mikeDnight

I'm sorry you haven't seen the subtle colours on our Moons surface. They are certainly not imaginary, or influenced in any way by enhanced images. I'm very aware that colour perception is an individual thing, and that the colours visible to the eye through the telescope are not immediately obvious, but once seen they become hard not to notice. The orange colour I spoke of can most often appear around craters with bright ejecta such as Aristarchus. It isn't there every time but appears when the lighting is right. When I first noticed the orange colour many years ago, I was completely ignorant about colour on the moon, and so contacted Peter Grego who at the time was the lunar section director of the Society for Popular Astronomy. He assured me the colours were very real and explained their cause. Hopefully, now that you know colour does exist on the Moon you may be more alert to it while observing.

Great sketch, and its also great that you feel observing in Daylight is a game changer. I'm quite certain what you have recorded in your sketch is very real. It's a ways a challenge to keep the subtlety of detail under control. I've always found it difficult to sketch Venus without exaggerating the intensity of the markings, while at the same time recording the range of detail on view. As a consequence my sketches of Venus are almost always overexagerated in intensity of shade for ease of interpretation. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your sketches!

Thanks Roy, The dotted lines represent areas that stand out as being significantly brighter than the general surroundings, possibly high cloud regions that are catching the Suns light.

He can be the kidney doner!

Who's kidney are you thinking of selling Alan, anyone particular in mind?

I'm guessing a hundred thousand would be a healthy order. You're at least on your way with the three of you dusting your wallets off.

What telescope are you using? Take a look at the full moon, it is full of colour! And around impact craters with bright ejecta, the colour orange can often be seen. Even the Apollo astronauts found glass beads around craters left over from the impact. The basalt planes are multiple colours and tones.

If Vixen did offer a second batch, I'm sure many would buy them. They are quite specialised however, and perhaps a new run of HR's would be limited as the first were. I also imagine that a few who missed out on the first run would snap them up. How much this would cost Vixen and what profit they would make may hold a second run back, unless prices were high. I have a feeling that Vixen knew from the start where they were going with this eyepiece, and that it was an experiment designed for their pleasure as much as for the amateur observer.

Observations from the night April 6th 2023. 4" refractor.

I edited that image out Mark. Although it did have a footnote on the original pic which I cropped, it certainly wasn't six elements in four groups. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a diagram for the TOE so far.

I rest my colour filters in the rubber eye-cup of the HR's. Not ideal but it works as long as the eyepiece isn't horizontal or below!

I dont know about you not being good at drawing Roy, but I'm looking at your sketch of the Sun and I think its awesome. The Sun is something I don't often look at; I even have a lovely Coronado PST but I loaned that out to another observer ages ago. He loves it! Considering your sketch has inspired me to take more notice of our beautiful star. It's a great sketch and observation Roy, so thanks for posting it. I'm off to brows FLO's website now to see how much your post is potentially going to cost me.

Attached are observations of Venus & Mars from the night of April 6th 2023. The seeing conditions were really quite good in general, with intermittent but short bouts of turbulence. Venus revealed subtle differences in cloud detail dependant on whether it was viewed with or without a colour filter, and different coloured filters enhanced different detail. Of late there has been repeated observation of a bright spot on the north preceeding limb of the planet, which may be due to high cloud reflecting the Suns light. Again, some filters aided in highlighting this feature. Mars was a pleasant surprise last night too, as immediately very obvious albedo detail was seen. Despite its diminutive size at present of around 6 seconds of arc, the planet's rotation was noted during the observations, and even the cloud/mist around Olympus Mons was really quite obvious. The Solis Lacus region is visible in the south and its complexity was just hinted at in the eyepiece over time. In the north there appeared a polar cap along with the darker Mare Acidalium, Tempe, & Nilokeras regions.

Hi Mark, I found the second diagram under Tak TOE design images, and it did have a footnote saying it was a TOE. What makes me think it may be is the design. It's a Zeiss Astroplanar/Masuyama which is the same a Tak's LE, except it incorporates a Barlow. Its not a criticism on my part as I love the design. In fact most of my eyepieces use the five element masuyama design. I love them! If anyone can shed more light on the TOE layout, it would be very helpful.

These are all excellent posts! I truly believe that super fine features such as the Enke division, actually discovered by Kater, not Enke, can be detected in smaller apertures than 200mm. I say this because a number of years ago during the 2000's, when Saturn was high in northern hemisphere skies and the rings were wide open, I've observed it many times using my FS128. Telescopically it appears to be very close to the outer edge of the A ring, but it can be seen extending for quite some distance around the anse. It appears very different to the dusky Enke minima which is not a hard linear feature. Interestingly, the Enke gap nearly always appeared more easily evident in the proceeding anse. I never did try to understand why that would be?

I bought all four when they first came out and I'm really glad I did. "Absolutely stunning" is a great way to describe their performance when the seeing allows. Just taking a close look at the mechanical design in the diagram below, illustrates nicely how much thought, time, effort, skill, & love went I to their design. One can glean from this just how much thought, effort, skill, & love went into the optics housed within this awesome eyepiece. If anyone can find a diagram of the optical layout of the TOE it would be interesting. The TOE being 6 elements in 4 groups.

Do you always put up the buntin when using your 4" Tak Stu?

Here are a few daylight observations of Venus from April 4th.

Loving your new signature Gerry!

You have more stamina than I have Gerry! I love observing, but I'm not sure I'd be that enthusiastic after a 400 mile round trip for supper, then want to observe in -21°C temperatures. I think I'd be much more inclined to snuggle up under a blanket with a bonnie lass, in front of my log burner, sipping cocoa. So long as my wife doesn't catch me I'll be fine!

It's great you're inspired by my sketches, thanks for that feed back! I most often observe the planet while it's still against a blue sky just before or just after Sun set. However, if you have some way of shielding your scope from accidentally crossing the Sun, you can observe it quite easily in full daylight. It's best to use a low power eyepiece for the search. I use a 35mm Eudiascopic, which after getting infinity focus during night time observing, I marked my drawtube, so I know I'm in focus for when doing a daytime sweep. Genius! I've only had one bad filter which I bought from Venturescope many years ago. It was a great filter, an #82A which is almost a turquoise colour, but was great for Mars and Venus. For some reason it just turned cloudy and rough. I'm presuming it was a fault with the coatings as all my other filters remained pristine. I could really do with getting another 82A, but I've had a lot of success with the 80A so never bothered to replace it. I think currently FLO have an offer on, so you can buy one get one free, or something similar. Could be buy two get none free! FLO are a good place to buy from as they look after there customers very well. They're a bit like carers for the mildly insane!

I'm certainly interested in these comparisons Gerry. They are really important, so please keep em coming!

Just buy yourself a Maxbright II binoviewer Gerry. A 120mm TSA for each eye will be stunning on lunar and planetary, and at a fraction of the price of a bigger scope. I can honestly say I haven't noticed any dimming of the image compared to the mono view, and there's certainly no reduction in resolution of fine detail. In fact fine detail becomes much easier to discern in the binoviewer. Food for thought!