John

Nice shot Stu The Triesnecker Rilles are looking superb tonight with the 130 triplet. A real "cats cradle" at 375x. Not forecast clear skies either ! Glad I put the scope out for the photo session earlier.

Its clear here currently - against the forecast as well ! Hope you have something similar Jeremy. The Moon and Venus look superb with my 130m triplet just now.

The advice we have had when visiting the USA is that American Express is the one card that they prefer us not to use !

Wow ! I feel the 24mm Panoptic is one of the best 1.25 eyepieces out there. I didn't think that much of the Hyperion 24 at all when I tried one for a while. For me both the 24mm ES 68 and the Maxview 24 / 68 were better corrected and the 24 Panoptic a touch better again. I also saw quite a lot of field edge distortion at F/6.5 and slower with all the Hyperions - too much for my taste. Shows how personal these things can be. You've got to try these things for yourself I think - our preferences are all so different I'm beginning to think thats the only way to find what works for you. Read 10 reports and you could have 10 different results !

....... Approximately .......

And there's more:

Some more:

More gratuitous posting of a refractor during lockdown I'm afraid TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet #20 made in 2006 by APM in Germany on the T-Rex Alt-Azimuth mount. Both quite rare items and they make a great match

For outreach they use a Meade 55mm plossl in the Alvan Clarke 24 inch refractor at the Lowell Observatory. It gives 178x in that scope, apparently:

Superb scope Jeremy - congratulations

I used to use some of the (V) (Vixen) .965 inch eyepieces engraved "Or." They worked rather well. I took two apart to clean them and found that the optical design consisted of 2 doublets rather like a plossl or symmetrical rather than the triplet plus singlet arrangement of the abbe ortho. The Vixen ones still worked nicely though.

Here are the 3 sizes for comparison. As the photo says, the .965 inch ones are not available new now, as far as I'm aware:

I don't think the fixed focal length Hyperions are better than the zoom apart from their field of view and a bit more eye relief. In your F/5 200mm scope the fixed length Hyperions will show more astigmatism in the outer parts of the field of view than the zoom does as well. The Morpheus may well be a step up though.

Star testing can provide some helpful information but for it to be really useful I think it needs to be done under good seeing conditions, with the scope fully cooled, at high magnifications, and with knowledge of how to interpret the results. This seems a helpful piece: https://popastro.com/documents/PA_jan-mar2009_p12-13_telescopetopics_startesting.pdf

As I suspect you are constrained in a similar way to many of us currently to observing at home, I would suggest concentrating for now on classes of deep sky objects that are least affected by light pollution such as globular and open clusters and the brighter planetary nebulae. Some of the brighter galaxies might also be available but many, and especially the face on ones, will be very hard to make anything of. Multiple stars and asterisms count as DSO's as well I think. When travel becomes possible then you can seek out darker skies and expand your DSO repertoire.

Here is my report of that Baz: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/304416-barnard-33-the-horsehead-nebula-at-last/ I would say that its more of a "right" magnification target to get an effective exit pupil that maxmimises the impact of the H-Beta filter (which is also a highly desireable tool for this task). Even when all these things and the observing conditions fall right I've found it probably the most challenging target that I've managed to see from home. It took me a few years to manage to see it as I've mentioned in the report.

If you really intend to stick to the moon and planets then the additional aperture might not make a lot of difference. The XT6 is an F/8 newtonian which is a really nice spec for a lunar and planetary scope. If you were to branch out into a wider variety of targets then the additional aperture, especially of the 10 inch will prove beneficial - there is no substitute for additional light grasp when it comes to deep sky observing.

Once you have the eye cup in the correct position for you, the Delos eyepieces are easy and comfortable to use. Similarly the Pentax XW's. The Nagler 5mm is an excellent eyepiece with a wider field of view than the Morpheus or the Delos but it's eye relief is just 12mm which some find tight. My personal favourite moon eyepiece when using my 12 inch dobsonian is the 5mm Pentax XW. I would think that the 4.5mm Delos would be very similar. I used to have all the Nagler T6's including the 5mm and liked them but I liked the Pentax XW's even more, I was surprised to find. If I was buying today I would strongly consider the Morpheus 4.5mm as well. Perhaps you need to give your 9mm Morpheus a bit more time ?

I've heard that the TAL2 eq is a very sturdy mount as well. I was on the look out for one a while back but nothing showed up. It's a classic I reckon

I finally managed to spot it with my 12 inch scope a while back. No "horse head" shape I'm afraid - just the vaguest slightly darker "bite" out of another very faint strip of nebulosity.

The Horsehead is just underneath Alnitak. And darn hard to see I might add !!!:

My Berlebach Uni 28 is HEQ5 so the T-Rex will not fit unless I modify it as @johninderby has with his. The 2 inch steel tripod that came with the T-Rex is pretty tall and sturdy. Despite being listed by Astrograph the T-Rex went out of production with the passing of the gentleman who designed and built it in Japan. If you add up the cost of the AZ100 it comes to something similar to the T-Rex but it is also superb (having tried a couple of the early ones) and is actually available of course.

The T-Rex would do a fine job but they are as rare as hens teeth. I used an early EQ6 with my 6 inc F/12 but that was a bit overwhelmed by it. It would have been OK with a 4 inch F/15 I would think though.

You certainly don't need a case full of Tele Vue, Pentax, Zeiss, Nikon etc eyepieces to get some fantastic views in astronomy

It does look much better but you can have a surprising amount of crud on your mirror without it making much difference to what you see.