jetstream

One astute member, Matt in Australia is perhaps the most experienced Tak/frac owner out there and with some of the nicest equipment Ive seen. He knows exactly what these scopes are capable of.... and his collection is a testament to the optical ability of them.Believe me if they didnt really perform, he would not own them. IMHO.

Great job! You are on the right path and the flocking wont bother the light throughput of your scope one bit. Your job will really enhance contrast and reduce the light blowing around the tube like newts do. In my case I used a special paint to paint the interior of the tube and flocked opposite the focuser. The secondary edge is super important to do and I used paint. When you look down the tube, anything that appears shiny should be painted flat black, including the tops of the secondary adjustment screws. Nice job, Gerry

Great report Michael! Id be keeping that super performing Starfield thats for sure! Congrats, Gerry

@stafford_stargazer I use the laser primarily to line up the secondary. A cheshire is used for the rest . The first step of the process is to use a sight tube to the set the offset and make the secondary round under the focuser. Most "cheshires" are actually sight tube/cheshire combinations and can be a bit confusing to use.IMHO

Thank you , I have an interest in optical testing and the fringe analysis programs. It is my understanding that there are vg ones out there and some that are deadly expensive. I'm trying to evolve a plan to keep my data as good or "hard" as I can to feed the program (s). Please keep us updated on the progress of your IF. Thank you , Gerry

Thanks Neil! The SW120ED is now a great tool as I intended it to be years ago. I couldnt line it up with just the cheshire and had to use the expensive Glatter laser.I had to buy a $450 USD Moonlight focuser for it to get it to work. Would you want to potentially go through this and spend the extra money? Or just buy a 100mm TAK and observe? Its hard to justify the Tak now but you never know...

Thanks Stu, I observe around the 300x range plus or minus quite a bit which is a great place to be.Going up that high in mag is fun and revealing and sure glad this scope is working. Its -22c this morning as I write and last night the 120ED kept up to the drop which is what I wanted the 100mm Tak for. The ability to keep up to the drop is a very important. Two areas were stunning to view last night and I spent a couple of hours on them. The Aristoteles and Exodus craters are a fantastic sight.

Of course. Can the optics of a telescope play a role in the bloat?

Seeing is unbelievably good right now, temps dropping quickly and its going down to -20c tonight. Some think that when temps drop like this there must be turbulence but this is not the case in the spring here usually. Yeah get a load of this 120ED story... The 120ED doublet keeps up to the fast temp drop much better than the TSA120 triplet. with the focuser aligned it turns out this scope has better optics than I ever could imagine. The Aristoteles and Exodus crater zone showed so much "boulder" strewn area tonight, highly contrasted and I could see the ragged, crater edges that also seemed to have "blast' boulders or structure in them. The whole area here looks extremely jagged with a huge boulder field around the craters. So the eyepieces and mag used... I first tried the NZ 3-6mm and wound it out immediately. This was such a good sign the Vixen HRs and 2.5XO were enlisted as my optics test eyepieces. The 2.5XO provided a stupid sharp view of everything and stunning on the mentioned area, same goes for the 2.4HR. Not too shabby at 360x and 375x... the 120ED wasnt breaking a sweat. Now what to do, well I'll show you in the images below. The barlowed 8MM Delos at 300x was a superb easy to use set up with the VIP/ barrel extensions and one 15mm ring. Now for the unreal situation: the 2.5 XO barlowed with one 15mm ring, plus the VIP EP holder body gave 562X sharp. Thats right 562x. I can hardly believe this either. That boulder field and crater area of Aristoteles held its definition at this mag. Maybe just starting to soften a tiny bit but Im not so sure either. Regardless this is a super performance out of this scope. I measured where I thought the FS was on the XO and I used .53" below the shoulder and the Delos is .25" below. This lunar session was fantastic! Gerry

@Rainmaker Simply excellent Matt. Love those binoscopes 👍 as well as the rest.

This is great to hear actually as I'm getting niggles that the XO might squeak ahead of the HR is thats even possible. Trying again tonight, looking good.

The NZ 3-6 is a great, handy and versatile eyepiece. I'll always have one.

This is interesting to me can you explain it further? Do all stars in an image bloat?

Imagers go to great length and expense to reduce star bloat and IIRC blue bloat. Scopes like the TOA130 are designed to help give nice tight stars.

Imagers spend much time and a whole pile of cash on their mounts to minimize a whole host of issues, such as PEC which only accounts for a portion of the error.check out the prices of a 10 Micron or A-P mount... the 10 Micron goes up to 27000 pounds... https://www.firstlightoptics.com/10micron-mounts/10micron_1454010.html the lunar/planetary imagers use "lucky imaging" ie the use of a dedicated (mostly) video camera and then use programming to choose the best frames and then stack them to reduce noise and so on. Without this whole process the images would be much worse than visual.

The more I learn about optics the more I realize how much I dont know.

Yes and I will forever

I just left the lens cap on, but took the small little section off and used that as a guide. I taped paper over this and then used calipers. Heres the deal- the calipers said I was off about 20thou but the cheshire said I was right on, so I left it. You could always cut out a circle of paper the same size as the dew shield fold it twice and mark the center. Tape this over the front and get the laser dot on it. The cheshire will then give you the real story from the back. I was lucky the lenses were lined up with eachother... really lucky. I always like to confirm anything with at least 2 tools, just me.

Well seeing as I have 2 great 120mm's now one for rapdly dropping temps and the other for more stable temps I figure I need an oil spaced 160mm triplet to fit in between the 120mm and 250mm range ie a TEC 160

I sure hope not... I'm not telling my wife that its working so well thats for sure!

Thanks everyone, Im pretty pumped to use this scope now. When I bought it I didnt have the Glatter laser and it just sat in the closet. Members might now see a flurry of 120ED threads lol My plan was to get it working good and then sell it... now what do I do?! I dont think I can Btw, @JeremyS and @dweller25 I felt a major ripple in space time hammer me over here from you guys when I mentioned I was selling the VX10. After using it the other night on the moon, first time in a while I backed out of the sale. Couldnt do it. My apologies to the prospective buyer, but I have a weakness for good optics. Thanks guys! I'm now getting a fleet of telescopes!! and its getting harder to get the wife to sign off on a new one But I have a new plan

You want to sell me the 1.6 and 2 ?My VX 10 could easily use the 2mm at 600x for lunar.

I would be willing to sign a pre order list and then if a go pre pay for the XO. The 2.5XO again confirmed its merit last night. A 5mm XO would be perfect for so much.... planets,faint galaxies, and espc small but highly detailed planetary neb in the 24". The 24" really and truly excels on PN's. Oddly I like the 24" for bright objects the most...

Following the advice of @John I re installed the Moonlight focuser after determining the original one was way out of alignment. The Moonlight was also off but very easy to adjust, which I did as shown in the other thread. Originally the laser dot was off about 5/16" in one direction and about 3/16" in the other roughly. I lined the dot up within maybe .020" of center. Seeing tonight was excellent. Long story short but the scope now takes 375x extremely sharp and with a faster snap focus. I used the 3.4mm HR at first, not enough so back for the 2.5XO and 2.4 HR. The scope handled this mag with these EPs with ease and could take more. Previously around 265x stayed good but not as sharp as 375x now... Yeah its really working and now I see what others were talking about regarding the vg optics. One eyepiece I should mention, that competes at the HR/XO level is the Zeiss 25.1-6.7 zoom/VIP. I finished up the observing with this one up to about 300x and it was like a razor. I never thought gross focuser alignment could degrade the views so bad, well I learned something new, thanks for the help John. Gerry