John

2 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

... sometimes eyepieces just suit some scopes much better than others. 

And some observing targets too. Hence my excuse for having lots of short focal length eyepieces: "that is my Jupiter eyepiece, that one my Mars eyepiece, my lunar eyepiece is here next to my binary star eyepiece and that one my small planetary nebulae eyepiece, etc, etc" 😁

1 hour ago, Littleguy80 said:

You’ve got my curiosity with this one, John. What are the eyepieces that didn’t live up to your memories of them?

I'll keep quiet about those I think because some are the very ones that others are raving about in this thread and I have learned just how personal eyepiece preferences are 🙄

I had a TMB Supermonocentric 5mm for a while. I sometimes wish that I had held onto it for longer simply because it would probably be worth 4x as much as I sold it for, today. 

I've owned two 3mm-6mm Nagler zooms in the past and I do wish that I still had one of those. Back then (about a decade ago I had the last one) I didn't find them that exciting but I've now grown to really enjoy and value the 2mm-4mm version so I find myself hankering after another copy of it's 3-6mm brother again.

At a more reasonable cost level, I had a nice set of the shorter focal length University Optics "classic" orthoscopics for a while and sometimes wish that I had held onto those as light weight, low cost high performers.

A couple of years back I re-bought a Ethos SX 4.7mm having sold my previous one plus the 3.7mm version a couple of years earlier because I thought that my short FL Pentax XW's would fill that gap. Then started to miss the hyper-wide high power views. I guess I'd like Ethos SX 3.7mm again in all honesty but I already have crowded short FL sections in my eyepiece cases and those big Ethos take up so much room.

To counter the above there are a few that I've owned in the past, then re-bought, only to find that they did not suit me now as much as they had when I first owned them. 

If I do get another Nagler 3-6mm zoom I think it would be the only eyepiece that I have bought 3 times !

I have owned a few of the Vixen LVW's as well in the past but for some reason I don't miss those as much as the ones above. They were excellent though, I remember that.

"Regrets, I've had a few....." as "Old Blue Eyes" sang 🙄

Rather blustery here this evening. I had some nice views of Venus despite this with my skinny 100mm F/9 refractor. Now it's dark I'm just browsing around. Best result so far is spotting 2 members of the Hickson 44 galaxy group up in Leo's neck area. NGC 3190 and 3193 I think and about 80 million light years away. M51 and NGC 5195 were looking quite contrasty as well. A 100mm frac is not a deep sky tool of course but it does surprisingly well really 🙂

I used my Astronomik O-III filter earlier this evening ........ to observe Venus !

It worked rather well at reducing the glare and the views were still crisp even at 300x. The downside was a blue / green tint to the field of view and the planet. Funny how quickly I got used to that and forgot about it though 😏

I didn't see any surface features for sure but I felt they were close to popping out now and then so maybe there were just suggestions of them visible during the moments of best seeing (and in between gusts of wind !).

Clear but blustery winds here. Venus quite nice all the same at 225x 🙂

Skytee II is quite a sturdy mount with a light 100mm F/9 refractor on board.

The middle one arrived this morning and later I found the book in the local National Trust book shop.

Comparing these high power eyepieces will be very interesting 🙂

For me it is the O-III filter. I do use UHC's as well which are useful but I have found that the O-III, when used on a receptive target, has the most impact. It is worth getting a good quality filter (eg: Astronomik) because they seem to have more effective band pass characteristics and deliver more of a contrast enhancement than lower cost filters.

I find my O-III filters  (I have a Lumicon in the 2 inch size and an Astronomik in 1.25 inch) work well with my 100mm scopes as well as my larger aperture ones so they are not just for 8 inch or larger scopes, as it used to be rumoured.

It will be interesting to see what others experiences are 🙂

My avatar is the restored Cooke 5 inch. I think that quite a lot of Sir Patricks equipment went to the South Downs Planetarium but I don't know if that includes the Cook refractor.

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

Self collimating telescopes, simply push a button and lasers instantly align mirrors to a degree even the human eye cannot.

..... then takes a series of DPAC tests in red, green and blue light, interprets the results and sends them to your mobile phone 😁

If the results fall below a level defined by the owner, the instrument is automatically offered for sale on the Astro Buy & Sell website at 66% of the retail price ...... 

As per the title of this thread, each time I come across this picture of Sir Patrick alongside his Cooke 5 inch refractor at Selsey, it puts a grin on my face 😃

It was almost certainly a posed shot but it seems to capture the excitement and anticipation of amateur astronomy and observing the night sky.

Interesting to see that the scope is fitted with an eyepiece turret in this photo loaded with what look like vintage Swift eyepieces.

Makes me want to get out and get observing, but unfortunately it's cloudy again 🙄

20 minutes ago, Louis D said:

So what's keeping the 40+ countries in Europe from designing and selling their own high spec NV sensors?

I've no idea. Maybe they are ?

Is the availability of high spec NV sensors still impacted by technology export restrictions, primarily in the USA, or have things moved on from there now ?

I suspect that NV augmented instruments will become more common and more affordable. I wonder if the boundaries between observing and imaging will blur ? Equipment that connects seamlessly with mobile technology will continue to develop and become more widespread - after all mobile phones have, like it or not, become an integral part of most peoples lives.

I hope that simple observing will continue but I suspect that it will increasingly become a niche activity within the amateur side of astronomy.

I'd love to hear what the folks at FLO think about potential future directions - it must be something that is on their mind frequently 🙂 

I seem to recall Vixen being a little confused over the AFoV of their 42mm LVW with some of them having 72 degrees screen printed on them and others (most) 65 degrees. I think they did it deliberately to fuel astro forum discussions ! 😁

8 minutes ago, Jasonb said:

One thing a friend of mine raised, that I hadn't though of. With a Dob, the design gives you a low viewpoint, in terms of the mirror height. The primary is *much* lower that it would be with a Newt on a Mount, so if you're in a garden with a fence/wall around it, a lot of the lower sky will be invisible for you. Has anyone else experienced that? It's not like you can put a 10" Dob up on a table!

 

I have quite often experienced this as our garden is surrounded by fences, trees and houses. It is one of the reasons that I have a number of refractors on tall tripods.

With a number of the planets having been quite low in the sky over the past few years, I have found it much easier to get the refractors onto them, sometimes barely above the surrounding obstacles.

If I had a more open aspect though, the dobsonian arrangement would work just fine.

A decently designed dobsonian mount does a really good job of holding these larger optical tubes steady, even at really high magnifications. Goodness knows what sort of non-dob mount I would have needed to hold my 12 inch F/5.3 steadily at 300x - 400x - it would have been pretty massive, as well as costly I suspect.

6 hours ago, bosun21 said:

It can prove to be an expensive learning curve. I did the journey in incremental steps before settling on a full set of Baader Morpheus eyepieces and several orthos along with a low power eyepiece. This was a costly mistake and I wish I had just went straight to a quality eyepiece. Once I tried one Morpheus I had found what I was looking for, so I just added another and another over a period of time. This is just my thoughts on the matter, you may have an entirely different outlook.

I used a similar approach. The problem for me though was that it was the Ethos eyepieces that I found that I really liked 🙄

So costly finding out and then even more costly once I had found out 🤑

I've used an 8 inch F/6 Orion Optics newtonian on a Skytee II for a while and that worked quite nicely. I do wonder if a 10 inch, even if it is Orion Optics (which are lighter than the chinese equivalents), might be a little bit too bulky for such a mount though.

57 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

...Quite enjoying this mucking about with eyepieces.  It's interesting to see the differences they make to the experience beyond magnification.  Really appreciate the help and feedback.

I agree - because eyepiece preference is such a personal thing, if you can actually try a few alternatives out for yourself it really helps in working out what ticks your personal boxes. Thank goodness for the used equipment market ! 🙂

This review by the late Tom Trusock dates back to 2004 but I feel it still has some validity today. The comparison here is with the TMB Supermonocentric eyepieces which are regarded by many as some of the very best of the specialized high power eyepieces:

Cloudy Nights Orion TMB VS Nagler

I've owned a few of the shorter length Vixen LV's over the years and they are very comfortable and sharp eyepieces. I felt that the ones that I used put up a slightly dimmer view sometimes than, say, a conventional ortho of the same focal length. I have seen throughput data for some eyepiece ranges that seems to confirm that the LV's are on the lower side. Still very useable though. I did feel that the Vixen SLV's took the LV concept and improved on it. The 6mm SLV was particularly nice I seem to recall 🙂

$25 per gram is quite cheap for witnessed fall meteorites. Most retail for 3-4x that much at least so there are profits to be made for the dealers, if any is found.

The one that recently fell in the UK (Winchcombe) currently retails at around $2,000 per gram !

I found that moving to a 10 inch dob gave me a "looking deep with a generous aperture" feeling noticeably more than when I used to use an 8 inch. Not sure why but that is how I found it. The 10 inchers tend to be more fussy about eyepiece choice though. 

Moving to 12 inches delivered even more of course but, for me, 10 inches of aperture seemed to be a step over watershed into something which might last me a lifetimes observing.

Others will have different experiences, of course 🙂

I've found the tints in Iota Cass are very subtle. My 130mm refractor at high magnification seems to do the best job on this one (see impression below).

The defocus tip is good and really does make the colours of binaries stand out.

My mounts are all undriven and I LOVE wide field views 🙂

I paid about the same as a TOE costs new for my mint pre-owned Ethos 4.7 and as @Don Pensacksays, the 6mm Ethos is an amazing eyepiece.

The Nagler zoom is the exception of course but it's instantly variable focal length more than earns it a place in my eyepiece case 🙂

It will be interesting to watch out for the where next line of specialised high power eyepieces comes from - I think Vixen surprised people with the HR's so who knows what might be hatching out there 😀