F15Rules

I agree, they did remind me of both the Ultima LX (a half decent range IMO, I owned and liked the 13mm and 22mm), and the conical top reminding me of the Skywatcher LET (a pretty poor range in my opinion, unworthy of the SW ED scopes it was often bundled with).

I enquired about this on UKABS as it was described as a SWAN eyepiece, but not like any WO Swan I've ever seen, so I didn't pursue it.

If it is similar to an Ultima LX it should prove a decent bargain

Let us know what you think!☺

Dave

1 hour ago, tomato said:

I’m not setting the alarm at 06:45 any more

...neither am I, but I still find my body clock waking me up most mornings between 6.30 and 7am..do you find that?☺

Dave

Hi Roy,

Thanks for your kind comments, I somehow missed your reply until now..

As you probably gathered, the Zeiss went to a new home and I met the new owner at a halfway point on the road to hand it over about 3 weeks ago.

I am now getting used to the idea of being retired and Sunday evenings are now strangely happy and relaxed affairs!😀😀.

Dave

For the overall combination of affordability, reliability and great engineering, I'd pick the Vixen GPDX.

Simply lovely to use and look at, and such good value as a used purchase.

Shown here with my Moonraker 80mm F15 ☺.

Dave

Congratulations John, a nice take on a legendary mount.

As you say, very smooth, lightweight and well engineered. An RA drive will finish off the setup nicely, great for high power comfy observing😀.

Enjoy!

Dave

The Pentax is a great zoom eyepiece, as good or better in build as a Leica which I have also owned (but not nearly as wide a field as the Leica).

If you think of the Pentax more as an 8-20mm range in practical terms, and add a decent 22mm to 30mm wide field fixed length eyepiece for low power, you might not need any others.

If you want to go higher magnification than the 8mm can give you, just add a decent 2x Barlow lens such as Baader Q or Baader Hyperion zoom and you will find you have a very good high power 4-12mm zoom as well.

Contrast, sharpness and colour rendition are as good as the Pentax XL/XF fixed ranges, but with a less wide FOV.

Hope that helps☺

Dave

My son in law is in Chile for the event as part of his job at Exeter Uni (he got his PHD in Astro Physics back in December and is now doing post-doc work).

He is somewhere in the Atacama desert as we speak I believe, but not heard from him yet.. he was very excited though, as his work is mainly theoretical, so the opportunity to get some real life observing of a total eclipse was quite an event for him. I told him I was VERY envious of his all expense paid trip, even though it took him 2 flights and almost 24 hours to get there! 😊.

Dave

FS128 in "first quarter" pose back in February when it got properly dark..😁

Dave

6 hours ago, John said:

I think the version of the TAL 100 that Dave has was followed by the version reviewed here by Astro Baby:

http://www.astro-baby.com/reviews/TAL 100RS/TAL 100RS Review.htm

They went back to the TAL EQ1 mount and wooden tripod for that one.

I've owned a couple of the earlier ones known as the TAL 100RT. These had a 1.25" only focuser, metal dew shield and deep purple lens coatings:

 

John is correct, I owned this scope and sold it to Mel (Astro Baby) some years ago. Great scope. (I owned at least 6 of these over the years).

The weak link on the 100r was the focuser with only about 25-30mm if travel and not the smoothest 

The purple objective though was excellent and a shade better than the RS one IMHO. But the RS had the (then) new 2" Crayford focuser which was streets better than the 100r unit.

The Tal EQ mount was better than the EQ5, but quirky (eg, had limited manual axis movement without resetting). Built like a tank though, and a great wooden tripod. I find wood a better tripod material than steel.

The supplied EPs were mixed. The 6.3mm is not great, with poor eye relief. The 9mm I never used (I had a 10mm which was ok), but the 25mm was/is fabulous- think Tele Vue quality optically.

Both R and RS are great achromats so whichever you have, just enjoy it!😁

Dave

I found this really nice miniature handmade model of a 19th century Comet Seeker 4" refractor,  made in the USA by Barry Crist.

It's made from solid wood and brass, and the mount can move in various directions.

See here for more info on the maker:https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/427023-barry-crist-models-are-finished/page-2

Just lovely craftsmanship ☺.

Dave

Thanks for all the kind remarks guys☺. It's starting to sink in now, having been a bit surreal to begin with. I'm certainly looking forward to some longer late night sessions from autumn onwards.

Stu, I've had the Moonraker for almost 5 years.. it was I believe a prototype made by Mark at Moonraker originally for Neil English. It's based around a Towa Topic (aka Meade 339) 80mm F15 optics set, with an aluminium tube made by Mark and what I think is a Crawmach USA dual speed Crawford focuser. It's very good on doubles and the Moon, and at F15 has great depth of focus, so getting a good focus at high power is much easier..

The dewshield is a beast and weighs a good deal so I tend to remove it when observing.

Dave

I have today signed an agreement with my employer that will mean that I take early retirement on Friday 28th June ...

I knew this was on the cards around a month ago, but couldn't say anything definite until it was signed and definite. That happened today.

I have been selling off quite a lot of items recently in anticipation of this, since my income will drop dramatically before long: I make no complaint about that, as I need to "cut my cloth" for a couple of years until my state pension kicks in. Anyway, this evening being such a lovely warm evening, I decided to photograph my Zeiss Telementor II ready for sale shortly, and while I was at it, I thought it would be nice to take a couple of photos of all my 3 currently remaining scopes together, hence the topic title.

I think they look rather nice together, although very different scopes: from left to right, Takahashi FS 128 on Tak EM2 equatorial mount with RA Drive, Moonraker 80mm F15 achromat on GPDX mount with Dual Drives, Telementor II on original Zeiss mount, (dates from 1989) with manual dual drives.

I will be sad to see the Zeiss go, it's a fabulous little scope that punches well above it's weight, and is in wonderful condition for it's age. But I will be keeping my Tak and the Moonraker and that will help console me for having to move the Zeiss on.

Thanks for looking

Dave

On 15/06/2019 at 20:38, RobertI said:

Good Lord!

Yes, that's definitely the smallest can of beans I have ever seen!!

Dave

That's lovely Stu, congratulations. They really are great scopes.

My later 1989 Mk II version seems to behave more like an 80mm rather than a 63 mm! The optics have a wonderful polish and figure and are razor sharp with very tight stellar points..just great on doubles and Lunar etc.

I agree with Helen, the mount is also excellent: very well engineered, (actually maybe over-engineered, but that helps deal with the longish tube), and extremely smooth on each axis.

Something that is not always realised is that the mount can also be used in both equatorial and altaz modes (see photos below)..a simple Allen key adjustment, done in seconds.

I can also use mine natively with binoviewers by removing the long black focuser extension tube and replacing it with a Baader  Zeiss-T2 adapter to give much more in-focus.

All in all a wonderful scope. Sadly, mine has to be sold soon as part of my imminent  enforced early retirement, but I shall miss it.

Thanks for sharing Stu 😊.

Dave

On 17/05/2019 at 09:32, Geoff Barnes said:

It suddenly occurred to me that when the next Carrington Event happens (as it surely will one day, resulting in the end of all electrical power and the consequences that go with that), us astronomy nerds would finally all have Bortle 1 skies at last!!! 👍

 

...and our imaging friends would have to turn to the "dark side" of visual only - literally!!😁

Dave

A few weeks back I found a very nice Carton GEN 10.5mm eyepiece which I described in this thread..

Since then, I have been able to buy a 28mm version of the same eyepiece (both 1.25" barrels) and now a very nice Carton GEN zoom eyepiece (7-21mm).

The zoom is very very solid, a good heft to it, with a nice smooth action. Just looking through it, it seems to open up to more than 60 degrees at the highest power setting, but I will check against my other wide field eyepieces to estimate what it is actually delivering in terms of FOV.

This looks as if it was originally designed to be a spotting scope eyepiece, like many other zooms, and is marked with 20x, 40x and 60x calibrations.

It is clearly new old stock - I have never seen anywhere either the 28mm or the zoom, so they must be pretty rare. There was also a 16.8mm version and a 2" 34mm version, and the fixed focal length range was also available branded as "Orion (US) Megavista - although I don't think Orion had the 28mm in their range.

The fixed eps range from 55 degrees for the 28mm to c 70 degrees for the 16.8mm and 34mm. The 10.5mm is almost identical in field to my Pentax XL 10.5mm, ie 65 degrees, and is just as sharp out to the edge as the Pentax.

A few photos of the newly arrived zoom are shown below 

Dave

On 14/05/2019 at 19:48, Stu said:

That's a lovely setup John, would have been tempted myself if I didn't already have a nice 4" scope. I'm sure you have many enjoyable nights with it.

Yes John, many congratulations, looks great! 

Enjoy 😀..

Dave

How about a Pentax XW 7mm John? A cracking eyepiece in any scope and a nice 70 Deg fov..ortho sharpness and contrast but far more comfortable to use.

Another great option is the Morpheus 6.5mm. Even wider FOV at 76 Deg and also very comfortable in use.

More expensive than the other options above, but you WILL see the difference😁.

Dave

New Skywatcher 6x30mm RACI finder for use with my Tak FS128 and Vixen ED103s scopes.

I have an SW 9x50 RACi on the Tak but sometimes it would be useful to have a wider FOV (7deg for the 6x30 vs 5.5deg for the 9x50, I believe) and also less faint stars visible when hunting some objects from a star atlas.

Had some trouble finding one of these at UK stockists, but eventually did succeed and ordered yesterday afternoon from 365Astronomy, arrived well packed just now, 21 hours later!  Thanks to Zoltan and team

Dave

36 minutes ago, Saganite said:

That is a major upgrade to the optical system, it can't fail to improve things......,congratulations.

Agree with Steve, the Baader prism is a top drawer piece of kit😀!!

Dave

On 10/05/2019 at 10:34, StarryEyed said:

What is that eyepiece exactly? 

It looks very like a Skywatcher Aero/TS Paracor etc, but has the text "Ultra flat field" on it?

Dave

Wanted one of these for years..will nicely complement my Sissy Haas volume

I also received (separately) 2 nice Vixen NPL 30mms for binoviewing

Dave

A few weeks ago I posted details of a Carton Japan 10.5mm eyepiece, which I like very much based on one good session so far.

Well, I found another one, a 28mm, which I didn't even realise existed! It arrived today and is shown below next to the 10.5mm.

Interestingly, the eye lenses look identical size on both eyepieces. The 28mm has, I believe, a 56 degree fov compared to the c 66 deg of the 10.5mm. They look very similar buildwise, and clearly came from the same factory.

The photos show both eyepieces wearing winged eye guards, which I like to observe with, and the original circular eyecups are shown to the side.

I know there was also a 16.8mm, also branded as Orion Megavista, but as yet I haven't been able to find one of these.

Finally, the seller, from whom I bought both of the above eyepieces, contacted me to ask if I would be interested in a Carton 7-21 zoom eyepiece!

I said yes please, and I should receive it in the next week or two. Another product I have never heard of, so I will be very interested to see how this one performs.

I will report on performance in the eyepiece forum once I have tested them properly?.

Dave

58 minutes ago, Piero said:

That eyepiece should work pretty well with that scope.

Lovely eyepiece Jeremy & Piero..I have an LVW 22mm and it is superb?.

Dave

Vixen High Resolution (HR) 3.4mm eyepiece. Beautifully built and NO undercut!

I've been getting some very nice higher power views of doubles lately, and I think the FS128 can go higher with the right eyepiece.

I just had to try this beauty, courtesy of Mike (iPeace), and wonderfully packaged as always. It's like new. Thanks Mike!

This will give me x305 native and x489 with a 1.6x barlow nosepiece on the odd really steady night.

I also have in mind more Lunar viewing and Jupiter/Saturn later this year ?

Dave