nicoscy

Thank you all for the gentle encouragement, however my kidneys are still resisting me so I'll stay put, try the full set of Abbe Orthos which are on the way and then consider the zoom...

Sigh, link has been bookmarked. Let's see how long I will resist the sirens' call...

John, I have tried the Baader and Seben zooms, plus TV Delites and Tak LEs and the LEs won hands down. I wouldn't mind at all adding the XF zoom if it's that good! Can I trouble you a bit to expand on scatter and red hue performance of this zoom?

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?

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....

Making life easy on the road is very important. So, I will throw my weight behind the FSQ-85. Flat field, no messing around with spacing, proven performer. What are your thoughts on mount and tripod though? You still have to lug those around I'll recommend the Gitzo Series 5 systematic 3 section tripod which is lightweight and very stiff in case you need a tripod recommendation. As to mounting, what are your plans (mostly irrespective of the scope since you set a top limit of slightly under 100mm)? ----- Slightly different direction: You could even go for a smaller scope and thus lighter mount and tripod. The WO RedCat perhaps or even one of the TS offerings from SharpStar? If you go "light" enough, you can use the Skywatcher AZ-GTi in EQ mode - quite a compact option...

A finder base for Taks which is compatible with regular finderscopes / RDFs is this one on AliExpress and it comes in silver and black options.

Many just buy direct from Japan. However I do not know if TNR will repair the scope if something wrong / out of collimation. It has been discussed many times in other forums - this price discrepancy - and other than TNR apparently needing a higher margin, nothing else makes sense...

agulotta, Your best bet is to place an ad on Cloudynights.com but you need to be a member there for 30 days to do so, or get a paid account on Astromart.com (costs $15) and sell it there. FYI last one listed and sold on AM, was listed for $5,200. Always depends on condition and possible accessories. It may be worth sending back to Astro-Physics so that they can clean it up, collimate it and this will then ensure that you can ask for top dollar.

Aperture?

Sigh, unfortunately strength does not come into play once you slip and land on your back and your disks bear the brunt of it But back to John's queries: John, - Make sure you get a heated dew shield. Since you will be using external power (be it socket / power pack), you might as well get the rig 100% dew-proof! - Also in case you have the possibility to make it happen, get a tripod dolly for the scope and just roll it outside and secure the wheels.

Alan, it depends on "status" of back. With L4-L5 and L5-S1 disk issues, I can only describe myself as an idiot for purchasing the CPC800 and moving it about!

Stu, congrats on acquiring a classic! For the moon, a Baader Moon & Skyglow filter will clean up the image completely. Actually, whatever scope one uses on the moon, this filter will clean up the image on so many levels.

John, Years ago I had the CPC800. Your assumption re set up and alignment time is 100% correct, however I will caution you as to the weight of the mount and scope. You need to be very careful as the dual fork and scope combo is quite heavy. It sent me for a short trip to the ER for a couple of injections for pain and to relax the muscles, after I pulled something in my back trying to heft the combo on the tripod. If you are good with that, all you need is a dew shield and a decent power pack and you are off to the races. A 3 star alignment takes very little time (yes, you will be done in under 5 minutes), however, regarding drift, I will leave this to more knowledgeable folks to answer. Another use of this scope would be for EAA. You can easily fit the scope with the cheap but cheerful 0.63x reducer, or even the new Starizona 0.4x reducer and enjoy EAA. Or, just get the Hyperstar compatible version and you are down to F2, which permits imaging with an alt/Az mount. Many options, as long as your back is happy If in my future I enter into a healthy relationship with an obsy at the back of a nice house, I will set up a CPC9.25 myself for all of the above!

For vixen style finderscopes and Takahashi scopes, this one will get the job done...

Sigh, I have the APM branded one. Only managed to use it once as the sun is very uncooperative during the current solar minimum

A lovely Nagler 26mm T5, serviced by Tele Vue and now good as new. While I do not have any cans of baked beans at home (please my fellow astronomers, do not castigate me to the bottomless pits of hell for this transgression), in the spirit of having something to show image scale, here is the Nagler 26mm next to its bigger brother and some pickled cucumbers in vinegar !!!

Being an admin on CN, I can only offer my perspective here as a member of SGL. NV is part of the broad electronically assisted astronomy theme, but in a different sense. It is purely visual real time (not near real time) observing. The use of an additional piece of gear that enhances light is akin to adding a Hb filter to see more detail on say NGC 7000. NV and traditional EAA (the second using a camera to either allow one image to form over the course of a few seconds, or stack images for a period of time to observe it) are thus completely different. One is truly real time observing, the other involves a more complicated setup and is not real time observing (I do both "regular" observing with eyepieces as well as traditional EAA). SGL has 3 observers with NV gear at present. I do understand the admins wishing to create a separate section for EAA / EEVA, but NVers consider what they do as visual observing (which it is). So, they feel right at home discussing their observations in the observing subforums of SGL. Perhaps a separate NV observing subforum under the observing forum umbrella would be an adequate compromise to all? Admittedly, at CN we are still working on trying to find a proper balance that will keep most people happy....

No time to object anyway. Paul is recycling a book about recycling and this will create an infinite loop of recycling which will create a vortex, sucking in the entire universe and spitting out recycled material on the other side of the vortex...