John

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

On 14/09/2019 at 20:37, Timebandit said:

 

 

Go with quality in my opinion, and go second hand. Buy once, Buy well and Buy cheap☺(not always possible even second hand, but way cheaper than new).                                        For DSO then you can get away with 3 eyepiece's. But if like me you do lunar and planetary, then you do need more at the higher power mags. I go from 4mm up to 7mm in eyepiece's for lunar, planetary, as depending on seeing conditions I try and push power to the limit in 1mm jumps, but still needing a sharp viewing experience.

So I have ended up with second hand quality in Pentax XW ,second hand BGO and a few second hand TV. I have completed my eyepiece collection and not needed to or felt like I am missing out to purchase another for around 18month now. Nothing has tempted me. More than happy with my little collection☺🔭

 

 

 

 

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

On 17/09/2019 at 15:29, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

I used to have a TMB Paragon 40mm, and foolishly sold it.  Clones are now sold as TS Paragon or SkyWatcher Aero 40mm. Really excellent performance, and very comfortable. Quite light too. The LVW 42mm I have now is also good, but is a bit less comfortable and a bit more prone to kidney-beaning.

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.

19 hours ago, jetstream said:

Maybe thats why you didn't find the Leica zoom/VIP better than your Ethos!

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.