John

hello all first time on the site but wathched the nights sky every clear night i could for years love it any advise on telescopes for rookies thanks

Try posting this in a thread of it's own in this section - you will get plenty of suggestions then

The Skywatcher Nirvana 16mm might be worth considering - at £135 new they are good value IMHO and work pretty well even in fast scopes - 90% as well as Naglers at a lot less money. If they are not exactly the same as a UWAN, then they are pretty darn close

One of these years i will bite the bullet and invest in a TV Plossl of 32mm or so because i really do like widefield views.

What is the apparent FOV of this EP?

It's 50 degrees - it's a standard plossl design, just well executed.

For wider fields of view you have Radians = 60 degrees AFoV, Panoptics = 68 degrees AFoV, Naglers = 82 degrees AFoV, Ethos = 100 degree AFoV and now the Ethos SX = 110 degrees AFoV

....The reason I'll go for the Televue is that all my eyepieces are Televue, and it's just a little quirk that I have.

I have that quirk too ......

Interesting, I have the 8,11,20 and 32mm notch-sided TV plossls and wouldn't call them remotely parfocal - in fact I've just put some parfocalising rings on them to save me re-focusing. Also the notch drives me nuts and I'd much prefer if they had smooth sides. Maybe the old ones would have been better for me!

Thats odd - the two TV plossl ranges that I've owned were spot-on par focal (with the exception of the 40mm as already mentioned). That's one of the main reasons I bought them

I agree about the undercut barrel though - I much prefer the smooth ones but that seems to have gone out of fashion !.

I've owned a set of the smooth-side TV plossls and a set of the later versions and they are really well made eyepieces. Personally I don't think I'd invest in the 40mm again though - it's a fine quality eyepiece but it's way off from par-focal with the rest of the range and shows no more sky than the 32mm does. It's long eye relief is good for glasses wearers (it was designed for this purpose I believe) but can make it awkward to find the right eye positoning if you don't wear glasses.

I have a 10" F/4.8 Orion Optics newtonian optical tube. Normally I use it on an alt-azimuth mount (rather like a Giro) and it's really easy to set up and use - almost a 10" "grab and go" in fact (apart from a bit of cool down time of course).

I put the scope onto my CG5 mount, which has the 2" steel pipe tripod legs, to see how it fared. The mount could handle the scope for visual use fine (the OTA weighs around 10kg which is relatively light for a 10") but, as a package, I found the whole thing very unweildy - the pleasure seemed to have gone right out of it.

I've a 6" refractor which I also use on the same mount but with that you can easily rotate the diagonal to get the eyepiece in a comfortable position - it's just not as simple with the newt unfortunately.

I have a lot of admiration for those who can manage a 10"+ newtonian on an equatorial mount but personally I'll be sticking with dobsonian / alt-azimuth mounts for scopes in that aperture category in future.

I tried to do that with my C8 when I had it. I was advised that Celestron don't keep records of the serial numbers as well, which was not much help !. Rod Mollise's guide to buying an SCT might be of interest if you have not already seen it (free download):

Home Page

The thing is that, generally, additional magnification won't show any more detail -what is needed is time at the eyepiece so that your eye and brain become accustomed to teasing out the detail that is already in the image and seize the fleeting moments of excellent seeing to build the best image that the combination of scope and viewing conditions can deliver.

Great review of a great finder Shane !.

I've owned both a Telrad and a Quikfinder and liked them both. Because of it's small footprint I think the Quickfinder is suitable for a wider range of scopes. It's lens is slightly less prone to dewing than the Telrad as well I found. Both great finders though.

hey sorry took so long to get back to you, wasn't feeling too good yesterday and had work today. I measured it tonight, and its 140mm from the dovetail to the ground when fully extended.

Thanks Natalie

Hope you are feeling better now.

Sounds great Natalie - thanks for the report.

One of the issues I find with many mounts is that they are rather too short, or at least the tripods are rather too short (I'm 6 foot and my back does not like stooping for too long) - I'm wondering how tall the AZ4 is with the tripod extended - say to the dovetail where you mount the scope ?.

I'm glad you got a successful 1st light with it.

John

Some nebulae are small and tight (eg: M57 - the Ring Nebula) and benefit from higher magnification. Some though are huge and sprawling and will hardly fit in the field of view at very low power with wide angle eyepieces. The Veil Nebula (which has a number of parts) needs a 4 degree true field of view to fit it all in - that's 8x the diameter of the moon. So the answer is to use a magnfication that suits the angular size of the object you are looking at. The apparent size of DSO's is something that the photos don't really help you grasp as there is nothing for scale - some are a lot smaller or larger than you think and for that reason it's easy to miss them altogether sometimes.

This pic is a bit out of date now but it shows the Maplins case off - it's the one with cubed foam which I've pressed the eyepieces into:

.Any recommendations on makes/models of reasonably priced quality EPs would be appreciated.

Thanks

You get what you pay for with eyepieces but, for your scope, the TAL, Skywatcher, Meade or Celestron plossls will work pretty well.

First Light Optics have a good deal on Skywatcher Plossl's at the moment:

Skywatcher - Skywatcher SP Plossl eyepieces

John

This was so helpful for me. Reading through my user manual was pretty basic but this thread really cleared some things up.

My Scope is a F/8.6 and came with a 9mm, 25mm and 2x Barlow lens. So from what was posted above it appears that I have the standard high power and low power eye pieces.

Would you all recommened any other sizes?

You might want to post this question in the beginners section as well to get some other views but I'd suggest a 32mm Plossl which will give you nice low power views. With the barlow lens you would have quite a comprehensive range of powers then.

John

Portability won't be a big issue i could do what many of you have done and add wheels but it's not that big of a problem for me.

In which case you might as well go for the 12" and then you won't always be wondering about "what might have been"

John

I used the 8-inch for 9 years and could have happily have gone longer as there were still so many things I hadn't seen with it, but figured if I was ever going to get into the heavy-duty league then I ought to do it before I was too old.

This is exactly the stage that I am at as well. I sold my 8" F/6 Skywatcher dobsonian and got a 12" Meade Lightbridge dob. I don't regret doing this but I have not been able to use the larger scope as much as I did the 8" because the latter was practically a "grab and go" scope. At F/6 the 8" was easier to keep in collimation as well.

That said I think the 12" scope is the first I've had that really starts to show the brighter DSO's like they look in pictures - globular clusters in particular are stunning with a foot of aperture

John

These look really good.

Add somme velcro and thats one awesome light shield.

Thanks for all the suggestions folks

I think the adapted camping mat approach looks very promising - I must make sure that I don't get a self-inflating one by mistake though - could be rather awkward !.

John

I have quite a lot of lateral lighting to contend with until around midnight and my neighbours go to bed and switch their lights off.

This light has a tendancy to find it's way into the top of the OTA of my Meade Lightbridge 12" dobsonian and causes a noticable drop in contrast when the scope is pointing at certain angles.

I'd like to get or make a light shield (similar to a dew shield) to put on the top end of the scope to reduce / remove this issue. I'm guessing that I will need one around 18" tall to be really effective in shielding the secondary - does that sound about the right height ?.

I'm also going to need something that goes right around the OTA (rather than the partial one that Astro Engineering make) because my unwanted light comes from a number of directions (including my own house when my family are still awake ).

Has anyone made anthing like this and, if so, could you share the details. I'd prefer something a light as possible because the Lightbridge is already rather "top heavy" especially with a 2" Nagler eyepiece in the drawtube !.

Would commercially available dew shields be appropriate ? - I saw one of these being used at the SGL4 Star Party but that was on a SW Flextube 12" and I wonder what it's (the dew shields) weight was.

All suggestions and further ideas welcomed

Thanks,

John

Hi John, I use to own the mak that my brother now owns and don't recall having to turn the focus that much when I change eyepieces or with any other Telescope that I owned. I tried the comparision with my present telescope WO80 at x18. With the mak it would be around x41 and I wonder with the mak longer focal length would the difference be less or even noticeable.

I think it's only the 35mm Ultima that needs the additional inward focus travel - the others in the range all seem to focus at a relatively "normal" position. Focus travel is rarely an issue with Mak's and SCT's though.

John

It's funny you should say that Darren ...... I've often read that the Ultima 30mm is a superb eyepiece (the other Ultimas are not too shabby either) but I've not had the pleasure of actually trying one. I have owned a couple of Ultima 35mm's though which were excellent but (unlike the rest of the Ultima range) do need a lot of additional inward focusser movement which means they have trouble coming to focus in some scopes - that would not be a problem in a Mak though.

John

Sounds like my next upgrade from my standard eye pieves.

What is a Televue EP? Is it the make of one or a style?

Tele Vue are a small company based near New York. They market quality refractors, eyepieces and other astro optical gear. Their stuff is top notch but does cost more than many other brands. They have been around since the early 1980's and one of their most famous products is an eyepiece design called a Nagler after the company founder Al Nagler. They also market an excellent range of eyepieces of the plossl design, including the 32mm.

John

Good report Jarvo

I've been a fan of Tele Vue products for years now. Even though I've now got Naglers and an Ethos I still feel tempted to add a TV 32mm Plossl to the collection - a classic !.

John

Debates about the pros and cons of lens designs and glass types are interesting but only part of the story IHMO.

Personally I feel that the quality of the figuring, polishing, coatings and mounting of the lens elements are not always given enough weight. Poor attention to any of these factors can produce a poor objective regardless of the glass type used.

John