mikeDnight

I think the Altair version, which is made from stainless steel and very heavy, is the only brand that is unblackened. It's something i didnt even think about checking when i bought it. Performance wise however, it really is a very nice eyepiece. Great door stop too!

I really like the Hyperion 24mm. A number of years ago, paulastro and myself, along with another observing buddy named Derek, were observing with our refractors and comparing the legendary 24mm Panoptic with the 24mm Hyperion. Derek prefered his 24mm Panoptic, but after comparing the two eyepieces for quite some time, Paul and I felt the 24mm Hyperion was the nicer, more comfortable eyepiece to use. Star images in the scopes being used appeared sharp across the field in the Hyperion and the views it gave were every bit as good as the Panoptic but with greater comfort. I've since owned my own 24mm Panoptic, but it didn't win me over and I sold it on.

The first time I looked at the Orion nebula using my 16mm Masuyama I was struck by two things, 1) just how sharp the on axis star images were, and 2) just how black the black nebulosity was. To my eye the star images on axis had a noticeable, though subtly sharper appearance compared to my 17.5mm Morpheus which itself is a wonderful eyepiece. And the contrast was exceptional. The only drawback is that it's a five element eyepiece with an 85° field, and so the edge of field sufferers in lower F ratio scopes. Distortion aside, the 16mm Masuyama is a great eyepiece if on axis performance is important. My favourite low power Televue eyepiece has to be the 35mm Panoptic. In my 101mm SDF my 31mm Nagler gave a full 5° field, but the outer field was not sharp. In contrast, the 35mm Panoptic gave a 4.5° field that was sharp right to the edge. The 35mm is considerably lighter, and to me at least somewhat more comfortable to observe with. The wider field of the 31mm Nagler was rendered pointless due to the distortion and I eventually sold the 31mm in favour of the 35mm. I love Pentax XW's, especially all from 10mm to 3.5mm. Didn't care for the 14mm much, though the 20mm was pretty nice on deep sky. Having said that, i think the 17.5mm and 12.5mm Morpheus are up there with the best. The mom Morpheus is a great eyepiece too! My favourite high power eyepieces are the Vixen High Resolution's. These are not only optically, but mechanically outstanding, and very comfortable to use. Even the 1.6mm is awesome when conditions allow for it.

I thought someone had slung mud on my windscreen this morning. It was you wasn't it!

I'm pretty sure I can see the Crepe ring within the anse when I zoom into your image Chris.

Thanks everyone for your kind comments. ☺️ Richard N and Dweller25, its almost certainly local seeing that's the issue, and with Saturn still relatively low and with the rings only at around 7° tilt, its challenging If there's residual heat or turbulence. I was using a Maxbright binoviewer, which helps for me at least, to tease out the more subtle detail. Fortunately for me, Saturn was in a regular sweet spot for planets when viewed from my site. Some other regions of the sky, particularly west of the meridian, are far less generous in terms of definition. I'm pretty confident the DZ will show everything depicted in the sketch Dave. I'll have to compare the DZ and give it a chance to shine. Hi John. I've observed Terby's White Spot many times over the years, though its been a long time since Saturn has had my attention. There are some comments about it in Alexanders book SATURN, and in SATURN and how to observe it, by Julius Benton if you have either in your personal library. Alexander's book is a real classic, but i found Bentons book to be very good too. Last night the Crepe looked like a very subtle smokey inner edge to the inner B ring and could have been missed if the image hadn't been in sharp focus. It's worth keeping an eye out for it. I couldn't see it on my previous session with Saturn on the 24th August, yet in my mind the planet appeared better then than last night. Crazy hobby, I'll never understand it!

Not really as exciting as it might sound as Terby's White Spot is nothing but a contrast effect, but at least it made you look.

Truly superb Stu. Reminds me of L.S. Ball's awesome sunspot drawings from over a century ago.

It could be the gap in observing, or the gap between Saturn and the Moon? Or may be its the Cassini division, which is also a gap, or perhaps it was the Encke gap? John was using a Tak after all!

I understand your feelings. I think the best way to observe the Moon is to decide on a little project. For me, I love the challenge of tracing rilles at the limit of observability, and find that using a binoviewer greatly improves the sensitivity of my vision. I do like to sketch what I see but find that with the Moon, even the simplest of targets rapidly becomes a formidable task even in a small scope. So I decided to study crater floors and try to ignore the terrace walls. It's amazing what fascinating detail is visible throughout a lunation. And another pet interest for me is hunting ghost craters. These are craters that have been largely or even totally submerged beneath the basalt lava planes. Their ghostly outlines can often be seen when the high Sun lights up the plane, and you get an idea of how the surface appeared before the region was filled with lava. The Moon is not monotone in colour either, and at low power when near to full, the subtle differences in colour tone can be nice to observe. Also, around impact craters with bright ejecta you can at times see an orange hue depending on the lighting, which is apparently caused by tiny glass beads which are a product of the impact. And then there are Clangers!! Here are some of my observations of crater floors - As with this observation of Cyrillus, it can be helpful to ignore the surrounding terrain as the task can become too daunting. I'm not skilled enough or fast enough to draw several features at once. Keeping things simple is difficult as there's always far too much detail to draw. Here I set out to record the basic outline of the Alpine Valley but the real purpose of the sketch was to show the central rille along the valley's length, and Elgar's rille crossing the valley width. Rays can be fun to trace under full Sun. And interesting shadows can offer spectacular sights as well as reveal the caldera pits in many of the lunar domes.

My 100mm F8 would once of a day have been considered a "wide-field" scope, and although many today wouldn't consider it such, it still does a bang up job at delivering rich field views. Then there's the baby 72mm, which gives lovely wide-field views.

A very sensible and enjoyable consideration of basic eyepieces. It's nice to hear someone who values their positive qualities rather than condemn them before actually using them.

Let's hope you're successful and she doesn't ask for the Pony on the top behind. 😲££££££

I haven't looked at this simulation, but have seen several in the past. I really struggle to see the point in such things as they never match the reality of an eyepiece view, and can be misleading. I've always felt that under reasonable conditions there's much more on view than simulations seem to suggest, and so have to ask "how are such things helpful?"

I think this has to be as simple and portable as it gets, but insanely effective.

In a word John, No! I find the DZ a touch cooler in tone, but as for planetary performance I'd say there's little if any real difference. I felt the DC gave a warmth and vibrancy to the belts of Jupiter that I really enjoyed. I saw great things through my DC both lunar, planetary, and deep sky. The only drawback with the DC was its weaker focuser, so I'd suggest the DF as the stronger option. As far as being apochromatic, I can only say that I was very happy with the DC even though the DZ is much better corrected according to the graphs I've seen. I think youd see more CA produced by a wide angle eyepiece than either the DC/DF or DZ objective will show. Both scope will give you piercing star images at 500X on a steady night, so I doubt you can go wrong whichever you choose. I've never taken my scopes on a plane and couldn't say what's the best way to go. I will say however that the DZ retractable dewshield only retracts by 80mm as the cell is hidden within it. Personally I think it's more of a marketing gimmick than something of real advantage, and I much prefer a fixed shield. The dewshields on the DC and DF unscrew easily as do the focusers, so they can be considered aircraft friendly. I think Stu has used them this way. Hope this helps!

It's the first sketch of Saturn with this 128. I've made a few sketches of Venus too, and a couple of tiny Mars. Now it's a more suitably mounted I'll hopefully get more opportunities if the seeing is good. I now need to be mindful so as to allocate equal time to both my scopes. I don't want any tears!

For the first time in what seems to be ages, Saturn appeared reasonably crisp, and for the first time in ages I was able to sketch some detail. Not a patch on what it looks like when high in the night sky, but beggars can't be choosers!

It's a nice clear sky over Burnley tonight, with the Double Custer and M31easily seen with the naked eye. I swept at low power through Cassiopeia and Perseus, then had a quick look through Cygnus. There was a clarity to the view that wasn't there a couple of days ago, so I turned the scope to Saturn, which two days ago was simply not worth looking at. Tonight however, despite being far from excellent, the view was good enough to show a strong equatorial belt, darkening of the temperat region and an even darker polar hood. A & B rings were nicely displayed but no sign of the Crepe ring. The planet was still low and troubled by intermittent turbulence so the Crepe was a lot to ask given the seeing conditions and height of the planet above my neighbours roof. Cassini's division was easily seen in both anse and could be traced close to the ring edge as it began to cross the face of the planet's globe, but it was lost as the ring neared the planet's CM. The shadow of the ring on the planet was quite stark as was the fine globe shadow on the ring. Hopefully this will be the first of many good views of Saturn.

I'm sure you'll have years of fun and adventure with your beautiful new FSQ. Size does matter, as if you don't use it because its too much of a hand full, bigger becomes an obstacle to enjoyment. It will certainly show you far more than a scope you wont use.

There's no doubt a 140 APM will have better resolution and light grasp John, but i think you really hit the nail on the head when you think in terms of portability. I've mentioned it before in several posts, that when I bought my first FC, a 100DC in 2015 the scope nearly wore me out. It was so light and easy to use, and packed quite a punch for its aperture class, that my time at the eyepiece greatly increased. It was such a pleasure to use that I set myself the little project of trying to find out just how much this little top end scope could really show me. In part this project was also prompted because of some negative thinking id read on SGL or CN, which implied that unless you live on Hawaii, small apertures are not really that capable. Well I don't live on Hawaii and I can confidently say that we don't need to. The FC100DC was an awesome scope but I eventually succumbed to reviews about the DZ by Daniel M on CN. It was an emotional wrench for me to part with my DC and wait for a DZ, which arrived on a slow boat from Japan. During the month without an FC I had to resort to using one of those reflector thingies, a 10" F6. Finally my DZ arrived and it was simply gorgeous. I know I'm an oddball for preferring these small scopes over larger ones, but even for those with larger aperture reflectors, I doubt anyone would be disappointed by having a DC, DF, DL, or DZ in their optical arsenal.

My first FS128 dewed over regularly, so I simply brought it back into the house and allowed it to thaw naturally. I've also used strap on dewshields such as AstroZap and they work well. Another thing I've done with my 100mm refractors is cut the toe out of a woollen sock and pull it over the Dew shield and lens cell. The latter is very effective though amusing to onlookers.

Get the ED refractor! No cool down worries, no spider diffraction, no collimation issues, and a good ED doublet will be essentially colour free visually, and will give razor sharp views.

M51 and M81 reveal subtle detail related to spiral structure, and M31 shows a very obvious arm all in a 4" refractor on a transparent night. And a "relatively bright" region of M33 is also observable and related to the spiral structure, again visible in a 4" from bortle 5, with good dark adaption with no filters, and a transparent sky. With a 6" things start to become considerably easier to see, and an 8" really begins to open up M31 and its dark dust lanes.

You could try using an off axis aperture stop. You may be able to cut a cardboard stop with a 4" or 4.5" off axis aperture to fit between the spider veins. It may sound counter intuitive, but can give great results. And choose an eyepiece that will give a mag of around 180X. If the power is too high it could kill the detail.