John

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.

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'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 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

My DL serial number begins 8C which apparently means 2016.

Thats an interesting point. There are a few eyepieces out there that offer slightly better performance than the Tele Vue equivalents in some aspects but they tend to cost more than the Tele Vues. I spent quite a lot a while back on the Leica ASPH zoom and a Baader VIP barlow plus some extenders and other adapters to get a flexible setup. I thought that these investments would mean that I would soon be selling off my Tele Vue and Pentax eyepieces and contentedly living with a superlative zoom based set but, for me at least, the Leica ASPH zoom + VIP barlow combination, while very good indeed, was not really a revelation. While very sharp centre field, I found it's edge correction not quite up to Tele Vue standards with my F/5.3 dobsonian and that matters a lot to me. I also saw some ghosting and scatter from brighter targets that I felt should not be there in such a high end optical system. After a few months of trying to get to love this expensive zoom, I got a bit frustrated with it and decided to sell it on. My Tele Vue and Pentax eyepieces are still with me. Your mileage may vary though - I may be one of the only amateur astronomers who has not been bowled over by the Leica ASPH zoom I do understand your situation regarding the scope. For ages I used a relatively modest couple of scopes but stuck with building a top quality set of Tele Vue and Pentax eyepieces to use with them. I could have bought a much larger aperture scope and used less expensive eyepieces with that but at that time I was constrained on scopes but not so much on eyepieces.

Well done for decoding the Tak serial number. It took me quite a while to work out how the year code worked with mine. I guess with a new design 2019 was likely to be the answer ! I wonder what the total production run of the DZ will be ?

Very impressive collimation tools Piero and a very exacting approach to getting things spot on Makes me a little embarrassed with my cheap plastic cheshire approach

Another thing thats worth keeping in mind is that it is well worth re-visiting these targets quite often and spending a little time studying them. As you become more familliar with them you start to notice details that were not initially seen. With the Dumbell Nebula, using some magnification (but no filter) to boost it's scale in the eyepiece can enable the 12th magnitude central star to pop into view plus some other foreground stars across the surface of the nebula. With the Ring Nebula you start to see the uneven brightness and twisted appearance around it's rim. There is a small galaxy (NGC 6207) that can be seen in the same low power field of view as Messier 13 if you look carefully enough. The bright gas and dust clouds around the Trapezium in the Orion Nebula can show a mottled texture and is known as the "Hygenian Region" and other features such as the dark "fishes mouth" and "the cliff" can be picked out with care around the heart of M42. There are many other such examples. These familliar objects all have these secret details that they don't give up too easily

Very, very nice Thanks for posting the photos - these are the 1st non-stock pics that I've seen of one. As the owner of a Tak FC-100DL, I'm very much looking forward to reading your performence reports on this scope

Sorry that I missed your question Stu. I don't know the answer to be honest with you. While my NELM is rarely better than 5.5 near the zenith, I do seem to get quite good transparency sometimes and seem to do quite well on deep sky targets that are reasonably high above the horizons. My garden is around 300 feet above sea level, not particularly high bit that might help a bit. We do get contrails but the aircraft are generally still quite high and the trails seem to dissipate quickly. Bristol is around 12 miles NE of me and Newport and Cardiff around 30 and 40 miles away to the NW. Those cities do put up quite a bit of LP so there is not much point in observing things below around 45 degrees in those directions.

A good O-III filter is more effective on this target but a good UHC will show it. It was a UHC that first showed me the Veil Nebula many moons ago - that was when my main scope was a 100mm ED refractor. So, yes an O-III for the best results but worth a go with the UHC in the meantime.

At F/4.8 the 21mm Ethos is very, very good. At F/5.3 it is very, very, very good. The exchange rate is therefore: .5 wave = one very. Hope that helps I have referenced the telescope-optics website many times but rarely understand more than a few % of what I read on there. I'm a bear of little brain when it comes to maths !

.3 ! Really though, I don't have a reference point either I'm afraid, I just tend to regard newtonians with focal ratios of F/5 and lower as pretty fast scopes that place more demands on eyepiece correction.

No. The ES that I've used and owned were the 24mm 68 degree and the 20mm 100 degree. They were both very nice eyepieces. I've read enough reports on the 82 degree ES eyepieces to realise that you get 90% or even 95% of the performance of a Nagler in scopes down to F/5. Below that I rekcon the Naglers will be better corrected at the edges of the field of view but the ES 82's will still be doing a good job.

I'm very lucky that I have both. I thought that I might not need the 31mm Nagler once I got the Ethos 21 but I've found that I use it enough to hang onto it. With my 12 inch dob the 21mm Ethos gets a lot more "air time" because the higher magnfication and smaller exit pupil are more beneficial when observing faint fuzzies from my moderately light polluted garden.

I can understand why you might want to avoid 2 inch eyepieces so I wont bore you with just how wonderful the Veil looks with them, especially with the 21mm Ethos

I had the ES 24m 68 and it was very nice. I did eventually move to the 24mm Panoptic though, which IMHO is slightly better optically, is more compact and is just a wonderful little eyepiece . Was it worth the additional £'s ???. Well to me, yes but then I'm easily pursuaded when it comes to Tele Vue. If you have OCD getting involved with Tele Vue can be a very expensive past time though

Hope you had some good views Alex

Glad you got some observing in too Mark. I found the transparency reasonably good here until about 1:00 am when a bank of fog rolled up the River Severn and suddenly all I could see were the brightest stars then a few minutes later, nothing. @jock1958: perhaps you were getting some of the foggy stuff a bit earlier than I did ?

A decent night tonight without a moon. Naked eye limit around mag 5 towards the zenith. Milky way visible faintly through Cygnus and the Andromeda Galaxy just about naked eye visible with a little averted vision. Not the best I get here but not too shabby either. I've been giving my favourite deep sky object, the Veil Nebula, some scrutiny tonight with the help of my 12 inch dobsonian and trusty Lumicon O-III filter. The 21mm Ethos and 31mm Nagler eyepieces show big enough chunks of sky to take in large segments of this complex network of related nebulosity, but not the whole thing of course. To get much out of the Veil Nebula a narrowband (ie: UHC) or even better a line (ie: O-III) filter is required it has to be said. The main segments of the Eastern and Western Veil and Pickerings Triangular Wisp are bright, extensive and well defined tonight. As my eye becomes more fully dark adapted fainter elements have become visible giving 5 NGC objects in total and a few other bits and pieces too. On an even darker and more transparent night I think I could go deeper still but pulling out what I have of this marvellous object has been very satisfying I've marked this chart of the Veil Nebula with my definite sightings so far. Yellow ovals are the easy portions, green ovals are objects that took a little more time to tease out. I have also had fleeting glimpses of other ill-defined patches as well but I've just recorded the stuff I'm sure of currently. My view through the newtonian is inverted with east and west reversed of course. The chart is the normal orientation view that our eyes see. To give an idea of the scale, the chart covers an area about 3.5 degrees by 3.5 degrees. With the 31mm Nagler I can get in the whole of the NCG 6992 / 6995 / IC 1340 segment in the field of view. With the 21mm Ethos it's a touch less. This really is such a complex and rich object - you can easily spend a whole session exploring it (I've spent over 2 hours on it myself this evening). Here are some links to articles which help delve deeper into the Veil Nebula: https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/explore-veil-nebula/ https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/beyond-the-familiar-veil/ https://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/Dissecting the Veil Nebula.html