nicoscy

No idea about that!

Ah, not many hedgehogs here. A safer place As for rabid star hopping, it will be over in a few years courtesy of light pollution. But I will always have EAA, some limited traditional eyepiece viewing and will probably enter NV territory as well. Plus solar of course

Hey, I am a rabid starhopper by night and only rarely do I do EAA. As for solar, I did buy a camera, but have yet to find the urge to skip the eyepiece and plug in a camera. Maybe in the future, maybe now. I get a full disk at 50x but I think this approaches the limit with the Lunt 60mm in terms of a balance of brightness and magnification. Of COURSE I will try more magnification and see where that takes me. I have a pair of ES 20mm 62°, which will give me a magnification of 65x and see how that goes.

We both work at nearly the same exit pupil, so we have more or less the same brightness. Obviously different resolution and image scale But since 32mm Plossls are so cheap on AliExpress, I ordered them to get slightly less magnification and more brightness. Just to see

Uh, you DON'T want to do solar viewing in the summer. However, we get a ton of opportunities in the winter, which is why I bought the solar scope in the first place. Plus if I can push myself, maybe plug in a camera and try my hand at solar imaging

Hi Mark, Really did not have time to test properly and I am losing interest in doing so, as what I see is perfect for me. I will test weather permitting (when it is not too hot to fiddle around in the heat), but I just don't see me becoming enamored with double stacking (yes, yes, famous last words)

I purchased a few months a Lunt 60 Tilt tuned single stack scope and until a few days ago, I was doing monoviewing. Great for proms, not so great on surface features, although using filters to dampen down the brightness did bring out some surface details. Discovered that simple eyepieces (in my case the Takahashi LEs) had a distinct advantage over more complex designs (e.g. TV Delites), in terms of the ever present red hue, providing a much better contrast. Enter a few days ago, my supercharged Zeiss binoviewers from Denis, with 26mm Plossl eyepieces and a 2.6x GPC, yielding 50x and an effective focal length of 10mm. The sheer amount of surface detail was astounding, hence why I am abandoning the double stack route. I am curious to hear if anybody else has had this experience or if you have any tips to share about binoviewing the sun which will improve the experience further. I did order a set of 32mm Plossl eyepieces to reduce magnification to 40x with effective eyepiece focal length of about 12mm. Anything I am missing? Any tips? Any similar experience set out there?

Also throwing in a Seben 7-24mm zoom with the Etalon. While my price is very fair, near offers will be considered!

Price updated to £1,350 - I finally found a recent sale to see how much these go for when sold pre-owned

And some photos :)

Hi All, Having tried both single stack and double stack with my Lunt 60mm, I decided that I am a "proms" kind of guy and do not need the Double Stack etalon for visual. Best I could find new is £2,172. I'd be happy to sell mine for £1,600 £1,350 inclusive of PayPal fees and shipping with tracking and insurance. Will upload photos later

Both now sold!

Time to throw in my 2c as I have the FS-128 and a TV Genesis (ancestor to the NP101). My first light with the FS-128 was on Jupiter and it was the most glorious of all first lights. I plopped in the focuser my Ethos 8mm and a 2x barlow and was happily exploring Jupiter for 15 minutes until the clouds rolled in. It is a fantastic scope IF you can find one and quite light for the aperture (albeit long, but your EQ-6 can handle it). As far as 5" for a visual observer goes, it is absolutely perfect. The Genesis is great for wide field views (up to 5° TFOV with a Nagler 31mm) but you do need the dark skies to support using low magnification, as the image shows a bright background if there is a lot of light pollution. Lighter and shorter than the FS-128, however of course the difference in aperture is immediately obvious (every mm counts when discussing these apertures). The TSA120 is a triplet and more corrected, but for visual this won't make a difference. More compact than the FS-128 and not much different to size than the NP101, it appears to be a suitable compromise, however, it takes longer to cool down (3 elements). Keep in mind that the flatness of field of the NP101 (or my Genesis for that matter) is equaled by the FS-128 due to the much longer focal length of the FS-128. At 1,040mm, the field is pretty darned flat to my eyes. One consideration not mentioned, is EAA and NV. The NP101 would shine for both applications due to inherent field flatness and short focal ratio. Something to ponder, as light pollution increases and we need to think about alternative ways to enjoy the hobby (hence my purchase of the Genesis in advance of a future purchase of NV gear, and for current use with my ASI294 for EAA when not doing small galaxies). If it were me, I would hunt for a well maintained FS-102 as a suitable compromise. Perfect blend of size, performance, price and focal ratio to cover all your needs in one scope. But any of the scopes you propose, would do as we are nitpicking. I do have a soft spot for the FS-102 though and if I could find a pristine one, I'd just buy it because.... FS-102....

Delite 18.2mm SOLD Delite 13mm NIB still available at GBP 170 including PayPal fees and shipping with tracking and insurance

Delite 18.2mm reserved pending payment