John

I've grabbed the opportunity to have a look at Jupiter before supper. The seeing seems pretty good and my little Vixen 102 is showing very nice belt detail and the great red spot as starts it's traverse across Jupiter's disk this evening. Unusually for Jupiter from here, even 200x is showing good contrast in the jovian cloud tops. Lots of clouds lurking though so I have to be ready to pop the scope under cover quickly but it is nice to be seeing something celestial again 🙂

That sounds right. The 60mm and 80mm's are very niche eyepieces !

The original Ultimas, Orion Ultrascopics and Parks Gold Series are highly favoured but some members here too as I recall. I believe they were made by Masuyama in Japan.

Things are looking more optimistic from Friday onwards here when colder but, hopefully, clearer weather arrives 🙂🤞 I got some naked eye glimpses of Orion and Jupiter last night but those were in gaps in the scudding clouds and heavy showers.

Not me I'm afraid Steve - I've owned the Ultima's up to 35mm FL but none of the "big boys" 🙂

Celestron used to market the Japanese made Ultima eyepieces in long focal lengths. This was a 5 element modified plossl design I think. Here are the 45mm, 60mm and 80mm from that range, all in the 2 inch fitting:

Two nails hit very firmly on the head there Steve Hopefully the variety of approaches shared in this thread will help folks new to observing find a way that works for them 🙂

I use RACI optical finders with my refractors and a similar finder plus an illuminated reticule finder with dobsonians. I generally use a combination of Stellarium and / or printed star charts to locate targets where I either don't know, or can't recall, the precise location. Sometimes a low power, wide field, eyepiece in the scope is used for the final stages of hopping with particularly faint or obscure targets. I often work out my own "star hop" pathways for more obscure targets. Generally these involve visualising the location of a target relative to readily visible stars. Unofficial asterisms (eg: triangles, rhomboids etc) help with this as does thinking along the lines of "2/3rds of the way between star A and star B, and down a little", that sort of thing. Certain parts of the sky are much better for me because of rather cluttered horizons and some large conifers bordering our property so I often have to be patient to allow a prospective target to rise into the clear area of sky. I know the position of a decent range of targets by heart now. As the seasons pass though I do sometimes need to refresh my memory for the initial viewing of a target that season. I can find my way around the principle constellations / brighter stars of each season now which helps with star hopping and observing planning. My target location improved a lot with the acquisition many years back of the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas which I found that worked well with my finders. During the months that followed the arrival of that little publication, my DSO hauls increased markedly 🙂 I always try and end a session on an "easy find" rather than a frustrating and fruitless search. That way, my motivation to observe again ASAP stays strong.

A barlow does extend eye relief. The amount depends on the focal length of the barlow lens I believe. The focal point will usually change as well. Not sure about the shape of the exit pupil plane 🤔

I've owned a Vixen "silvertop" 2 inch 50mm plossl in the past. It's performance was decent but the eye relief was long so I needed to "hover" my eye well above the top of the eyepiece, not something that I'm fond of doing. The AFoV of that one was stated as 50 degrees but it may have been a degree or two less in reality. I used this one with a C8 SCT I had at that time. I think I decided that I liked the views that 40mm SWA eyepieces produced better (darker background sky ?) and they showed the same amount of true field.

Although Saturn is very beautiful, I find Jupiter a much more interesting target in terms of being able to see features changing from session to session and also as you actually observe. You never know quite what the giant planet will present to you 🙂

Mine is an early one as well. The APM would have been too bulky for me to consider as a travel eyepiece though. I saw it as a potential replacement for my Delos 14mm and Pentax XW 10mm within the 1.25 inch set that I use with my 100mm-130mm refractors and especially in the Tak.

What have you got against dobsonians ? I'm sure very few on here would advocate them as the answer to every astronomical need 🙂

I was thinking of the earlier posters 72mm F/6 refractor. Speaking for my requirements, while optically very good, I wanted to use the APM zoom with my Tak FC100-DL in which I use a Baader T2 Zeiss prism with a 1.25 inch adapter fitted (as I do with my 1.25 inch eyepiece set) but found that it needed more inwards focuser travel in that mode than I wanted to use. In 2 inch mode the APM zoom worked fine with my other scopes and the Tak of course, if I chose to put a 2 inch diagonal in it. I'm glad I was able to borrow the APM zoom to see what it is all about though 🙂 I had borrowed an Svbony 3-8mm zoom at the same time and that one ticked a few more boxes with me so I bought one of my own. Anyhow, lots of options have been explored in this thread - I hope that has been some help to those who are considering options 🙂

If you go for the APM zoom be prepared to use a 2 inch diagonal with your scope, if you don't already. The APM zoom is much better used in 2 inch mode because in 1.25 inch mode it needs a lot of inwards focuser travel to reach focus. More than many scopes have available. Otherwise, it is a good zoom option.

When I look back at astro equipment brochures / catalogues from the 1980's I realise a) how little choice there was back then and b) how high the prices were back then ! Today's situation means that more thought needs to go into buying decisions but we do have the likes of SGL and other forums to help in making these decisions. On balance, I think the situation is pretty good today 🙂

I bought a Tele Vue Planetary Filter a few years back, before they were discontinued. With the TV branding it was not inexpensive ! When I used it on Jupiter I found that it did slightly enhance the visibility of the more obvious jovian surface features however that seemed to come at the expense of making the more subtle features harder or impossible to pick up 🤔 Eventually I decided that I preferred the unfiltered view.

There is a Windows untility called Recuva which is surprisingly good at retrieving deleted files. I use the free version: Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free! (ccleaner.com) Off topic for a weather discussion thread though, but there you go 🙂

There are some quasars bright enough to observe without electronic assistance. I've seen the brightest, 3C 273, with my 100mm refractor and several more with larger apertures.

I have a travel scope similar to yours (70mm ED refractor F/420mm in my case). My main eyepieces for my regular scopes are Pentax XW, Delos, Panoptic, Nagler and Ethos but for travel (and outreach) I have the Baader 8-24 zoom, a Maxvision 20mm SWA for 3 degree+ true fields and the Svbony 3-8mm zoom for higher powers. These 3 are more readily packable and obviously less costly than the Tele Vue / Pentax options but still decent performers. The Svbony zoom gets used a lot in all my scopes in fact - a very useful, and useable, eyepiece 🙂

I've seen Mercury often with binoculars but from where I observe it is difficult to get a telescope on to it due to it's low altitude and plenty of obstacles around my horizons to get in the way. When I have observed it with a scope, seeing the tiny disk with a clear phase is a nice reward 🙂

Eyepieces are a very personal thing. I can't say that I have come across many (any ?) that I actually hated through. Some seem more natural to use than others and that is influenced by a whole range of factors such as observing preferences, scope type, glasses wearer or not, and even facial shape. The Delite is the one Tele Vue range that I have yet to experience so I can't speak for those. All the other ranges I have generally got on fine with (even the Radians) so I guess that I would probably like a Delite as well 🙂 I think you have to find out for yourself what floats your boat and what does not - thank goodness for the 2nd hand equipment market 👍 Also, I think tastes change with time / experience. I didn't really hit it off in the past with the Nagler zoom 3-6mm (despite trying 2 of them) but over the past few years I've grown very fond of the 2-4mm version of the same eyepiece. Go figure, as our US friends have a habit of saying 🙂

Lovely @Stu 🙂 There is little or nothing to rival a FeatherTouch. And I didn't used to be too fussy about focusers ! 🙄

Thanks for the warning. I don't think any of my current 1.25 inch eyepieces have such barrels but I'm sure to have used some that do have conical barrels in this adapter at some time over the 7+ years I've owned it. I don't recall any problems but I am be forewarned now and aware 🙂 It seems to me that practically all ways yet devised to hold an eyepiece into a focuser tube have some drawback or other. Or is there a perfect design that few know of ?

The Svbony 3-8mm zoom does need to be held slightly more firmly than some zooms though because the zoom action click stops are quite "hard". I wonder if that was why @JeremyS had the issue with his Baader Clickstop 🤔