Saganite

You will Paul, for sure.

That's a shame Paul. We will have to have a meet up at the next one.

Likewise, roads are fine, and it is only a 14 mile trip, so I will be there early.

And so do I ! I did have a Tak FC100DC and optically it was superb, as is the Vixen, but looking at it on its tripod never gave me the glow of satisfaction that I feel when I look at my Vixen ED103s, the scope I bought upon selling the Tak. For me, in most things, it has to look right as well as be right, and this Vixen fulfills that brief perfectly...👍

Having had several OTA's with tubes cut down to accommodate binoviewers, it is normal for me to forget to put a tube extension in when in cyclops mode. The worst face palm slap though was spending some time trying extenders of various lengths , wondering why I could not focus and getting more exasperated and angrier by the minute, only to realize that I still had the OCS screwed into the nosepiece of the diagonal.😳🥵

Excellent Jeremy, can't type for laughing ..😂😂

My TAL RS looked just like that Paul, but here is an image of the TAL R, purple as Markse68 says...

Take no notice Iain, he is ...

A great session Paul until..... I hope you are ok. Look forward to seeing you at Kettering...

Persevered as long as I could this evening just to be out, but the seeing is so poor, diabolical in fact, it was not enjoyable. Still, must take the bad with the good...

I hope you get there Paul, it would be good to meet you at last..

He is one of the nicest people you could wish to meet, and very knowledegable .

AAAGH...Lovely Dave really lovely...Steve

I have sent the enquiry onward so hopefully you will have some answers before too long.

Hi Guillaume, A lovely find. I am a member of the Bedford Astronomical Society and I know Phil very well, in fact, he operates the big 16" Cass in our Observatory. pm sent. Steve

Crikey, the likeness is incredible !... I'll be there .

Lovely Dave. There is something special about VIXEN...🤗

The Nirvana eyepiece range is highly regarded and 16mm I find to be a sweet focal length, so I hope you enjoy it....

I finally received this lovely clicklock with adapter ring to replace the 2" eyepiece holder with the three screws shown in the picture. It is for me the perfect finishing touch for the 3" FT focuser,

I will second that. I had a Champagne Gold ED100 some years ago and I fitted a Moonlite focuser to it to do justice to the telescopes Objectve, a very fine doublet indeed. One of a few scopes That I have very fond memories of.

A good point Stu, and I should have said that I was binoviewing the Moon when I switched briefly to Orion , and never having captured E&F in this mode, I couldn't really expect it. I am confident however that I will get them eventually, with the bino... I did try my little zoom on them but the seeing simply wasn't good enough.

Superb set up and an excellent session Stu. The seeing here was not as good as I have had recently but still acceptably good for Lunar. I too spent some time on Hadley Rille and strangely I thought of you , wondering if you were observing it.... I could not get anything like the powers you were using though, and I could get neither E nor F in the Trapezium.

Had my first sighting of the new comet just now, with my 7 X 50's initially, and then with my 4" Vixen, which I had to dismount , along with the AZ100 from my Obsy, and set up on the tripod along the side of my house to be able to see it. Pretty impressive sight I must say and very pleasing to have seen it. I can continue now with what I was doing, but will plonk the tripod on the grass and do so from there. Not up for another dismantle and reassemble tonight...

At long last Dave ! They look as superb as I know them to be. Really chuffed for you ....

Beautiful image, well done !👍