John

I use a Uni 28 with my F/9 FC100-DL plus either the Skytee II or Ercole mount.

Might be overkill for the F/7.4 FC though ?

Just now, Littleguy80 said:

I think I’ve pretty much ended up with that kinda set. APM 30mm UFF, APM HDC 20mm, Docter 12.5mm, Delos 10mm, Pentax XW 5mm and Vixen HR 3.4mm. I started out with a more matching set but over time just starting picking whatever seemed best for my tastes at particular focal lengths. 

If I was starting out again that would be a set that I would be happy to live with🙂

The Nagler ranges and history are quite complex. Here is a report from another forum which explains things:

naglers (cloudynights.com)

11 hours ago, John said:

He is doing better than I am - I don't have any fixed FL eyepieces between 12mm and 8mm currently 🙄

I should have said between 12mm and 9mm inclusive. I have the 8mm Ethos of course 🙄

Plus I have a couple of zooms which do cover that range.

I can only speak for the ones I currently own or have owned recently and the differences I've seen are generally miniscule, if I have seen them at all !

I tend to agree regarding the 5mm XW. I actually really like all the XW's shorter than 14mm.

I have only used the 17.3 and 14mm Delos and feel that the latter (which I still have) was slightly better than the former but there are a lot that I have not used.

My preferred Panoptic is the 24mm but I've not used any of the 2 inchers in that range.

The 2-4mm Nagler zoom seems brilliant to me and I've owned a couple of the 3-6's but not held on to them. The latter ones are supposed to be a little better than the 2-4's though according to a Russian gentleman 😉

Of the Ethos I own (21mm, 13mm, 8mm, 6mm and 4.7mm) I believe that the 6mm is the best optically but to my eye they are all superb. The 10mm is also reputed to be one of the very best Ethos but I've not used that one.

I have owned several sets of TV plossls (old and new types) and, from what I recall, the 20mm and 25mm were probably the best of those, optically.

I've owned a few Vixen LVW's and agree with @Mr Spock that the 22mm is pretty special. 

I've owned both the ES 92's and felt that the 17mm was more comfortable for me to use so kept that one for longer. Both were very, very good optical performers though. The best that ES have produced IMHO.

The only Nagler that I still have is the 31mm. I've owned most of those in the past and the stand outs back then were probably the 22mm T4 and the 13mm T6. 

I only owned 2 Radians, the 4mm and 3mm and preferred the 3mm. Lots of other focal lengths in that range though.

Baader Classic's - the 10mm and 18mm were really excellent.

I've owned and used plenty more but the above are the ones that popped into my head as I thought about your question.

I think I'll defer to the expertise of someone like @Don Pensack to fathom out why some focal lengths seem to stand out from others in eyepiece ranges 🙂

With eyepiece choices being somewhat personal, what floats one persons boat may well have quite the opposite impact on another person of course, as we know well from threads on here and elsewhere 😉

I've just had a look through some pics on the UK importer OVL's website and they seem to show that there are now no collimation screws on the back of 90mm and 102mm mak-cassegrains.

This seems to be a recent development. Up until not so long ago these smaller MCT's certainly had them.

3 hours ago, JeremyS said:

C’mon Louis. You’re not even trying 

🤣

He is doing better than I am - I don't have any fixed FL eyepieces between 12mm and 8mm currently 🙄

The Celestron-branded 90mm mak-cass that I had a couple of years back had push-pull collimation screws at the primary end.

7 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

 

It’s this one from APM: https://www.apm-telescopes.net/en/adapter-125-for-leica-89-178-zoom-eyepiece

It is actually sold as a 1.25-inch adapter. I asked APM if the wider bit fitted 2-inch and they said no. But countless ppl over on CN assure me it was suitable for both sizes. And indeed it is.
 

The 1.25 inch nose is relatively short and doesn’t get anywhere close to my Baader mirror diagonals. Not sure about prism diagonals.

APM also do 2-inch only adapters: https://www.apm-telescopes.net/en/adapter-2-for-leica-89-178-zoom-eyepiece-m48 and

https://www.apm-telescopes.net/en/adapter-2-for-leica-89-178-zoom-eyepiece-t2
 

I’ve been having nearly as much fun sorting this out as I get with Tak adapters. But I’ve yet to check the Leica reaches focus in all my scopes and configurations 😊

The APM "superzoom" has a longer 2 inch section but still does not touch the mirrors in my AP and TV 2 inch diagonals. It's quite close though - I would not want to chance it with a filter fitted. You might have a bit more "headroom" with the ASPH adapter though. Play it safe and put the filter on the diagonal barrel perhaps ? 🙂

1 minute ago, bosun21 said:

The 9mm Morpheus is a handsome eyepiece and optically great as well.

I've been quite tempted to get one to try out in that slot. It seems daft that I've still not used a Morpheus after reading so much about them 🙂

Just now, DirkSteele said:

Need to see what difference this pier makes (I had been using the tiny pier from the Sky Watcher Az Gti - surprised it did not buckle to be honest!), but I think the length is pushing the limit a bit once the magnification gets up to the level we know this scope can easily take.  I also need to see if an even more robust tripod helps.  Solid as rock on the APM AzMax Load but that is not a surprise given it throws by LZOS 180 f/7 around pretty easily.  How about your experience?

Similar to yours. On the Berlebach Uni 28 the Ercole will hold the 130 F/9.2 OK for low to medium power observing but as you get over 200x (which is just cruising for these 130's) the settle times start to become intrusive. 

When I use my 130 now it goes straight onto the T-Rex which delivers a really stable platform even at "ludicrous" magnifications. The total weight difference between the T-Rex and the Ercole is around 4.5 kg but the Ercole needs quite a bit of counterweighting so that equals things up.  

2 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Well, that's cheered me up no end 😊.

Me too 😪

Just now, Don Pensack said:

It's the same.  The manufacturer is KunMing United Optics (KUO), and Sky Rover is their "house brand".

They also sell eyepieces private label to at least 10 companies, maybe more.

Are they responsible for the Svbony 3-8mm zoom ?

There is a certain resemblance.

7 minutes ago, DirkSteele said:

Needed a half pier to boost the height of my LZOS 130/1200 when using my Ercole on the Gitzo Series 5 tripod. Tecnosky model from Astrograph delivered today. Quite a hunk of metal....

 

How do you find your Ercole copes with the 130mm F/9.2 Matthew ?

5 hours ago, josefk said:

i am VERY fussy about balance - i hate kick-up and droop on Alt-Az mounts when unbalancing the scope with various weight EPs. This adapter is pricey for what it is materially but i think it is going to deliver value in ergonomic pleasure. It puts all my EPs (except one outlier) into a 90g range lightest to heaviest and just a 20g range for my most used EPs.

 

I had one of those for a while when I combined Nagler T6 and Ethos eyepieces. It does the job very well. The Equaliser I think it's called. I could have done with one for all the T6's though. 

I reckon this is the same eyepiece as the 30mm UFF but under different branding:

U.K. Astronomy Buy & Sell (astrobuysell.com)

UF 30mm Ultra Flat Field Eyepiece – Sky Rover Optics

If it is not exactly the same then it is very, very similar.

I've Powermated XW's and they (like many eyepiece types with the Powermate) seem to retain all of their positive optical characteristics when used with a PM. The only reasons that I stopped using PM's were i) that it was another (quite expensive) optical accessory to install / remove in the dark and ii) the resulting "stack" of an already tall eyepiece plus a Powermate can get long and unwieldy especially if the scope is small.

Powermates are really excellent extenders. As usual with the Tele Vue brand, the cost is quite high though. 

Interesting report 🙂

Just a small point - the Pentax XW 10mm and 5mm that I have used have 70 degree fields of view. There are now 2 focal lengths in the XW range that give 85 degrees but those are 16.5mm and 23mm focal length.

I do agree that eyepiece preferences are very personal. The 5mm Pentax XW is also one of my favourites though so we do agree on that one 🙂

26 minutes ago, tomato said:

.... a lot of folks now seem to prefer taking video clips of a live event on their smartphones rather than experiencing it with their own eyes. The urge to “capture and post” seems strong these days.

This seems driven by the constant need some seem to have to prove that "they are having a good time" by posting a never ending stream of pictures of what they are doing on social media 🙄

2 hours ago, lawsio said:

Just on the light pollution issue, I'm a Civil Engineer specialising in Highways and many of the Local Authorities around the UK I work with are enforcing Dark Skies policies on new roads now, with roads only to being lit where it would pose a safety risk should they not be, for example crossing locations and certain junction types. It's part of a wider 'future ready/net zero' initiative to reduce carbon, ongoing costs, impact on wildlife, etc so I'd be lying if I said it was specifically to benefit ammeter astronomers, but hopefully in time the more of these policies get taken up, maybe some existing older street lights get taken down rather than replaced and skies might gradually start to darken again. Maybe.

That is encouraging. I have been wondering if the fiscal and environmental costs of energy provision might start to influence planning and implementation of public lighting systems of all types. It sounds like things are starting to move now 🙂

I found the AZ-4 fine for my Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 but it did not handle my Tak FC100-DL F/9 so well, especially as the magnification exceeded 100x or so. Both those scopes are a similar weight - around 4kg fully loaded. 

The Sightron looks to be very nicely made alt-az mount though 🙂

3 hours ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

I had a travel Mak 102 with Skywatcher AZ5, aluminium tripod, OVL 7-21 zoom, 25mm Vixen NPL eyepiece and 2 diagonals - a 45° erecting for day use and a 90° dielectric for night. All except the tripod and mount fitted in a cheap Amazon sourced camera bag.

It was a nice experiment and worked well but I found binoculars less faff so dropped the travel kit idea, sold the 102 plus zoom and a year later bought a 127 to sit on an idle AZGTI for at home use... 🙄

 

 

I tried a 90mm Mak a couple of years ago on an AZ-3 mount, as a travel scope. It worked well enough but I found that the reason to take a scope away is to get under dark skies and when under dark skies, I like wide fields of view, which is not really the forte of the Mak.

My current travel scope is a 70mm F/6 ED refractor which does wide well and can handle 140x or more if needed too. 

I had my 11x70 binoculars on Dartmoor with me last summer, under some of the darkest skies that I've seen, and the views were pretty wonderful 🙂

3 minutes ago, Louis D said:

If you're just popping out for 10 or 15 minutes to grab a quick peek at a planet, the 127 Mak is a terrible choice.  It shows all sorts of chromatic aberrations at high power on bright objects while trying to cool down.  By comparison, I see no such issues with a similarly sized Newtonian.  My 90mm triplet shows spikes around bright objects while trying to cool down, so also not a good quick peek choice.  My 72ED doublet is pretty much ready to go immediately, though.

It really depends on your intended use case which telescope will provide the best images.

That is why I no longer own SCT's, MCT's or Mak-Newtonians.

To do my comparison I would need to borrow one 🙂

Looks a nice mount. As long as it can handle the tube length, the weight should be no problem. Tube length creates more stress on mount heads and tripod hubs than the weight of the OTA does. 

I'd love to put a Skywatcher mak 127mm alongside my ED120 refractor and (carefully) compare the views.

I think the result would be very close on deep sky objects. On double stars, the moon and planets, I suspect things might swing in favour of the refractor but only very slightly.

If I did the same comparison using my ED102 refractor I think the mak 127 would show a clearer advantage on DSO's and would possibly beat the 102 refractor on the higher resolution targets as well.