mikeDnight

I think Zoom eyepieces are always a compromise and good quality individual focal length eyepieces always give better performance. I don't think you'd need the range of Hyperions as tempting as that may be. I can only repeat what's already been said about the Baader Morpheus, as it is a spectacular eyepiece. My choice with £600 to play with would be a 24mm Hyperion, 17.5mm Morpheus, 9mm Morpheus and a 2X barlow to take that 9mm to 4.5mm.

Now that's just silly! But that 1.6mm Vixen HR with a 2X Barlow did show this!!

They are great lunar pic's Stu. They make my attempts look like they've been taken through a box brownie. FC100 at 30X and hand held i-phone. at 218X and at 463X

It's a fascinating feature, and so much sharper in the eyepiece than in the image. I'm glad I'm not the only observer who's nutty enough to throw 460X at the Moon.

What a spectacular lunation it was this evening, not only because of the detail but also because of the clarity of the view. The attached pics were just snapped with my mobile phone camera through my 100mm refractor. I hope they give at least an idea of how great the views were. As always, the view through the eyepiece was significantly sharper, but its only a cheap plastic camera lens, so hope you'll allow for the amateur attempt at hand held phone imaging. Feel free to add your own images if you've taken any. 25mm Parks Gold, X30. 3.4mm Vixen HR, X218 1.6mm Vixen HR, X463. Showing Rima Ariadaeus. But notice too the fine rima running parallel to the left of the main rima. This was laser etched in the eyepiece but sadly hard to see in the i-phone image.

Brilliant stuff chaps! It's really quite amazing what a phone camera can do. Below is my hand held snap from last night using a 100mm refractor and 3.4mm eyepiece. The seeing was on the wobbly side, but even so the eyepiece view was generally quite a bit sharper than the image below.

If spikes continue to occur, you could try rotating the eyepiece. If the spikes rotate with the eyepiece, its probably oil on the eye lens, which can be cleaned off using lens cleaner and a lens cloth from an opticians.

That's beautiful Stu! My seeing had a bit of a wobble on last night, but it was still enjoyable. First pic shows a blurry star alongside earthshine. 25mm Parks X30. i-phone hand held. 3.4mm HR, 218X, hand held i-phone

Very nice Paul! My seeing had a bit of a wobble on last night, but still enjoyable. ☺

What appears as CA can sometimes be caused by the eyepiece and not the scope, also, on bright objects like Venus or Sirius, atmospheric refraction can be an issue due to their brilliance and usually low angle. From personal experience with a 127mm version of your refractor, I can honestly say it was a true apo triplet with no visual CA and was a pretty impressive scope.

Very nice images there Stu. I took a look myself early evening but the seeing was like looking through a fast moving river. Max power I could use was 118X, so after half an hour I packed up. It was freezing cold too, or I'm getting soft!

I'm not an imager but I'd imagine the same applies to imaging as it does to visual with regard to star colour, and that's increasing the aperture. You need an FSQ106! It's only money after all!

We'd best not buy food then, as that's far more likely to come into contact with many more potentially contaminated people.

To be perfectly honest JOC, I think the Morpheus are classics in their own life-time, and are up there with both the stunning Pentax XW's and offerings from Televue. And in some ways I think they are a better eyepiece!

I've not used the ES 14 myself. I sold a 7.5mm Parks Gold to the gentleman and the next news he'd bought a FC100DF. I think most people struggle at first in one way or another with the Takahashi back end, with its adapters. It's all very old school compared to the more modern high end focusers I suppose. Anyhow, he phoned me last night to say he'd been able to get the eyepiece to come to focus. It did seem strange that a 14mm struggled to focus as its a middle of the range focal length. I could understand it better if it was either very long or very short. None of this has phased him though, as he's blown away by the Tak's performance on the Moon and Venus.

On the night I saw whatever it was I saw - presumably comet Atlas - I aimed the 4" at other things after sketching it, but the sky had already started clouding up. Being low down in a valley and not far from a river, I'm often plagued with mist's and thin cloud; and monstrous Pendle Hill a few miles to my north just seems to generate cloud. Consequently I couldn't find the object again in the 4", so I tried searching for it in the 10" F6 Newt', but to no avail. I regret now not letting the 4" keep tracking the target, as at least then I'd have been certain it was moving. Lesson learned - I hope!

It's a secret! Go on then, I'll tell you. Apparently the 2" ES 14 needed more back focus, so he retracted the eyepiece a couple of millimetres and it snapped into focus. Perhaps a spacer ring for that eyepiece would be the way to go, though it shouldn't be needed if Tak had designed the focuser properly in the first place. There's simply not enough travel in both directions, which is something that could so easily be resolved by shortening the main tube and lengthening the draw tube by a small amount. May be they do it on purpose so you buy Tak eyepieces? I still love Tak though! 💙

Problem solved!

Took this hand held pic of Crisium this evening, only to later find my i-phone's camera lens was filthy. Next time I'll make sure its clean and the image is properly focussed. The scope was a Tak FC100DC and the eyepice a Vixen 3.4mm HR. (218X ).

Just looked at my phone's camera lens and it was filthy.

Yet another clear sky, and this time it was a crescent Moon that moved me to set up the scope early. The seeing wasn't too good initially but still the detail was awesome. It's been a while since I last sketched the Moon, so I thought it would be a good time to do so. The evening was mild and I was in no hurry to go back indoors. Petavius was my choice of target but because of the unsteady seeing, I kept the power low at X118. After the lunar sketch I aimed the scope at Venus, which was higher than the Moon and not as badly affected by turbulence. Here I could increase the power to 218X and decided to make another sketch of the planet. Very subtle detail was visible even without planetary filters, and it was persistent.

I've just made a sketch of Petavius through the binoviewer with 2X barlow and 25mm Parks Gold. The view was glorious and the wrinkle ridges south of Crisium were spectacular. Then I popped in the 3.4mm HR and using my mobile hand held against the eyepiece took a pic of Mare Crisium. Eat your heart out Damian Peach! Next time I might even try and get things in focus!!

It goes like this: "Hi love, I've wone a free two week holiday in Cyprus - for one! See you in a fortnight. XXX". "Hi love, I'm back! You'll never guess what I won in a raffle while in Cyprus!"

Some rat bag talked Nicos' into not selling it. No idea who that could have been!

I've just had a question paused to me by a Tak FC100DF owner, but my scope is a DC and so not quite the same. He recently bought a brand new DF, but while using a 14mm Explore Scientific 2" eyepiece and a TeleVue 2" diagonal, found he couldn't obtain focus. Has anyone experienced this problem and if so, how was it resolved?