rwilkey

Hi Miguel, a warm welcome from me too. I also love refractors for double stars, planets and Moon, so we are very similar!

Hi Johnathan, a very warm welcome from me too, enjoy the wonders of the cosmos. Clear skies!

Hi Greg, for my refractor I chose a Vixen Porta II mount and tripod, my telescope has a 900mm f/l and the mount carries it superbly, and very steady, bit expensive though but the only advantage over the AZ4 is that it has slow-mo controls, found at FLO here, along with a picture of mine: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/vixen-mounts/vixen-porta-ii-mount.html

Hi Liam, the planets will still look like a pea, however, your image will be much more detailed and tak-sharp with the right eyepiece; make sure you get good quality ep's for the desired result. The moons of Jupiter will still look like bits of dandruff, but hey-ho, they are between 4 and 6AU's away from Earth. Where you will notice a difference is with Saturn's moons, in a 3" you will only see Titan, but in a 10" you will also see: Rhea, Enceladus, Tethys, Hyperian, Iapetus & Dione. Now that's not bad is it? Good luck with your purchase!

Hi Terry, welcome to the Lounge. Firstly, the 20mm 'erecting' eyepiece is mainly for daytime use. The circumstances you describe sounds like what we call kidney-beaning, ie. you need to get your eye in the right position to get a full view, you might be viewing too far away or too close to the eyepiece, so that the view appears to wobble or dissappear altogether. With the 10mm eyepiece you have to get your eye closer and this may explain the better view.

Hi Sunshine, should work a treat, weather not good your way but let us know how you get on.

I keep saying that too!

Hi Avtar, that's a good set-up you have there, you seem to have all bases covered!

Here is my pride and joy:

Hi Dave, getting my 'eyeguards' mixed up, what I mean is the rubber covering on the twist-up feature (which works perfectly well), unless this is just a odd one that failed quality checks?

I think I would choose the Vixen SLV for a better overall view and sharp as they come. The only pain about the Pentax XF is that the fold-up rubber eyeguard comes loose easily and comes off, otherwise the ep is quite good right across the field.

I have just bought the XW10 from a fellow SGLer and am looking forward to using it soon, loved your report, so thanks for that.

No, an AZ4 will not support it in my opinion.

Very surprised, the ED100 is a cracking scope in my opinion!

Just to make you more jealous, here's mine (a year after your post!):

Hi Gus, in my opinion the Semi-APO filter will serve your purposes better for reducing CA, I used to have one and it is quite good, but got rid of it when I bought an ED refractor.

Hi Nogbad, nothing intrinsically wrong with the Seben filters, they ARE the GSO ones, but rather annoying they don't have the wratton numbers on the side. That's some fine ep's you have there!

Hi Joves, I see you have gone for the Astronomik filters, I pressume for the CCD ones, myself, being visual only, have just completed my Lumicon collection and keep them within their outer boxes within my eyepiece case, sorry no photos.