John

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

I had the Ethos 4.7 and 3.7 for quite a while and compared them extensively with the Pentax XW 5mm and 3.5mm. Much as I love the hyper wide field, I found that the XW's were just a little better in terms of sharpness (on and off axis) and light scatter control so eventually and with some twinges of the regret I let the Ethos SX's go to new homes. I suspect the results of a Delos - Ethos SX comparison might be very similar. I currently have the Delos 17.3 and 14mm as part of my 1.25 inch set and they are excellent. I chose them over the Pentax 20mm and 14mm XW's because I was not keen on the field curvature that those focal length XW's posess. I'm very happy with the 10, 7, 5 and 3.5mm XW's though.

For what it's worth, the eyepieces that I use with my Tak FC-100DL are: Panoptic 24mm, Delos 17.3mm and 14mm, Pentax XW 10, 7, 5 and 3.5mm and the Nagler 2-4mm zoom. I do also have Ethos in 21, 13, 8 and 6mm but most often I use the Tak in 1.25" mode (Baader T2 Zeiss diagonal) so the 1.25 inch set is used much more often. You can go round and round with eyepiece choices and I have over the years having tried loads. I've settled on the above now though and I stongly suspect that the eyepieces are better than my observing eye is !

Interesting report Dave but in all honesty it can be misleading to compare the performance of eyepieces that deliver greatly varying magnifications. The seeing conditions are likely to be responsible for more of the variations you see than the eyepiece from my experience. Hyperions are great in slow scopes such as the mak-cassegrain 127 (I assume your Skywatcher 127 is the mak-cassegrain) but show noticable astigmatism (elongated stars) in the outer parts of the field of view when the focal ratio of the scope drops much below around F/8-F/8 and thats when they get some stick from observers who use them in such scopes. Of the ones that I've owned and used, the shorter focal length Speers-WALERS seem to perform better generally than the longer ones. The Nirvanas are fine eyepieces and deliver very close to Tele Vue Nagler performance, especially in a scope like yours.

I've not used a Vixen HR but the reports I've read have left me with a similar conclusion to Timebandit - top tier planetary performers. If and when Vixen stop producing them I suspect they will become sought after in the same way that TMB Supermonocentrics, Astro Physic's SPLs and Pentx XOs now are.

If thats the case it undermines most of the eyepiece reviews that I've posted on here because I've used the 12 inch for most of them

I've just changed the post title to correct the date Gus

I clean my eyepiece lenses reasonably often using the Baader Wonder Fluid and their micro fibre cloth AFTER blowing off all loose debris with a manual hurricane blower. I've never seen damage like that to coatings before to be honest. I've owned and cleaned dozens of eyepieces including the Pentax XFs and XW's. The coatings on the Pentax eyepieces have always seemed immaculately applied and robust, at least for the cleaning method that I use. If there is a company who know about coating optical lenses, it's Pentax from my experience with their photographic products as well as their astronomical ones. If I had to guess I'd say that the marks photographed do look like small impact marks but I'd have to see the eyepiece itself to be sure.

Thats a good point. Specialist planetary observing kit is a long term investment currently I reckon My refractors have had some good views of Jupiter and Saturn but my 12 inch dob has not excelled on them at all this opposition. When they are higher in the sky it's a superb planetary scope.

I wondered if they simply restart the number sequence every 10 years eg: 8C = 2016, 9C = 2017, 10C = 2018, 1D = 2019 etc, etc. I'm not realy that bothered though - if you upgrade the focuser, which quite a few folks do, the serial plate stays with the old unit