John

23 hours ago, Roy Challen said:

I'm fairly sure all the Tal 100 fracs use 1.25" eyepieces. The Tal 1 newt used slightly larger (32mm?) eyepieces in the early versions, then swapped to 1.25 later on. Not sure when the transition was.

Glad you found a solution 🙂

I agree. I had one of the very early TAL 100's (1999) and that was fitted out for 1.25 inch eyepieces. 

On the 25mm TAL Plossls, those can vary depending on the production run. Optically they seem to be uniformly good but the field stop diameter did vary so the AFoV could be from 55 degrees down to around 48 degrees. 

1 hour ago, mikeDnight said:

The triplet may be appealing, but from experience I had in side by side comparison between my friends Meade 127mm ED triplet, which was a very nice scope, and my Equinox 120ED doublet, the triplet always took 45 mins to cool, compared to 15 mins for the doublet. Both were beautiful performers when thermally stable.

The ED120 doublets have been known to show less CA than some lower cost 127 triplets. 

I have a wooden tripod which, though not exactly the same quality as the new one that FLO are offering, closely mirrors it's design.

I haven't used it for a while but I do recall it being very stable with the mounts that I tried it with which included the Skytee II, the Ercole, a Giro III and a Vixen GP.

The design looks more slender in some ways than the Berlebach Uni but the wide leg / top bracket design gives a lot of stability and better vibration dampening / resistance. More than you would think from the weight / mass of the tripod.

To be honest I'd forgotten that I had this tripod until I re-read the FLO announcement today 🙄

Maybe it is the Venusian's tribute to Queen's 1975 hit song ? 😁

Great images by the way ! 

Is is an interesting idea but as far as I understand it, the exit pupil created by the scope / eyepiece combination is usually somewhat smaller than the eye lens of the eyepiece and exits the eyepiece though it's central axis. Given a typical low power eyepiece exit pupil of, say, 6mm diameter I'm not sure how one could hold this disk of light with both eyes at the same time ?

Maybe I'm missing something 

I will give it a try though, during the next clear night. I hope I don't end up permanently cross-eyed !

I have just weighed my ED120 Pro at 6.4kg which includes 9x50 RACI finder, 2 inch diagonal, tube rings and a 250mm CNC Vixen-type DT bar. The focuser on the scope is a Moonlite CF dual speed though which might weigh a bit more than the stock focuser.

I've been comparing the new Stellalyra dual alt az mount with the Skytee II which is still listed by FLO at £289.00 vs the £319.00 for the Stellalyra. It's not immediately clear what the differences are - is there something internal perhaps ?

I had a Tak 30mm straight through finder which came as the package that my FC100-DL came equipped with. I'm afraid that I lasted just one short session with it. The quality is excellent of course but the humble Skywatcher 6x30 RACI worked better for me in terms of comfort and the orientation of the field (which is a personal preference I accept).

The Skywatcher finder fits into the Tak finder bracket and, IMHO, looks fine on the scope. I don't have so much infatuation with the brand to prevent what I see as effective and sensible changes here and there🙂

20 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

Do you guys have any suggestions for good reading materials on telescope optics?  This is all fascinating.

This source is very often quoted or linked to on forums:

Amateur Telescope Optics (telescope-optics.net)

Most of it is way over my head though 🙄

14 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

The tripod looks remarkably similar to my Berlebach Report 312....

I think it is very similar to the tripod that William Optics and Baader used to have in their ranges quite a few years back. In the USA Oberwerk list something very similar as their TR3 model.

Many manufacturers weight quotes don't include tube rings, finder, dovetail, diagonal etc. It's worth checking if it's critical, to be 100% sure. My 130mm F/9.2 triplet weighs 9.3kg and that does include those accessories but it is not the lightest around (or the heaviest !).

Borg have the reputation of producing about the lightest refractors for their aperture class. I don't know if the 125mm is still made though ?

I don't actually use the finder to find fainter DSO's themselves of course. It is centering the star field that the DSO lies in that the finder is used for. For really faint stuff a wide field eyepiece in the scope provides the next step 🙂 

6 minutes ago, Naughty Neal said:

The Mount is a skytee 2 looks like a simple rebadging in name.

Telescope Services and Stellarvue have done the same with this mount so why not FLO ?

I use 6x30 RACI's on my 100mm and 102mm refractors. 9x50 RACI's on the 120mm and 130mm. I have a couple of RDF's that sometimes get used instead but mostly it's the optical RACI's which are Synta products either branded Skywatcher or Orion (USA).

The Vixen NPL 30mm that the OP already has is a decent low power eyepiece and gets 95% of the way there in terms of true field. Cost = zero 🙂

3 minutes ago, kbrown said:

I might be wrong but I thought that 3 (straight) vanes would produce 6 spikes since they're all pointing at different directions?

That is my understanding as well.

My 12 inch dob vanes were like this:

10 minutes ago, Adam_Wade said:

Thank you for the detailed explanation! Order has been placed.

The amount for the tripod and mount was 3x what I had originally planned, but that is why I also missed out on the T-Rex mount when it was widely available.

I've used early versions of the AZ100 and currently have a T-Rex. I can assure you that the AZ100 is every bit as good as the T-Rex, has more functionality potential now and is of course fully supported by the folks at Rowan.

Very interesting idea and one that looks relatively easy to try out 🙂

My 12 inch dob used curved vanes which worked quite well but I was only visual. 

The views through that, when the conditions allow, are going to be truly superb I'll bet 😁

Congratulations on the impending "beastly" arrival Stu 🙂

(plus, it will develop your muscles as well !!!)

3 hours ago, The60mmKid said:

It's so true that everyone should own a 5" refractor.

 

 

(But seriously: That's a lovely FC-100. Those can bring much joy.)

I guess "aperture fever" comes in slightly smaller doses where refractors are concerned 🙂 

28 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

I don't know what to make of tonight's forecast. BBC says clear, Clear Outside says 100% high cloud. Thankfully if it is clear the Tak only takes a couple of minutes to set up and get going.

The FC100's are great like that - they seem to need virtually no cool down time at all 🙂

My Vixen ED102 F/6.5 needs 20 minutes or so to give it's best. Thicker lenses and a fatter tube I reckon ?

10 minutes ago, Epick Crom said:

 

......Alas, it appears that it's companion mountain is un named (Grrr IAU!)

 

Nice report Joe 🙂

If the mountain is un-named, it's yours - you can name it Mount Joe 😁

You just need to get the I.A.U to agree to it 😉

2 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Going to be honest, I thought they were on sale because it seemed like a very good price, especially when you look at the price of eyepieces it goes toe to toe with.

Exactly.

35 minutes ago, Louis D said:

My understanding from reading up on CN about the Chromacor is that Valery Deryuzhin at Aries Optical (in Ukraine) was utilizing some exotic surplussed Soviet glass of unusual dispersion properties that isn't normally produced and is very expensive to have a new melt poured.  Thus, we're not likely to see them made again anytime soon unless a Chinese glass producer surpluses some after making a similar optical production run for their government.  I'm not holding my breath waiting, though.

There's a bunch of Chromacor reviews here for anyone wanting to read up on them.

I was wondering if today there are glass types that are more readily available that could achieve similar results ?

Putting the wavelengths of light back where they belong (or very close to it) seems preferable to filtering them out to me. And SA correction is improved as well.

At one point Istar were working on a similar corrector to the Chromacor but they didn't pursue it favouring a move to ED glass in the objective design instead. 

This thread is about filtering though so I'll shup up about correctors I think 🙂

FLO's price seems quite reasonable for such a well corrected, high performing and complex eyepiece. I guess I'm looking at alternatives such as the Delos and the XW's which seem to be in the same league.