John

44 minutes ago, Davesellars said:

Thanks Michael!

I've only briefly had an opportunity to try the 14mm Delos.  Last night I was clouded out within 5 minutes but got a quick look with it and the 120ED which proved to be a great combination!

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 

23 minutes ago, Moonshane said:

Future plans include

18.18.2mm, 15mm and 9mm Delites, a Baader Cool wedge, a Baader zeiss prism, shortening my 120ed (maybe) a pair of lower power eyepieces perhaps 32mm plossls, a moonlite for my pst mod etc etc.......does it ever stop?

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

2 hours ago, Piero said:

Nice boxes John!  

Can I ask you which Maplin (?) case models do you use, please? Just to have an idea about sizes.  

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.

29 minutes ago, Timebandit said:

 

Very very nice John. I wondered what your collection of eyepieces consists of presently . The secrets out and what a cracking line up it is. It makes my eyepiece collection look rather basic and underwhelming?.  Lots of green and black there John with some nice helpings of pentax xw (real quality the pentax and I love mine).  

See you have some ethos in 6 and 8 . How does the Pentax 5xw and 7xw stack up against these in side by side comparison in the frac and dob John. Which provides the sharpest image out of the two ?

I see no Orthos there John ? I take it the eye relief is not up to your requirements and you prefer a better eye relief nowerdays. I do like my Ortho and especially as I have managed to pair up some for Binoviewers  .

Anyway pure quality in those cases John . Like a case of fine wine just waiting to be tasted ?.

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.

1 hour ago, Highburymark said:

Very nice cases John. How do you find the Tak LE 30? 

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.

5 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

Very nice set of glass there John. In terms on range I would say you and I are on a fairly similar plane except that i stop at 4mm.

One thing i would like to point out to everyone is that i have not bought, nor felt the need to buy a new EP since obtaining the 7mm Delite way back in April ! Thats 5 whole months, must be a record of some sort. 

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 !

8 minutes ago, Highburymark said:

Maybe Al Nagler could design a range of orthos with 20mm eye relief?

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 !

Still looks a great scope Shane

I love refractors and have owned more of them than any other kind of scope but there are many things that my 12" dob has shown me that no frac that I could ever afford or be able to use could show and those sights make up the richness of the hobby just as much as the things that fracs are so good at.

If it's showing me something lovely and even better, something that I've not seen before, then it's a "proper scope" regardless of the design IMHO

@ baggywrinkle: I'm a bit confused when you say that your AA152 "....is sharp across 80-85% of the field...." 

Do you mean that the scope has field curvature, coma or similar or do you think the eyepieces are the main factor perhaps ?

1 hour ago, Anderscn said:

Same considerations here regarding mount for the big Istar. The Sabre is just adequate, but not my long term solution if I keep the scope.

I like the simplicity of the manual AZ-mounts, and as I see it, only the AOKswiss Ayomaster is up to the job. And I am 95% sure that I will get one at the end of the year. Then I could also have some fun using it with my two smaller Istars simultaneously

 The LZOS 130mm f/9 only weighs 10 kilos with rings (as far as I have found out) - I would think the AOK Ayodigi 2 would be fine for the job. That was their recommendation for my 127mm F/12 Istar based scope (the FRT127) that is 13 kilo´s with rings, diagonal, dovetail and Delos EP.

Best Regards,

Anders

 

Thanks for the suggestion Anders

My LZOS 130 F/9.2 is the LW version - 8kg with the rings plus a little more with the finder and 2" diagonal.

Having been through the process of trying to find a mount for a 6" F/12 Istar for nearly a year my suggestion would be to try things before you buy, if at all possible. Despite trying a Bray Tablet Alt-az mount and also an EQ6 head on the massive Meade LXD750 3" tripod I was still not happy with the scopes stability.

At that time I did not have the budget for an Ayomaster or an APM Maxload both of which might have done the job plus I was reluctant to spend more on the mount than I had on the scope, which was a bit naive with hindsight.

Good luck !

Very interesting stuff !

What Meade did not get right, others can sort out in due course

The Meade 178ED is listed at £7K (mounted) in my 2000 BC&F brochure. I'd have been a bit annoyed if I'd forked that out back then and found that it had the sort of issues that you mention although I guess it was cheap for a 7" APO compared to the likes of Astro Physics.

Maybe thats why they were underrated ?

Look forward to reading your reports on the scope

Just now, DRT said:

Are you coming to SGLXII, John? If so you are welcome to try it on my AZ-EQ6 and Ercole

 

Thanks Derek but I'm afraid I won't be at SGLXII. 

2 hours ago, Dude_with_the_tube said:

...I assume you still havent made up your mind on how to mount your TMB?

I'm going to try a few different options out. I find until I actually try something, I can't really determine whether it will really suit me. Fortunately we still have a pretty active used equipment market in the UK

I've used the TMB / LZOS a few times on the Giro II and it's useable but I'd like a bit more stability at high powers.

I'll lookforward to reading any thoughts you have on the Meade 178ED. Having seen these in Telescope House in London back in the early 1990's and having read an interesting variety of views on them since, I've always wondered what they are really like.

2 hours ago, Dude_with_the_tube said:

i do recognise this scope.Is that not yours John? I do like anything above F10 he he.You have to agree that a simple acrho in F12 or F15 or bless the mount in F18 just looks MAJESTIC!

Looks like my old Istar but they do all look alike !

The mount looks decent - I could not find something which held mine steady enough for my liking. Even the EQ6 / 3" steel tubed Meade Giant tripod was not up to it.

I've just sold a Sabre as it happens. Nice mount but did the same job as the Giro II that I already have.