Piero

Last weekend I fitted the original wheelbarrow handles to my redesigned 12" F6 dob. Now both telescopes are ready to be wheeled out from my garage with easy.

“What have you seen in a 5" Refractor, that you've not seen in an 8" newt?” I would do solar observing with a refractor. Apart from that, imagination..

It's possible that the myriad is a bit heavier. Ernest measured 854g (see link above).

My first 100s was a Lunt Engineering HDC. I liked it but was not hooked. At that time I used it with my 12" F6 dob and usually jumped from 30mm to 12.5mm. I have eventually been hooked by 100 deg eps after trying the 9mm and then 7mm APM XWAs. The scope this time is a 16" F4 + PC2 and a focal length of 9mm really feels optimised with this telescope. I decided to swap my N22T4 with Steve's APM XWA 20mm to have a "matching set". Glad this exchange happened! So for me the "dyslexic duos" are: 30, 12.5mm with the 12" F6 dob and 20, 9mm with this other dob.

Mm.. to me they seem very similar in weight and I'm sensitive to this in fact I don't like heavy eyepieces. According to Ernest, the APM XWA 20mm weighs 689g (page to scroll: https://astro--talks-ru.translate.goog/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1445&sid=62f5b3f4a78b02a2dc07dc7c8da24868&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_sch=http ). I just measured it too and got 695g. Is it possible that you didn't subtract the tare? @Littleguy80 FYI.

Okay, my main sets are: 1. rigid case: 4 X 2" eps + barlow 2. lowepro case: 3 X 2" eps 3. Pouch: 6 X 1.25" eps + Barlow I also have 3 Delos that I need to sell. In the pouch I have 2 other eyepieces which are kept for convenience but could also be sold. Rigid case and Lowepro case are used together in the field, so that I don't need to put eyepieces in my pockets. The selection of these depends on the telescope used. In Italy I have 3 eyepieces (stock plossls and 1 ortho) + Barlow.

Well done! It looks better than the original 👍

No, I have not. The mirror box of my 16" is only 11" deep. My 12" has a slightly deeper MB, but this has holes to the front and back at the level of the mirror surface (not the mirror edge!) to provide passive ventilation. Both mirror cells are based on Kriege's design, so the back is fully open. In either cases, the views become noticeable better (easily an extra 100x and more) as the light shroud is pulled about 3" up. --- Update: Here is a photo for the passive ventilation with the Kriege MC in my 12" F6. The mirror. Has it's lid (see dark circle). The counterweight balancing system has changed since this photo. My 16" is shown in my profile photo.

In my truss dobsons I pull up the light shroud about 3" from the mirror box. I find this to eliminate the formation of air boundary layer above the primary mirror as this cools down to ambient temperature. I also leave the fan behind the back of the primary mirror on, but at reduced speed. It's quite interesting to notice how much "poor seeing" is actually very local.

I observed a few galaxies in Leo last Saturday. I quite like the area around the "neck". If I remember correctly, stellarium calls them Leo quadruplet. Thanks @John for sharing that article. Like the author, my sky is bortle 4 and we use similar apertures. The sky was very steady. M3 was superb at 494x with my 16" dob. There wasn't a significant image break down at 714x either. Shame that the sky became foggy around midnight.

I agree with all what Stu said above. @Flame Nebula I certainly don't want to put you off, but have you already had some experience in imaging with your 80mm refractor? Reading your posts I suspect that you don't. Of course there is nothing wrong with this, but if this is the case, I would advise to approach this gradually. Imaging is a hobby in the hobby. Everyone in this forum appreciates astro images, but that's only the final result or the tip of the iceberg. Behind that there is a lot of effort, often long hours taking shots, processing, etc. Some people love all of this, others don't. Moving around an AZ6 is doable but I would not say that it is effortless.. and that's only one bit of the required equipment. What I am trying to say is to give it a go with a simple and cheap equipment to understand whether this is really your thing. Like you I was also interested in imaging when I came back to this hobby again, about 10 years ago. I researched half the Internet at that time regarding the equipment required for DSOs or planetary imaging. I decided not to press the button (and have no regrets about this) after mentally putting myself in the context of doing imaging. For instance, I work with computers all day and there is no way that I want to spend my free time processing data in front of a screen. I don't even like the idea of spending "at least" 30 min setting all up and then sitting on a chair watching and controlling my equipment in the dark whilst a lovely sky is above me. Let's not even mention the clouds coming and obscuring the target. I admire people pursuing this "other" hobby with pleasure. For me something like that is enjoyable as a job (e.g. as a way to get data for research), not as a hobby. As I said above, I really don't want to put you off. My advice is just to take it gradually, incrementing your knowledge and experience with time, and understanding whether you like it or not. To be honest with you, the same advice is also well applicable to visual observing and that's at least one order of magnitude simpler than imaging. Hope this helps. Piero

If wheelbarrow handles are fitted, moving the telescope around is not tiring at all. I leave my 16" f4 assembled in the garage and wheel it out in a couple of minutes. Seriously, it takes me less time to observe with this telescope than my 4" refractor.. This photo was taken from my previous house. The telescope lived in the living room and was wheeled through that door and steps with ramps. From that door I wheeled it for about 20m (each way). Your TV eyepieces with a coma corrector will work fine.

Looks very good! Enjoy your new focuser!

I reached the same conclusion with binoculars.. My eight eye is not as good as my left one and thankfully I'm "lefty" (..like Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco) .

I had the 5mm and 9mm Vixen SLV and thought they were very good, particularly the 5mm. In my opinion though, it is a bit unfortunate that although good they don't exceed in any particular feature apart from eye relief. The Vixen HR are better optically, and a lot of other eyepieces are much better in terms of AFOV. Eye relief helps, but one needs to be seriously astigmatic to need 20mm eye relief below 10mm focal length, particularly with 50 deg AFOV... The SLV would have been a boom if they had come out a decade earlier at least, I feel. In that case they would have won against TV plossls.