tiny dim pinpoint of light but impressive when you know what it is !

Quote from the original post folks: "...I really don't want to go to all the faff and expense of getting another mount if I can avoid it?..." And now we are talking about £370 tripods ....... really ?????

Yes I saw that. I've learned a few things in my years in this hobby and one of them is to trust my feelings on equipment. I have given binoviewers enough tries over the last few years to know that they are not my "cup of tea". But at least I have tried them and more than once. Good luck to all those who find that they enjoy using them

I have seen the Horsehead Steve, after many, many tries. Here is my report when I did it: As you will gather from that, it was highly unspectacular and barely "there" at all but having repeated the observation a few times since then, I am confident that I have seen the thing. I was using the 24mm Panoptic which gives 66x and a true field in the 12 inch dob of around 1 degree. I was also using an Astronomik H-Beta filter. So your reckoning is about right I would say. Probably the toughest and least distinct thing that I've observed I reckon. It also needed the darkest and most transparent skies that I get from my back garden and lots of extended and maintained dark adaption of my eyes. Much more than I usually do. An observing hood would probably have helped here. As Jeremy Perez puts it on his excellent website (linked to above): ".....it's like trying to see a little bit of nothing with a little bit of less than nothing resting over it...." Good luck with the Horsey

I'm no imager but I can vouch for the LZOS optical quality from a visual point of view - I have a LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor which has really superb optics.

A very decent scope ! If you are looking to part with it, please post the details, photos and asking price on the SGL classifieds section: https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/217-for-sale-swap/ There are some notes in that section on how to advertise things. Thanks

Mine is branded Astro Engineering but I think this is more or less the same thing: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dew-prevention/astrozap-light-shield-for-dobsonian.html Where I mostly observe from, up until 11:00 pm or so, I do have lights going on and off and I found that shielding the upper end of the tube kept stray light off the secondary mirror and the end of the focuser tube - makes quite an improvement in contrast when deep sky observing. When I take the scope to to darker surroundings I don't use it. Some folks use an all round light shield which are effective as well. My light issues tend to come from the same direction though hence the partial shield. I can slide it around the tube if needed and it pops on and off easily (velco strap).

You will need to use a diagonal I think and quite possibly a 2 inch one as Louis suggests above.

I used to have an Intes MN61. I owned it alongside the Skywatcher ED120 for quite a few months and compared them often. Very, very close in performance I felt. Eventually it was the cool down time and the need for a pretty stout mount that led me to part with the MN61. I could see that a good 6 inch mak-cassegrain might achieve similar performance but I'm not so sure about a 6 inch SCT

The Skywatcher 130M has a focal ratio of F/6.9 so is not particularly demanding with regards to collimation. If it gets a bump sometime it will need to be checked and possibly adjusted. The cheshire eyepiece is a good tool for that task: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/other-collimation-tools/astro-essentials-cheshire-collimating-eyepiece.html I suspect the 130M will be pretty good "out of the box" though.

I've read that from Don a few times since I last tried them. It would seem odd to me for a brand like Vixen to overlook something like a shiny internal spacer in what was intended to be a high quality eyepiece but I do have respect for Don's views so I'm sure that he did see this in the examples he has tried. Maybe there is, or has been, some variation in the production runs ?

They used to say that Celestron wanted to drop the C5's for a long time because there was little or no profit in them - their manufacturing costs were about the same as the C8 but they could not charge as much for them. They kept them going because NASA used them in the Shuttle and the ISS apparently.

I could not see such reflections when I tested the SLV's Michael but Don Pensack (who posts here from time to time and has a lot of experience) has mentioned them quite often I felt that the ones I used were really nice eyepieces. The 6mm in particular I compared at some length to the 6mm Baader Genuine Ortho and found the performance very closely matched, which is high praise for the more complex SLV. I like to think that I would have noticed stray light or reflection within the SLV during those comparisons. Maybe there are a couple of different runs out there ?

I used to use one (same make as Stu's) with my 12 inch dob. It worked well but I found it bulky to store and it raised the height of the eyepiece by just a bit too much. I'm back to being a "nudger" again now !.

The blue / grey part is an equatorial platform. A simple but effective way to drive a dob while observing.

I'm trying to find about a bit more about the requirements here

Hi and welcome to the forum ! We need to know a little more to make some suggestions eg: - Approx budget that you have - Would the moon and planets be of more interest than deep sky objects or are you interested in all that is "up there" ? - Are you interested in just observing or imaging or both ? - Are you prepared to find your own targets in the sky or would you like the scope to do that for you (ie: a "GOTO" scope) ? - Do you need to carry the scope far, eg: up and down stairs, out to the car (when we can do that again) etc, etc. - How much room do you have to store the scope in when it is not being used. Scopes come in all shapes, sizes, costs etc so the above helps to narrow things down. Thanks

Well done ! I didn't realise that the Telementor used a cemented doublet. Easier than messing around with 2 elements, spacers etc !

How does the 00 8" F/8 compare with the Mewlon 210 Stu ? Or is the jury still out on that ?

I always liked that scope John I think Helen has it now ?