John

I don't expect the Pan had enough eye relief for you ?

Funny how different eyes see things. I've had Ethos in 21, 13, 8 and 6 and Delos in 17.3 (your old one) for some time plus now the Delos 14 and really like them on a wide range of targets. I just don't see any edge (or centre !) issues with them in any of my scopes

Well done for finding one ! I had one for a while before moving to a 24mm Panoptic. The 22 LVW is very good though.

Your Lunt LS60 is a nice frac !

I agree very much that eyepiece preferences are a very personal thing. Once you get to a certain level of optical quality ergonomic issues tend to play a bigger part in whether or not you decide that it's a "keeper" or not. I found this with the Nagler 13mm Type 6 recently. This eyepiece used to be one of my all time favourites when I owned it a few years back. I recently acquired another one to fill a gap in my 1.25" set but I just didn't take to it this time around. I'm sure the quality is just as good as the earlier one I owned. I guess my preferences have changed subtly over the past 3 years or so Conversely I've owned Nagler 3-6 zooms at least twice before (maybe 3 times ?) and not held onto them for long but the Nagler 2-4 zoom that I have now, which is pretty much exactly the same to use, is now a highly used and an important part of my toolbox. I'm very comfortable with it. "Go figure ", as our US friends say

Great report Alan It was the loan of a Pentax XW 10mm from FLO that pursuaded me that my excellent Tele Vue Nagler T6's could be bested

I guess they could retire the Panoptic line and release a "Delos II" range starting at, say, 22mm which would be the largest possible in the 1.25" barrel I think, then have a couple of longer FL's in the 2" format. I'll mention it to Al Nagler when we next have lunch together ......

Many Tele Vue eyepieces are made in Taiwan, including the Ethos and Delos ranges. Hope 1st light with the eyepieces goes well.

Congratulations on the new arrivals. The Orion pics are the 1st "non stock" images that I've seen of one as far as I recall.

Yes it is Derek. Single speed but very nice to operate. I have the original helical focuser as well but the Feathertouch seems a lot better.

You are no help at all to the struggling occularholic Mark

Can't recall if I've posted these for a while. White Light and H-Alpha setups. SGL mug on seat !:

Ain't that the truth ! I have one empty eyepiece case at the moment - it's whispering "fill me, fill me" from the corner of the dining room.

Nice looking eyepiece - I'll look forward to hearing your views on it Nice Ripping Yarns DVD as well - I've not seen that series in ages - an idea for my Xmas list

Any improvements on these are i) going to be small at most and ii) going to come at some cost ! Thats an excellent set of eyepieces by any standards

Thanks Jules - looks a great setup Funny eyepiece you are using though ! (from a visual only person )

We need to stay off politics Louis, as I'm sure you know

I've bought a few items, including eyepieces, from the USA. The prices were good but once import duty and handling charges were added on the price was pretty much the same as it would have been within the EU. For hard to get items sometimes the only way to find them is to import from across the pond though because the US market is a lot larget than here. With the LVW's now out of production it will be interesting to see if they develop a "mystique" which presses their used prices upwards in the way it did (temporarily) when the Baader Genuine Orthos went out of production and as it has (permanently it seems ) for the 30mm and 40mm Pentax XW's. It's worth keeping a level head about these things - the LVW's are very nice eyepieces but there are equally nice alternatives around today, IMHO, and some a little better even. I reckon LVW's are good used buys for around the same price as a Tele Vue Radian but I'd not pay more than that for one.

Well here is my TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet out there right now. Wonderful lunar and binary star observing at 400x tonight !

Yes, you get what you pay for. It works OK but it's not a Baader T2 !

You could still post a pic - it might inspire you to look though it if the sky is clear !

Great to see the big Vixen again - used to be my dream scope following the Astronomy Now review way, way back Good to see the ED102 F/9 riding nicely on an AZ-4 as well. I'm still pondering on an AZ-4 as a lighter option to the Skytee II for the Tak FC-100DL

Nice Japanese glass The Vixen rep at the astro show last month confirmed to me that the LVW's are definitely out of production now so pick them up while you can ! I asked if they had a successor planned and he pointed to the SSW's but I had to point out that they did not really fill the same niche.

Hello and welcome to the forum. I can't help you on these issues but I've found a website which might be worth reading. It includes some of the maths involved in black holes: http://physicsforidiots.com/space/black-holes/

I've been doing a lot of reading on HA solar scopes recently and one thing that has really struck me is the variation in performance reported between individual units, of all brands and designs. I wonder, if you lined up half a dozen examples of the same scope model and viewed through each one under the same conditions, same magnification etc, etc, whether any of them would be exactly the same ?. Edit: It also occurs that maybe, if you repeated the excercise on another occasion the results would differ again ?