John

That last image shows the Lunar Apennine Mountains. The Apollo 15 landing site is in there. You can see the Hadley Rille and Mount Hadley with high magnifications through my 12" dobsonian.

Nice pics of the scopes In that last one of the moon, it looks like the CA around the limb varies in tint from the top (greenish) to the bottom (blueish). I've not seen that before. Usually you see it as per your other two photos, a consistent colour around the limb, changing colour, again consistently, as you rack through the focus point. Does the Antares show that visually or is it a photographic artifact ?

Thats a bit of a rarity

The field stop diameter of an eyepiece will increase as it's focal length increases so a 25mm Kellner (or similar 3 element design) will have a larger diameter field stop than, say, a 15mm Plossl. The Plossl will still have a larger apparent field of view through. The 25mm Kellner type eyepieces supplied as stock items are often labelled "Super Wide Angle" or similar because their field stop is a little wider than the a normal Kellner would be. So you see a little larger apparent field of view even though it's not going to be that well corrected, especially in a faster focal ratio scope. These are low cost eyepieces though (you can get them for £5 used) so thay don't do too badly considering that and they do get you started

First Light Optics do the Skywatcher SP plossls at £20 for the 25mm: http://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-eyepieces/skywatcher-sp-plossl-eyepieces.html

The Kellner usually has a field of view of around 45 degrees. You can get them a bit wider but the correction goes downhill off axis quite quickly. They work best in scopes of F/10 or slower. Plossls are generally better corrected up to 50 degrees and work better in faster scopes than Kellners do. The erecting eyepiece will have an additional lens set in the barrel to flip the image around to match the view that our eyes see. They don't work well for astronomy purposes. The Celestron Omni plossls are OK in quality terms. About the same as the Skywatcher SP plossls. The Vixen NPL plossls are better quality I think but they cost a little more as well. The field of view of an eyepiece is determined by the diameter of the field stop rather than by the diameter of the lenses. You can have a very wide field stop but if the optical design of the eyepiece is not well corrected off axis the outer parts of the field will not be particularly nice to look at !

Mark from Moonraker took some of his scopes to the NEAF this year in the US: I think if they had a "best in show" award he would have won it !

You would run into the magnification limits put on us by viewing conditions / scope type. Barlow lenses are not "magic bullets" - the constraints on what is useful magnification still apply I'm afraid

Excellent reports, a pleasure to read, apart from the pangs of jealosy as Mark reports Interesting that you say a number of times about more details appearing the longer you view the object. I've always found this in planetary observing and I'm now finding it with deep sky observing too. "The more you look, the more you see" - definitely I'm also finding that using quite high magnification allows me to see deeper and fainter with deep sky objects.

It's very similar to the ones that Oberwerk use for their really large binoculars but I've modified it to take the Giro Mount. Prior to this I used the mount on a CG5 tripod with the 2" steel tubed legs. The wooden tripod is lighter, taller and at least as sturdy. It looks better too, perhaps, but that is subjective of course.

Here are some more pics of my two fracs. The Skywatcher ED120 F/7.5 now has a Moonlite CF2 Tri-knob focuser fitted and the Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 now has an older Moonlite CF2 Dual-knob and some CNC tube rings. Both scopes are ED doublets and used purely for visual observing.

Just one in the range as far as I'm aware. They are costly but ergonomically it is practical to binoview them wheras the Ethos 13mm (which they are most often compared with) are just a bit too wide despite Tele Vue slimming the Ethos a few mm following the initial production run. Anyone got a "fat" Ethos 13mm ?.

A pair of Docters - nice

Very nice and very neat Steve

I think Moonraker scopes are beautifully put together but, for my taste, are overly flamboyant. A bit too much like a 1960's sci-fi film prop perhaps ?. Any scope that shares a cover pic with Simon Cowell promoting the X-Factor has dropped a few credbility posts with me I'm afraid Good luck to Mark for spotting a niche in the market though and I'm sure his scopes will continue to be in demand.

You have a distinct gap in the 90mm aperture region Derek And 80mm come to that ....

Very nice I used to have one just like it when WO first bought them out.

Nice job The good thing about these old synta scopes is that they are pretty tough. A bit of TLC can turn a rather shabby one into a lovely instrument, as you have proved

Lovely scope Chris Looks like the pillar / pier doubles as a bird table too

Some great eyepiece choices there Peter I'd love to try a Nav HW someday.

The only Speers-Waler eyepiece I've owned was the 24mm which had a 67 degree field of view. It was quite good in the F/10 scope I had at the time but showed plenty of edge distortion when I got an F/6.5 scope. It was quite inexpensive though. I wonder if the lenses of your SW 7.5 need a clean - did the previous owner smoke for example ?. The shorter focal length SW's have good reputations generally although Antares changed the specs of them quite often, ie: there were also 7mm and 7.4mm's in the series and some had 70 degree AFoV's wheras others had 82 degrees. They tend to need more inwards focuser movement than other eyepiece types which can cause issues if you don't have that amount of travel available with your focuser. Otherwise it should be a sound buy for £65 I'd have thought The name comes from Glen Speers who founded and owns Antares and the 2nd part is Wide Angle Long Eye Relief although not all of them had particularly long eye relief !

No problem Chris - I've owned quite a lot of scopes I found the AR152L decent but quite a bit heavier than the Synta / Skywatcher 150mm F/8's. I used a Chromacor with mine which removed most of the CA and corrected the SA that these scopes seem often to have. If I went for a low cost 6" achro again I think it would be a Synta / Skywatcher F/8 - I never really warmed to the AR6 for some reason. I prefer the Bresser 127L over both the AR6 and the Skywatcher Evostar 120 that I had around that time. I'd not go for an achro faster than F/8 even for deep sky observing because of the CA. All good fun though

I've owned a Bresser 127L and a Meade AR5 Chris. They are identical apart from the branding and I suspect the optics of the new Bresser 127L's are the same. The Bresser was very nice but the Meade had very mediocre optics I had a Meade AR6 for a while as well which I think is pretty much the same scope as the Bresser 152L.

I've been looking at those on the Telescope House website. Although this is a refractor thread, the new Bresser 8" dob looks interesting. The use of tube rings to attach the alt bearings makes it easy to switch to an EQ mount for the scope at a later date. Smart design. The 127L refractor with the new hex focuser looks decidedly good value at £250.

Gotta love the classic "volcano top" orthos