John

Ah, the Vixen .965" orthos ! - I had some of those with my old Vixen SP102M. The ZJ ones are very nice too !

I had galaxy hunting sessions a couple of years back where a 32mm TV plossl was the only eyepiece I used all night long. I was using an eyecup extender though which makes a lot of differing to the ease of eye positioning with this particular eyepiece. FWIW all the Ethos eyepieces have 7mm less eyerelief than the 32mm plossl - the 15mm that the Ethos have can make it difficult for those wearing glasses when observing to see the full field of view but that is a slightly different issue I think.

I'm not expecting much difference between the ES 24 / 68 and the Maxvision 24 / 68 to be honest. I sold the latter thinking it would not be needed and then rather quickly found that I missed having that focal length / FoV in the 1.25" size !

Lovely Tak What tube rings are you using ?. I'm using the Tak clamshell with my 100DL but I might fancy a change to rings at some point.

What a nice selection Dave There's a lot of glass in that Morpheus eye lens ! I'm glad you like the 24mm ES 68 - I've just ordered one. Amazingly it will be just the 2nd ES eyepiece that I've ever owned.

I've been using a 30mm Takahashi LE lately which seems a very nice 1.25" low power eyepiece. Similar in performance to the 32mm TV plossl I'd say. Even more costly to buy new though

I agree with the views above. The TV 32PL is excellent WITH the eye guard extension but that pushes the price up even further It's one design where TV should have recessed the eye lens a bit to ensure that the rubber eyecup was long enough to correspond with the eye relief.

I used my newly acquired 17.3mm Delos at a public outreach star party a few nights ago. The scope was my 12" F/5.3 dob and the 17.3mm was perfect for showing off objects such as M13, M57, M27 etc. Although it would not fit much of M31 into the FoV the portion that was on show plus M32 nearby was spectacular. People seemed to find the combination of long eye relief, a large eye lens and the soft eyecup easy to use and the very sharp field drew many wows and other exclamations

I don't think it does ever stop completely but the pace of change ebbs and flows over time ! I wonder if TV plan any more focal lengths in the Delite range ?. They certainly get wonderful reviews every time I read about them. Thats the trouble with the www - it's so easy to find lots of reports and chatter about various bits of kit, it's hard not to have your head turned even when the stuff you have got is doing a perfectly good job

For what it's worth, I've read reports on another forum that the 3.5mm and 5mm XW's have now ceased production. They don't appear now on the Ricoh / Pentax UK website: http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.uk/en/eyepieces.html

Great result from the 14 XW Mike

Thanks Piero. The bigger case is 45cm x 32cm (external) and the smaller one 33cm x 27cm. They are the ones that come with the pluck foam fitted.

I do approve Steve (FLO) was pursuading me to try XW's years ago but it took me a while to come around to them. Once I did (Steve loaned me the 10mm) I could see what he was talking about - they ousted my much loved Nagler T6's (although the latter are excellent too) ! I use the 3.5mm in my refractors more than in my 12" dob but it does occasionally get some use in the big scope when the target / seeing will support 454x ! I find it and the 5mm XW fantastic lunar eyepieces and they seem to show details that other eyepieces just hint at.

Thanks On the XW v's Ethos thing, I've compared them quite a bit around the focal lengths that I have XW's in and it's really difficult to find much between them, apart from the much larger FoV of the Ethos and the longer eye relief of the XW. I really like them both ! I tend to prefer to use the 1.25" set with my refractors and the ultra / hyper wides with my 12" dob. I don't have any orthos at the present time but I'd not rule out picking up a few again if the right opportunity presents itself. That would probably be in the 7mm - 5mm range. I do find the 4mm ortho's rather hard work ! The little Nagler zoom is a pretty amazing high power eyepiece though. It's great for tight double stars with the fracs but has also proved adept at showing fainter planetary moons.

Thanks I've only used the LE30 a couple of time as yet and it seems very nice. Very similar to a TV 32mm plossl but I find the eye relief matches the eyecup depth better with the LE. It's pretty sharp right across even in my F/5.3 dob.

Thanks Steve 5 months without buying an eyepiece You are made of strong stuff !

My current sets: Photo 1: The 2 Inch Box: Nagler 31, Ethos 21, Ethos 13, Ethos 8, Ethos 6, Ethos SX 4.7 and Ethos SX 3.7 Photo 2: The 1.25 Inch Box: Tak LE 30, Delos 17.3, XW 10, XW 7, XW 5, XW 3.5 Photo 3: Nagler 2-4mm Zoom (no room in the other boxes !)

Great looking dob Stu - congratulations

Very, very nice Zhao That one was on my short list as well !

I think the Radians were intended to be that eyepiece Thats treating orthoscopic as an optical characteristic rather than a specific optical design. Nice casefull Michael My diagonals seem to stay on the ends of my refractors - just as well probably as there's no room for them in the eyepiece cases !

So glad you have got your hands on your glass Milke (not on the front surface obviously) The figures are superb for a 20" F/4. Really looking forward to 1st light and subsequent reports.

Everything crossed here that things will take a smooth (and well figured ! ) path from here on Mike. I strongly suspect that OO are very aware of their mixed (putting it kindly) reputation for customer attitude and service. If it had been a priority for them they would have taken action to address it ages ago. Much more complex companies than OO have turned their reputations around but the drive needs to come from the top.

I've been catching up with this thread today Mike. The past 12 hours or so makes heartbreaking reading I really hope OO get this sorted for you PDQ. I can't believe that they have any more than a couple of commissions of this scale on the go at any one time so there can be no excuse for not having bang up to date info on the current status of your mirror. SGL is the 2nd largest astro forum in the world and I'm sure the largest potential customer base for OO. I simply can't believe their lack of impetus to sort this out in a positive way for the customer. I often wonder when I hear of tales like this - how would the senior people at OO feel if they were treated in this way ?

Look forward to seeing some pics of the Towa F/15 Dave. Nothing like a long, white refractor

Here is my APM / TMB / LZOS 130mm F/9.2 triplet apo on it's new (to me) Celestron AVX mount. This mount is does a great job with this scope I've found The 3rd pic shows my lovely little Vixen 102mm ED F/6.5 having an outing as well. Simple polar alignment through the RA axis has delivered accurate tracking straight off at up to 300x this evening. I'm not using the GOTO facilities but that may come in useful some day Split Lambda Cygni with the 130mm set up tonight - nice !