John

There is another clear patch passing over now but I've given up and bought the scope and mount inside now. Didn't really get a clear run at much tonight. Might pop out with binoculars later.

Great thread folks ! The 10mm BCO is a superb DSO eyepiece. I'm also glad that I'm not the only person not to be bowled over 100% by the Leica zoom. It's a great eyepiece, no doubt particularly for a zoom but didn't make me feel that I wanted to part with my XW and Ethos collection. Too many clouds about here to have a long enjoyable session unfortunately. Just a few doubles plus Venus with my 100mm refractor in short bursts between the cloud cover for me. better than nothing though I guess the comet is Panstarrs Mark - how was it tonight ?

Great stuff Baz !!!! I've been in and out several times tonight due to clouds blowing over and light rain. Bit frustrating but I did do some observing at least. Now you have seen E & F they will be that much easier the next time around, as long as the seeing is decent.

Cloud cover again and light rain. Scope back in greenhouse. Me back in house for coffee I was just starting to enjoy myself as well !

Quite nice just now so I have the 100mm Tak out. A big chunk of cloud came over about 30 mins ago and I thought that was the end of the fun but its cleared again now so I'm glad I kept the scope cool in the greenhouse

I'm getting E & F Trapezium intermittently with my Tak 100 refractor this evening. The Pentax XW 7mm (129x) is showing them more clearly than my shorter focal length eyepieces. E shows more often than F but now and then both pop into view together. Must be those little moments of steadier seeing

Good choice. 171x is medium to high power with your 200P. Room for a shorter focal length in your set as well but that can come in due course

I think this is being covered in your other thread on your eyepiece issue:

The closest focus distance of newtonians can be as much as 100 metres away. Racking the focuser right out and pulling the eyepiece partially out of the focus tube might enable you to reach focus. The instrument was designed to view objects a lot further away of course

These are excellent images - thanks for posting them

Same here - the nice weather earlier has been replaced by quite thick clouds now I was asking for trouble by starting this thread, wasn't I ?

I supposed to be helping with an outreach event on Thursday evening, which looks the best bet currently. The flooding in some parts of the country looks awful

"Clear Outside" is actually showing 3 nights this week with observing potential !!!!! Moon should be out of the way as well. Just got to remember how to use the scopes now ........

One thing to bear in mind is that the tolerance for collimation error is greater the slower the scope. For example, in an F/8 newtonian the so-called "sweet spot" for collimation is 11mm in diameter around the optical axis whereas for an F/5 it shrinks to just 2.8mm. The upshot of this is that fast newtonians need to be collimated that much more accurately if they are to be able to achieve their theoretical performance potential. More on this here: http://web.telia.com/~u41105032/kolli/kolli.html

I reckon you should be thinking about Vixen SLV's. They are really good planetary eyepieces and can be bought for less than £100 these days. Here is a review I did of them a while back - the 6mm was a wonderful planetary performer:

The EON 120 is an excellent refractor. Skywatcher used to carry the same scope under the Equinox label. Really good ED doublet objective lenses in these scopes.

Finding the right magnification is the key to getting E & F Trapezium. Not too little and not too much. Often I find that 150x - 200x is about right. I can see them regularly with my 120mm and 130mm refractors and sometimes with my 100mm / 102mm ones but not all the time with those.

The ES 92's are rather nice but also rather large and heavy !. The 17mm is the heaviest eyepiece that I currently own at 2.87 lbs / 1.3 kg:

I have a Skywatcher ED120 as well and can heartily recommend it. Mine is one of the older gold tube ones but optically it is really good. When I got my Takahashi FC-100DL and TMB/LZOS 130mm triplet I did wonder if the ED120 would be redundant but not a bit of it - it stands up very well to the much more expensive and exotic competition. Synta put a lot of care into the design and manufacture of the 120mm ED doublet objective and it shows in its performance in my view.

I'm interested in one of these (the £124 type rather than the £3K type !) for use with my 130mm triplet refractor. Does it eat up any focuser travel ? Thanks

The Eskimo Nebula in Gemini is a good example of an object which is worth observing both with and without a UHC or O-III filter. Without the filter, at 100x or more the central star of the planetary nebula is visible gleaming out from the centre of a small hazy disk. Add the filter and you often loose sight of the central star with small to medium aperture scopes but in return the layered structure of the nebulous disk becomes better defined and the nebulosity stands out better from the background sky. I'm still not quite sure that it ever looks much like an eskimo or a clowns face (its other name) but it is a fascinating object and, like so many of these things, repays careful examination at varying magnifications and with and without filters.

The Nirvana's are good eyepieces. The 16mm is not quite as good as the rest but still a pretty decent 82 degree eyepiece. Pity that there are not more of them in the range.

"I'm sorry Dave but I'm afraid that I can't do that"

As long as there is a check that says "Are you sure ?" if you say "Unclamp scope"

If it does not stipulate otherwise I would assume that the 110ED uses FPL-51 as the ED element. If FPL-53 is used they invariably tell you all about it ! I've not used one so I cant comment on how it handles CA.