John

Thats the same eyepiece as the APM XWA 20mm isn't it Gerry ?

I think this is fun - go as the solar system !: My other half went to a party dressed as Halleys Comet - you can guess how long ago that was !

Welcome to the Stargazers Lounge forum. Is your query actually related to astronomy equipment ?

Hi and welcome to the forum. I owned the very similar Meade AR152 /1200 some time ago. It is a pretty substantial scope and for visual observing I felt that at least an HEQ5 mount was required. For imaging you really are going to need something like an EQ6. This is the challenge with these big achromat refractors - mounting steadily them will cost more than the scope did by some margin !

Telescopes with very high optical quality seem to support high magnifications while maintaining good image quality. Although the maths still apply these scopes with premium optics do seem to be able to "bend the rules" surprisingly often.

I'm not sure about it either come to think about it. It's probably a bit beyond the scope of the question asked by the original poster anyway

I have the ES 17 92 and until recently the ES 12 92. They are great eyepieces for sure. I didn't get on with the eye relief of the 12mm so that has moved on now. I still have the 17mm, for now. They are the best that ES has produced in my view but they don't actually better the Ethos apart from eye relief as far as I can see. There is always something a touch better than you and I have somewhere out there or about to be launched. Usually the cost is very high and availability very low and the actual differences in performance subtle nuances or ergonomic preferences. Also, eyepiece choice is very personal so finding 100% concensus on "the best" just does not happen in my experience

I think often we see the Encke Minima rather than the Encke Division.

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