John

Lots of nice glass in there Russell

Trouble is, with the size of these wide / ultra wide eyepieces, you soon run out of room !

I dated my old C8, roughly, using old Celestron brochures, Uncle Rods guide and some old Astro magazines. The ones folks worry about are the "Halleyscopes", ie: the ones sold in advance of the return of Halley's Comet in 1986. It seems to be well know that Meade and Celestron "relaxed" their quality checking during that period to meet the demand !

Mine turned out to be a 1994 model I recall. It had excellent optics but had developed a bit of "mirror flop" which was annoying.

..... I just replaced the thumb wheel ones with strips of cycle inner tube.

That was what I did too. Works a treat

Wow, another full set of Ethoses. :eek:

Nearly - just the 3.7mm and 4.7mm SX's missing

Lovely set all the same. That Pentax zoom is no slouch either. Interesting that you hold both the E21 and N31. I've read of many selling the latter when they bought the former and then having to track another 31mm down as they missed it !

I recently bought an older Moonlite focuser for a refractor. It was not as smooth as I'd been expecting and the drawtube was not square with the body of the focuser but I only noticed this when looking at the focuser from the scope end and noticed that the end of the drawtube was not concentric with the main body of the focuser. To investigate further I removed the drawtube and then found that one of the four ring bearings that the top of the drawtube presses against had split and was just dragging against the drawtube the rather than rolling smoothly with its movement. I e.mailed Moonlite in the USA and got a prompt response. for around $20 they sent be a set of four new bearings and now the focuser is silky smooth even when tensioned up for heavy accessories.

Could this be your problem perhaps ?

Skywatcher / Orion (USA) / Meade Lightbridge are all very similar in optical quality. Orion (USA) uses the same optics as Skywatchers. If you would like to improve the optical quality then Orion Optics (UK) scopes are worth looking at. They tend to be lighter than their chinese counterparts too. You can opt for even higher quality optics with Orion Optics if you wish.

Of course you do have to invest more in better quality optics but that won't be a surprise I'm sure.

My understanding is as set out by Keith above. What I'm not sure about however is the extent to which this still applies to the Celestron SCT's whose optics are now made in China ?.

It's an old thread but I'll move it to the eyepiece discussion section as it will get more attention there.

I've never seen a Skywatcher manual for an ED scope to be honest but there are loads of articles on the web for cleaning refractor objectives. My Vixen ED objective has been cleaned twice in it's 12 year life. 1-2 times a year would seem excessive to me.

I think the FPL-53 element is the rear (inner) one on the ED120 and the outer (front one) is crown glass. I don't know the composition of the lens coatings but the ED range seem to be deeper in colour than the Evostar / Startravel achromat refractors. Coatings are an area where manufacturers like to keep things to themselves, presumably to maintain their competitive edge.

A bit of light dust here and there is quite normal on an objective lens after a few uses. I find a high power lens blower (manually operated) gets rid of most of it.

My Vixen ED102 uses different glass and coatings to my Skywatcher ED120 but they both seem very effective scopes

The front and rear surfaces of refractor objective lenses are coated and some care is needed to avoid damaging them. As it happens I cleaned the objective of my Vixen ED102 a few nights ago. I used the Baader Optical Wonder fluid and their micro fibre cloth. I followed the instructions and sprayed the fluid onto the cloth rather than the lens. The lens has come up very well.

Don't be tempted to take a short cut on this - an objective lens is very expensive to replace, if it could be replaced at all.

.... I know a member on here gave up a 16mm UWAN for a 16mm T5 Nag so it matched others in his box and regretted it......

Yep, that would be me

I should have believed the review that said there was little or no noticeable difference between the two

I'm using a 4mm Nirvana (a clone of the UWAN) for high power planetary observing at the moment. It sits between a 5mm Pentax XW and a 3.5mm Nagler Type 6 but more than holds it's own. Very, very good eyepieces - I just wish the range of focal lengths in the series was greater

A 21mm (2") Nirvana / UWAN and an 11mm would be great additions

A "minimal" set but one of darn fine quality Damo

....Sometimes the lure of the ethos is just too much! .....

That I can quite understand - you can hear it saying "pick me, pick me" in the eyepiece case

I know what you felt like Nick! My ethos slipped out of the 1.25" tal diagonal and fell with a large thud onto (thank the lord) soft wet grass, about a meter to the side was paving slabs!

You are a brave person trusting the mighty Ethos to a setscrew 1.25" diagonal

I observer mostly from a patio so I'm not going to follow your lead I'm afraid

... I guess my thoughts were that a model produced for reviewing would have had careful QC on it optically and it has proved to be very good.69.....

Thats very shrewd Stu

Mmm that would be nice

I am thinking more along the lines of a 127mm ED doublet @ f/7.5 but far more expensive (more a lifelong wish)

My "dream scope" is a Vixen ED150 F/9 doublet. One came up for sale last year (there only a handful in the UK) but the timing was wrong and I just didn't have the readies

I think it's new owner is a member here though so there is hope yet I guess

Very nice collection Stu

....Just need to find the money for a nice largish ED refractor

This is a good substitute for the price of an ED100:

U.K. Astronomy Buy & Sell

Can't find the thread John ???....

I've not started it, as yet. Interesting to read your views on the topic anyway so thanks for posting them

Thats a lovely set of eyepieces and I do know what you mean about those Tele Vue caps

I shall have to turn mine the other way around now !

One question that is getting asked a lot on the forum is why folks are prepared to spend so much on high quality eyepieces like Tele Vues when there are lower cost alternatives that are very, very nearly as good.

I think I know my reasons but I'd be interested to know the rationale that other owners of such equipment have, if that's not being nosey

Edit: To be fair it's not just Tele Vue, there are other brands such as Pentax, Takahashi, Zeiss etc that fall into the same category.

2nd Edit: On second thoughts, this is probably not the thread to have the above discussion in - I'll post the question elsewhere maybe

That looks like a nice old English refractor

It's hard to tell from the photo - will the focuser tube take 1.25" eyepieces or is it restricted to the .965" types ?.

Also you would find a 90 degree diagonal makes viewing easier. You can get one that converts a .965" scope into a 1.25" one which is very useful as you cannot get .965" eyepieces easily any more.

The higher the number in mm on the eyepiece, the lower the magnification. What scope do you have ?. I'm asking because we need to know if it will take 1.25" eyepieces.

A refractor with a 100mm objective lens can show some nice detail on Jupiter under good conditions, with decent eyepieces. The Andromeda galaxy won't appear as more than an oval smudge though.

..... and wish he would have listed it as an achro Ahh well.....

That is a valid point. All the reading that I have done point to it being a very nice achromat. I also wonder if the focuser has been replaced at some point - the original had a single speed crayford with gold anodised focus wheels wheras the scope you have bought seems to have a dual speed focuser with silver wheels.

With the interchangeability of William Optics objective lenses (ie: the upgrade that Steve mentioned) and focusers it's quite possible to have a hybrid scope I guess

None of this makes it anything other than a nice scope though - I'm looking forward to your reports on how it performs when you have had a chance to use it

Some amazing sets there! What case do you recommend then? I dont want to break the bank but want em safe.

Mine is the Maplins one with the pluck foam filling. They are quite popular although I see one view in this thread that they are flimsy but mine seems OK.

J... are you not slightly tempted to upgrade the 20 Nagler to either the 17 Ethos or 21 Ethos? Not to question the quality glass that is the 20 Nag, but more to complete that lovely Ethos set you have......

Do you sell for a living Rob ?

I'm trying to be sensible and level headed (makes a change ) and this is currently helped enormously by an empty astro budget