takurrito

Another thumbs up for the Nagler 13s from me. One of my favourite binoviewing pairs, especially for lunar observing. They provide the "looking out of a spaceship orbiting the moon" effect due to the immersion.

I'm not a huge fan of the TV plossls for binoviewing. I find the 25mm and 20mm are finicky for eye placement and cause blackouts. Very sharp on axis when you nail the eye placement though, with a warmer tone. I prefer Leica/Zeiss microscope eyepieces for the 25mm focal length.

24mm Panoptics are superb and provide the maximum true field of view on the Maxbright IIs.

18mm, 12.5mm, 9mm, and 6mm pairs of the Fujiyama Orthos are my preferred pairs for high power planetary viewing. The narrow field of view of 42 degrees doesn't bother me for planetary and I find when binoviewing, the field of view "feels" wider. 

Thanks for the great report. I've been likewise very impressed with the FC-76q. Long focal length scopes like the f/12.6 FC-76Q cuts through bad seeing really well and delivers sharp views when faster scopes reveal a boiling mess. 

I've done quite a bit of planetary observing with my 10" Meade ACF SCT and have compared it to the APM 140 (140mm doublet apo), and have had the opposite experience. My 10" showed a substantial amount more on Jupiter than I've ever seen through the APM 140 (or my 4" Takahashi). One steady night with the binoviewers, my observing buddy and I counted 14 distinct bands on Jupiter and detail within the GRS. 

I insulated my SCT with Reflectix, which almost eliminates the need for cool-down. There's extensive threads on insulating SCTs and it works as advertised. 

Thanks for the info! The ones I have seem optically very good, so it's more out of curiosity than anything else. 

On 16/11/2021 at 09:15, Highburymark said:

The trick with both Zeiss and Leica microscope EPs is to get German  examples, avoiding anything from China or Singapore, which seem to use inferior optics. Adapting them to 1.25” is easy - just used some tape and good quality writing paper to add 1.75mm to the barrel diameter. They now fit snugly into the binoviewer. 
 

How is it possible to tell if Zeiss or Leica eyepieces are made in Germany? I looked for a made-in stamp on mine but can't find them. 

Hi Patrick, I have the AZ-EQ6 and have never experienced the issue you described. I agree with Dean, it's probably an issue with the handset controller. If you can bring it to a local telescope store, I bet they will have a demo handset that you could use to determine if the handset is indeed the culprit. The wifi adapter Dean mentioned is worth a try as you could control the mount with the SkySafari app on your phone. 

Which side do I look through? My baby tak, named Tako.

My FC-76Q, a formidable 3" f/12.6 quadruplet that throws up razor sharp lunar and planetary views, named Takoyaki.

And the biggest of em all, Takurrito, the FC100DZ.

I absolutely can relate with your frustration trying to get the binoviewers to reach focus. I binoview with 4 different scopes (60mm, 76mm, and 100mm refractors, and a 10" SCT), and trying to remember which scope combo requires the 1.7 GPC and which require an extension tube can be an exercise in frustration. To make matters worse, my 60 and 76mm scopes can be configured with the Takahashi extender CQ 1.7x that screws in-between the objective and focuser, meaning that I have to try and remember how to set the binoviewer up in 60mm f/5.9, 60mm f/10, 76mm f/7.5 and 76mm f/12.6 modes. 

Just yesterday I sent @mikeDnight a message asking about how he was able to reach focus without the GPC on his FC100DZ, because I swore I couldn't reach focus with mine, but after his assurance I tried again and sure enough, I could reach focus with in-focus to spare! Clearly I confused my DZ with my 76mm scope 🥲.