John

Then you may need to use an extension tube to get eyepieces to focus with the scope. Astro cameras often have to be closer to the tube wall (and therefore the main mirror) than eyepieces do.

I have a Baader T2 Zeiss prism and it's a great performer but so are my Tele Vue and Astro Physics mirror diagonals

The 130mm F/9.2 is a triplet (LZOS objective) and it is not far off the weight and length of a 6 inch F/8 frac to be honest. To get a 6 inch with comparable performance would cost me much more than I can afford just for the OTA and then I'd need to spend another £1K or so on a mount hat could really do it justice. The Altair 150 EDF is a very interesting entry into this niche though, no doubt about it.

Hopefully priced somewhere between the Skytee II / Ercole and the £1K plus items I mentioned earlier ?

I had an Altair Sabre Mk2 for a while. It was OK to use and looked good but I felt that both the Ercole and the Skytee II did a better job with my ED120 refractor in terms of both smoothness of motions and high magnification vibration dampening. I tried a 6 inch F/8 refractor on the Sabre and it was rather overwhelmed. Very interested to hear what FLO might be thinking of

I still think there is a niche for a heavy duty alt-az mount somewhere between the Skytee II / Ercole and the top end ones such as the APM Maxload / T-Rex / DM6 etc.

The astro prisms discussed here deliver an image with the same orientation as a mirror diagonal. There are prism diagonals that give "correct" image and the lower cost versions of those are not great for astro use. I believe that there are some higher end correct image diagonals available now though. I use one of the Baader T2 Zeiss prisms with one of my refractors and its excellent.

The 3-6 and 2-4 Nagler zooms have pretty much identical optical performance. Apart from the focal lengths the only difference is that the 2-4 has click stops at half mm intervals wheras the 3-6 has them at 1mm. You can position the zooms anywhere along their range though. As I understand it, the Tak FC-100DL was made in two production runs each comprising 100 instruments. My scope was the last UK one of the 1st run available. I did wonder if Tak would do a 3rd run but with the launch of the F/8 FC-100DZ I think we won't see any more DL's made. Congratulations on your Vixen FL102 - it's a scope that I dreamed of owning for many years

I was observing with a Lunt 100 at 8,000 feet altitude recently in the USA and found precious little detail to see on the solar disk. There were one or two small prominences and that was it. I was quite pleased that it was not my £7K plus scope given the amount of detail visible

I'm on my 3rd Ercole. It took me a while to work out how to get the best from them ! I also have a Skytee II and while it's build and finish are not near the Giro Ercole standards it does hold my longest and heaviest refractor more steadily than the Ercole does.

I've just seen this thread - great write up of a superb 4 inch refractor

Another big fan of alt-az mounts here and, after a few false starts, the Giro Ercole as well

I use my Nagler zoom 2-4mm very often with my Tak 100mm F/9, much more often than I thought I would. I'm lucky to also have Pentax XW's at 5mm and 3.5mm as well though. The instantly variable focal length is a very strong asset to have at high power.

Interesting that they are using FPL-53 element on this one and at around the price (or a touch less) that APM use FPL-51. Having owned and used a few 6 inch refractors over the years I'm happy to stick at 120mm and 130mm as my largest refractors now. I'll go for other scope designs for apertures greater than that. £2.5K gives an interesting range of other options.

I got Triton list night with my 12 inch dob. Using high powers seems to help - I was at 450x. Triton was clear with direct vision last night. I have seen it with my 130mm refractor as well.

It reminds me of the 1980's Vixen Custom 80M F/10 which was sold on the Vixen Custom D alt-az mount:

This scope has been discussed at some length on another forum: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/612877-information-on-starbase-80-achromatic-takahashish/ and https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/675967-takahashi-starbase-80-anyone-have-one/#entry9632264 It seems that it's not made by Takahashi but it is made in Japan. The Japanese website linked to in the 2nd of above threads states "....not a Takahashi product"

Glad you got at least traces of the Veil with the UHC. An O-III is noticably more effective on this target so, when you can, worth picking one up. The Castell brand is not too expensive and works well I believe.

I got it earlier this evening with my 12 inch dob but its visible in the 50mm finder. You need quite a bit of magnification to see that it is a disk rather than an point of light - 150x or more ? Tonight it is close to Phi Aquarius. At 450x I could see Neptunes largest and brightest moon, Triton as well. As long as you can find Phi Aquarius, finding Neptune should be relatively straightforward.

I just about managed to spot Comet C/2018 W2 tonight with my 12 inch dob and the 8mm Ethos eyepiece. Moonlight was hampering things and washing it out. NGC 404 looked somewhat brighter to me. Cartes du Ciel has the position pretty much spot on currently:

Great photos and lovely scopes LZOS objectives are truly superb from my experience with my 130mm F/9.2 triplet.

It's worth remembering that the Delos (and the later Delite) were developed on the back of the work that went into the Ethos so the performance of these 3 ranges has a lot in common apart from the apparent field of view and eye relief. The Pentax XW's have been around for a long while and replaced the also excellent Pentax XL's. To some extent Pentax were beating Tele Vue in the 68-82 something degree field niche until Tele Vue launched the Delos. From my experience the Delos and XW's are very, very similar in optical performance and overall quality. It's worth bearing in mind that the 17.3 and 14mm Delos are not par-focal with the other Delos focal lengths by around 8mm but they are close to the XW's which is one of the reasons that I use those focal length Delos to compliment my shorter focal length XW's. Another "quite interesting" factoid is that the 6mm and 8mm Delos are actually a touch heavier than the Ethos of the same focal lengths. Good luck with your seach for a nice used 3.5 Delos

I'm a bit late to this but I do agree with the above post from Timebandit after many years of trying different eyepieces and reviewing some of them for this forum

Bit late to this but I agree re the Paragon. I don't use 40mm 2 inch eyepieces that much so went for a 40mm Aero ED clone (which I believe is the same optically as the Paragon) and have been very pleasantly surprised but it's performance even in my F/5.3 12 inch dob. By far the best focal length in this series IMHO. By the way, I paid £50 for my mint Aero ED clone which makes you think when the Panoptic 41 costs £400+ and the Vixen 42mm LVW at £240. FWIW I'm not sure what the AFoV of the Vixen actually is - there has been some confusion on this.

I agree with the above comments re: the TV Everbrite diagonals (I have 3 of them). If you get a chance to get an Astro Physics Maxbright I might prefer to go for that but otherwise it's difficult to fault the Everbrites. I have also compared these (including the Astro Physics) to my Baader T2 Zeiss prism diagonal but stuggle to see any obvious differences in the views. The little Baader T2 prism seems to suit my Tak FC-100DL rather well though so thats the scope it serves in