John

If you use the 2 adapters together these scopes definitely wont come to focus. It's a common mistake that is made by new owners because, in the past at least, the manual was not clear that the adapters should not be used together. The photos look OK to me but the focuser is still in its innermost position and sticking into the light path. Am I right in assuming that you have tried moving the focuser along its full range and it still will not come to any sort of sharp focus on the moon even when using the 25mm eyepiece ?

Well if there is anything wrong at least you will get a replacement. These scopes work really well normally. I've owned one and many other folks on this forum own or have owned one as well. Perhaps some pics looking down the scope tube from the top end, down the focusser tube with no eyepiece in it and of the bottom end of the scope where the primary mirror is would help diagnose what is amiss ?

Was the scope purchased new ?

To be brutally honest, there are very few Meade products, of any sort, that I rate. I have owned quite a few of their scopes, eyepieces etc over the years but they have rarely impressed me or stayed with me for long. One exception would be the 4000 series UWA eyepieces which were pretty decent Nagler copies. I believe the 5000 UWA's are good as well. The 4000 SWA's were way overpriced for their performance IMHO. The Japan made 16mm Meade 3000 was a very nice medium power plossl and the 40mm in that series was surprisingly nice as well. I have just one Meade product currently and that is a series 4000 1.25 inch UHC type filter which I use for outreach. Its quite a good budget UHC. Sorry Meade

As per the above illustration. Thats why I said that it looks OK - because it did ! The travel of the focuser drawtube (the tube that the eyepiece goes into) is around 50mm - 70mm. Try it around half way out on the Moon and it should be not too far out. It will need finer adjustment to get the moon sharp. Use the 25mm eyepiece while you find out how things work.

This is the screw that vlaiv is referring to:

PS: you might also be able to attach a finder shoe for Skywatcher type finders using that threaded hole. I've seen it done.

Can you try it out ? I had some of the old Japan made 4000 plossls bought new back in the late 1980's (£90 apiece !!!!) and they were nothing special I thought. I ended up returning the 6.4mm to BC&F because it was really quite poor with a soft field stop. I preferred the Meade 3000 series when they were made in Japan.

I think there is a screw in the body of the DDG focuser that you remove (it's a plastic blank) revealing a threaded hole which you can then attach a WO finder mount to. Like in these pics:

Looks OK to me. The scope won't focus on anything close to you. At least 100 metres away or more is the closest I seem to recall. I assume that you have used the focus wheels to move the eyepiece and the focuser tube further out than that picture shows ? The full range of movement of the focuser tube is around 50-70mm I think.

I find the 21st Century Moon Atlas by Charles wood and Maurice Collins very useful. As well as a guide to many lunar features the authors pose questions which get ones mind working and enhance the observing experience. I also use the Virtual Moon Atlas on my laptop and LunarMap HD on my mobile phone.

I was using 280x to observe Neptune with my ED120 refractor a few nights back at an outreach event. I wanted enough magnification to show a clear disk to the punters and it was appreciated. The undriven, alt-azimuth mount that I was using made tracking at this magnfication challenging but we managed and the speed with which Neptune scooted across the field of view prompted some good discussion about the rotation of the Earth Even at that power, Neptunes 2.5 arc second disk was very small indeed - definitely not "star like" though as all observers noted. And most thought it a pale blue colour as well, especially the younger observers. Though a large planet, Neptune is over 4 billion km away.

Most of the time planetary views will be better (ie: sharper and more contrasty) at magnifications somewhat lower than the theoretical maximium for your scope. For Jupiter you may well find that 130x - 150x gives the best views. For Saturn and Mars maybe 150x - 250x. Seeing conditions are the big leveller here plus the nature and needs of the target object, which vary. Even with my 12 inch scope I rarely use more than 350x and often much less on the planets. So you can try using as much magnification as you like but the planetary views, although larger in scale, will appear fuzzy and washed out.

I like the widest fields possible generally and also I like those fields to be well corrected right across. These have proved to be expensive preferences ! I have a set of hyper wide eyepieces that I used in 2 inch mode with my 12 inch dobsonian. I have another set of 1.25 inch eyepieces which tend to get used in my refractors and these are 68 -72 degree AFoV eyepieces plus a Nagler 2-4mm zoom, which has just a 50 degree field of course but is a potent little gem of an eyepiece. Ethos dominate the hyper-wide set (4 of those) and Pentax XW's the 1.25" set (4 of those as well). Overall I currently have 17 eyepieces with the Tele Vue brand making up over half of those. I also have a lower cost 30mm 2 inch wide field, a mid-range zoom and a barlow which I use as a travel / lightweight / outreach set. I'd like to try the new Tele Vue Apollo 11 sometime but I'm not going to fork out £1,000 plus to buy one ! I'd also like to try the 12.5mm Docter and Nikon Nav HW eyepieces but won't loose any sleep if that does not come about - I might like them too much I don't have any plossls or orthos currently.

True. The Docter 12.5mm is, according to some, a touch better than the 13mm Ethos as well. Slightly better eyepieces are out there, at a price.

Maybe the poster is planning ahead ? Scopes tend to come and go but a top quality eyepiece set can serve a lifetime

I agree with Louis suggestions. The plossls branded "Revelation" here in the UK are pretty good as well as being low cost. The Meade Adventurescope 80 is the same scope as the Skywatcher ST80 so any references to that you find on the web will also apply to the Meade version. Welcome to the forum by the way

A couple of other bits of reading on the topic of what makes an apochromat. Thomas Back (founded TMB Optical): http://www.csun.edu/~rprovin/tmb/definition.html Roland Christen (founded Astro Physics): http://www.csun.edu/~rprovin/roland/color.html

Most likely your latitude Les I am around 350 miles further south than you are I reckon, which helps. Sirius seems to get to around 22-23 degrees here.

With some additions / modifications I think the AZ100 could compete with the much more expensive TTS Panther mount.

Very interesting review Dave I too find it very difficult / impossible to see differences in performance between competant and premium diagonals while others report very clear (to them) differences. Maybe the giant planets will provide more obvious differences when they are better placed ?

Your english is great I had the 17mm Ethos for a while sometime back and while it is a great eyepiece, most often I found myself going straight from the 21mm to the 13mm so I sold the 17mm Ethos to a new home. I currently have an Explore Scientific 92 degree 17mm in that "gap" so it will be interesting to see how much use that gets. What is the focal ratio of your 10 inch newtonian ? If it is F/5 or faster a coma corrector may be a wise investment if you want to get the best out of these hyper wide eyepieces.

I don't often use a 40mm eyepiece either so the Aero ED 40 that I have does just fine for the £50 it cost me. Its actually a very nice eyepiece

Hi and welcome to the forum. Superb set but you will need something at the longer end. 21mm Ethos is fabulous but hugely expensive. Think about the APM XWA 20mm 100 degree as a somewhat less expensive but still excellent alternative. The set I use most often for my 12 inch F/5.3 dobsonian is: Ethos 21, 13, 8 and 6mm and the Pentax XW 5mm so very similar to the route you are going down. There are lots of other options as you know but after many years of trying eyepieces I have settled happily with the set above. Others have made different choices and are very happy as well of course

Much bigger, heavier and with a 92 degree field of view compared with the 72 degrees of the Delos. Optical performance is very similar. I've been comparing the ES 92's with my Ethos and Delos eyepieces. I didn't find the eye relief of the 12mm ES suited me so I've now sold that one. Still have the 17mm though. The ES 92's might not be quite as sharp to the edge in an F/4.7 scope as the Delos is though. My dob is F/5.3. We are talking very large eyepieces here: