YKSE

29 minutes ago, surfindogg said:

I now spend more time observing than swapping eyepieces. ;-)

 

Noce More time observing is good way make best of the few clear nights

They have very good range of binoculars (even though many not in stock), and very atractive prices. Andrews' review mentioned their good combined postage cost. So when I saw the two pais of binos I'm interested in, I took the plunge. £12 postage to Sweden for the two, clearly among the best UK dealers for EU shipping.

Order placed on Friday, it arrived in Stockholm already on Monday! While the Swedish postal service took three days to send it to me.

It was well packed with foams inside around the bino pairs,  a tag of "fragile" on the package to reminder postmen for gentle handle

A very easy and smooth purchasing experience with microglobe, I can warmly recommend it.

Lovely looking scope, Stu. Is there any strengthening behind the focuser mounting plate?

To my engineering fixated eyes, the focuser plate will be most strained when viewing near zenith, a plate without strengthening looks a bit weak when using heavy EPs. Viewing targets away from zenith shouldn't have any issue.

I have travelled with my C8, 120ED, 80ED, 8x40 bino, 15x70 bino, and the eyepiece case, erh, that's all the visual stuff I have

40 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

 

I have used a 31T5 at an exit pupil of 7.56mm which worked, even if you might lose some light. When using the LVW 42mm in the same F/4.1 scope you get an exit pupil of 10.25mm. Assuming your pupils dilate to 7mm you are cutting down the light cone to F/6, so you would not really be testing the EP at F/4.2.

Thanks Michael, that's very good to know. so there're actually more, even though small, advantages in using EPs with large exit pupils

Nice case, Michael!

People do use EP with large exit pupils as here (10.4mm!), my guess is that with large aperture, light grasp is not an issue, while TFOV can be a more precious commodity.

Steve,

There seem to be a number of different Paracorr I, you can find out a bit more here

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/444841-confused-different-models-of-paracorr-1/?hl=%2Bdifferent+%2Bparacorr#entry6986374

There's another screw under the findscope you can adjust with a screwdriver.

My celestron RACI finder could be easily aligned with those two screws for a long time. One day it became quite off, not even losen or tighten the screw under could get it properly aligned. I put in a spacer between the screw and finder to get it work.

 I read these forums ALLOT, including cloudynights and heaps of reviews whenever I can and you guys helped lots in deciding what to get. I think that I know now a fair deal now about pros and cons of different designs for both optics and mounts but in terms of real observing experience,

That's an excellent way to learn all these thing IMHO, you get to know all the different oppinions from variaty of time point of different users, much better than post a simple question like "what's best eyepiece", where you'll only get some answers available at the time, and it saves you time and money from trying out different eyepieces, unless it's part of your interest or work.

YKSE, how do you like the NIKON's? I saw those on the website when I bought mine although you got the superwides. I notice they are a little cheaper ;-)

I still have not had chance to give mine a decent workout due to holidays and appalling weather. Most frustrating

Steve,

I got these Nikons when Swedish kronor was 10% stronger to Yen then

They're quite good to my eye, Vega is as pin sharp in the edge as in the center in 120ED, very good stray light control (Moon is invible outside field of view), scatter light on Jupiter is in level with 18mm BCO. very little latteral colour seen in daytime, clearly less than MaxVisions; very little rectilinear distortion, the slight barrel distorion is only seen in 17.5mm pointing at telepost in daytime. Angular Magnification distortion in these EP does make splitting doubles in the edge more difficult, this is none issue for me though since I prefer to observ on-axis where aberrations are minimum. The extra field is good for star-hopping, the distortion type (AMD) suit me better to match star patterns with star chart.

17.5mm SW has 26mm ER! it's quite smaller without the eye cup:

Using 17.5SW without eye cup, you get the same floating effect which 28mmRKE is famed for, but its much easier to hold the view in Nikon.

Edit: forgot to mention it, they're par-focal, and par-focal with Pentax XW too

This my first yearly update of the case, lt looked like this last time, and here is it, after over 20 trips to dark site, nearly 300 new DSO (over 100 galaxies among those)

The updgrades(new additions):

Considering the discussions of undercuts, here're pictures of barrel shapes of mine:

With safety undercut:

Smooth barrel:

Bevel barrel:

Worryingly, I'm moving dangerously close to the point when I can say I have all the eyepieces I need.

Nice collection  and yes, you're just one or two holes away from pronouncing the magic words - about this case   

not lookin hard enough...its in there!

My bad , had only looked at wrong position, not following Al's recommendation just didn't come across my mind.

The updated info for this handsome triple is about 300mm long and safely above 2kg

I win!

Even without the paracorr which usually sits inbetween?

I'd like to see that Steve

I thought the Nikon came with some form of tele extender which turns it into a 12.5mm ?

I think the EiC-H14 comes with HW 17 changes it to 14mm, and the EiC-H10 comes with HW12.5 changes it to 10mm. As the EiCs have only two lens, and change focus position as shown here, they are more barlows than tele-extender.

Nice collection, Kerry

Very nice Kerry

I thought that the 30mm was a monster of an eyepiece. But next to the 20mm 100° ........

Paul

And I have been under impression that Delos' are long....

Very nice and neat case there  , Shaun

Those are serious good glasses  Have you been able to get a first light with L-O-A 21?

Ian,

I'm thinking of binoviewing with heschel wedge, therefore shortening the light path is important.

I've checked with Baader support about the BDS, light path is 12+58+7+4.9=82mm with the short eyepiece holder.

The stock focuser measures about 122mm long without taking it loose, so the light path seems to be something up to 30mm shorter with BDS. I'll be very interested in your measurement.

Ian,

Can you help me with the focuser light-path difference of BDS vs SW crayford? Thanks

Nice to know that using camera for measurement, do you know how the quantify the measurement? any link to this measurement?

As to RD and AMD, my understanding is slightly different than yours, with AMD, the straight lines will keep straight across the field of view, but the spaceing between the lines gets narrower and narrower closer to the edge. While with RD, there're two types of RD, pincushion distortion where straight lines close to edge look like )(, and barrel distortion, where straight lines close to edge look like ().

RD and AMD are part of Geometrical Distortions (GD), Chris Lord has more detailed discussions about distortions here, what I can understand is that GD depends only on FOV, the wider FOV, the more GD, you can trade between RD and AMD, but you can't reduce the total Geometrical Distortions.

The fact that most astronomical eyepieces choose to correct AMD, is because AMD will cause close double stars smear together close to the edge, not because of astigmatism, also there are no straight lines in night sky to show this distortion, while in daytime use, AMD is more preferred because we have too many familiar staight lines in the view. You can increase GD (AMD or RD) to correct astigmatism (some Nikon eyepieces has more AMD than calculated total GD for correcting astigmatism), or you can increase field curvature to correct astigmatism (like some Pentax eyepiece).

Ruud,

Can you show your formula for calculation field stops? How do you estimate how much Rectilinear in an eyepice? I mean in term of measurement, not the calculated geometrical distortion.

Thought I still have a few bits of old glass to look through.

DPP_0007.JPG DPP_0010.JPG DPP_0009.JPG

Alan

That's some seriously nice old glasses, Alan.

DPP_0001.JPG

This is what can happen when you really take dieting seriously.

Alan

My approach is a little different, watch the weight all the time

Nice updates Vox45 and Indibush , kee using your gears, read more and take your before each and every update, only you youself can take best care of your money.

 I still don't know how I slipped the Solar Spectrum H-alpha filter + ERF + Baader TZ-4 telecentric + Vixen Ortho under the radar. Not exactly small kit, and came in a new case too

Maybe you accidentally looking at some shinny shoes when you took in the package?