John

Your 1.25 inch Tak adapter seems a little different from Nicola's and mine Jeremy ? The 2nd knurled ring seems deeper ?

I use a Baader T2 Zeiss prism diagonal with 1.25 inch fittings front and back. That goes straight into the 2 inch fitting on the end of the drawtube without the 71L extension. All my 1.25 inch eyepieces reach focus somewhere around the central part of the drawtube travel with that arrangement (pic below).

If you want to use 1.25 inch eyepieces in the 2 inch diagonal I think you will need a 35mm 2 inch fit extension of some sort.

I have the 71L and can't use it because it's too long. My scope is the FC100-DL. The 71S might be the one of those two. Edit: The 71S has an optical length of 35mm so may well do the trick. It costs though - £149.00 !!

I reckon you might need a 35mm 2 inch extension between the scope drawtube and the diagonal. Something like this: StellaLyra 35mm 2" Extension Tube | First Light Optics I found that I needed one when I used a 2 inch diagonal with my Tak FC100-DL Other 35mm extenders are available of course. Baader have a click lock one I think.

I get rid of eyepieces quite quickly if they are not getting much use. I have become more ruthless over the past few years on this 😈 Currently I seem to have 3 "sets" of eyepieces: Very wide fields (all Tele Vue) Nagler 31mm, Ethos 21mm, Ethos 13mm, Ethos 8mm, Ethos 6mm, Ethos SX 4.7mm Wide / normal fields 1.25 inch fitting: Tele Vue Panoptic 24mm, Tele Vue Delos 14mm, Baader Mk IV 8-24mm zoom, Pentax XW 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm, Tele Vue Nagler 2-4mm zoom Travel / Outreach: Maxvision 20mm 68 degrees, Hyperflex 7.2mm-21.5mm zoom, Baader Q-Turret 2.25x barlow So currently that is 15 eyepieces plus the barlow to address the original question. So what does that tell us ? - nothing at all really 🙄

Well done ! 🙂 I last observed this comet back in late June when it was around magnitude 10. I found it quite challenging to tease out of the not-quite-dark sky with my 4 inch refractor back then. Good to hear that it is still visible in smallish scopes. I will re-visit it when I'm next observing 👍

These are superb sketches. Thanks for posting them 🙂

I agree. I was impressed that Takahashi made a special, longer clamshell just for the limited edition FC100-DL refractor. At F/9 vs the regular FC100 focal ratio of F/7.4 the company judged that a longer clamshell would provide better support for the longer telescope tube. This must have involved some expense and trouble in creating the revised sand casting moulds just for this model.

That seems to match what I am experiencing. Thanks 👍

They ought to re-name the scope the Takahashi ULEZ 😉

I'd be interested to know which one eyepiece managed to mess up the perfect on axis image in Ernest's tests 😁

He can't be that tight - he has developed a taste for Ethos now 😉

As you can see from responses to this thread, there is none of that on here ! 🤪

It is odd. The eyepiece is quite low down Richard Suiters "wobbly stack" of factors that impact the quality of the view we get and yet the eyepiece section of forums is often one of the busiest 🙄

For those of you who have the APM 7.7-15.4mm zoom, do you use it in 2 inch or 1.25 inch mode ? I'm finding that it simply won't come to focus in at least two of my scopes in 1.25 inch mode. I realised from reading other reports that it would require more inwards focuser travel than many eyepieces but I didn't realise that it was as much as it actually seems to be. In 2 inch mode it seems to reach focus just a bit further out than, for example, Pentax XW's, which is fine. My scopes are all refractors. Thanks 🙂

I got Zeta Herc first a few years back with my ED120. Since then I've regularly observed it and it now seems a little easier to do. If the seeing is halfway decent my 100mm will split it at 225x and upwards. The uneven brightness of the component stars does add a lot to the difficulty I agree. Nice report of your session 🙂

As I've got older I've increasingly felt similarly. I still have one ortho but hardly ever use it these days. They are still great optically but I value observing comfort now more than I used to !

Very interesting piece - thanks for posting the link Jeremy 🙂 I had a look at SN2023xif last night with my ED120 refractor. It is still hovering around the mid-magnitude 12's. A bit of a challenge until it really got dark last night. My first sighting of it was around 2 months back so it's certainly got staying power (and lots of other power as well of course !) 🙂

The skies have been clear tonight (eventually) so I have made a good start. I would like a few sessions before reaching any conclusions though, so please bear with me 🙂 As well as the zooms, I've pressed the 14mm Delos, 24mm Panoptic and 8mm Ethos into service so there are some quality fixed focal lengths in play as well. Tonight I stuck with the ED120mm refractor at F/7.5. No moon so some reasonable DSO viewing was possible once the sky darkened.

Thanks for sharing that Dave 🙂 That is just the sort of thing that I would like to do with my Baader T2 Zeiss prism 👍

A lot more targets available at night though 😁

Thanks to a very kind loan from @bomberbaz (Steve) I am going to be having some interesting times comparing these zoom eyepieces for a while. I was hoping for some clear sky tonight but it's looking dodgy just now - must be the process of putting a scope out and lining up the eyepieces that draws the clouds ! 🙄 From right to left they are the APM 15.4mm - 7.7mm, the Baader Mk IV 24mm - 8mm, SVbony 8mm - 3mm and the Tele Vue Nagler 4mm - 2mm. I'm really looking forward to using the APM and the SVbony zooms that Steve has lent me, having read so much about them. I will also be comparing these with good quality fixed focal length equivalents.

Someone better let Zaphod know 😬

On the one that I have, the battery is held in the brightness adjustment wheel, underneath the round lid that has knurled edges and a slot across the top. Edit: as @almclshows above.