mikeDnight

That would have been my dream scope. Do you still have it stored in your loft John?

Thanks for the pic Adrian. I haven't used that particular Celestron barlow, but my immediate reaction was to think the barlow has quite a long body, which makes me wonder if the problem lies with the barlow. Do you have another barlow that you could try? Does the scope with barlow reach focus with shorter focal length eyepieces?

A couple of dodgy looking packages arrived this morning. Smuggled by Dantooine, (Dale), who is obviously highly skilled at smuggling. And wrapped with surgical precision I might add. I wonder what could possibly be inside? It's a 6.5mm & 4.5mm Morpheus, Morphei, Morpheus's or whatever. They are perfect, so a BIG THANK YOU to Dale for a rapid and painless operation at a great price. 😊

It's my very own padded cell Jeremy. I haven't tried bouncing the Tak like a super-ball yet, but I think it should be ok if I did. 😕

The walls are clad internally with black, interlocking rubber exercise matting. I did it to reduce stray light inside the building, but its also on the floor too. Warm to stand on and gives any dropped eyepieces a good chance of survival. ☺

I have a beautiful Tak FC100DZ that I dont really need! £1500 plus a brand new Starfield 102 will secure it. 😈

You never know! It does say in the Tak manual that fluorite is superior by many orders of magnitude to any ED glass. What that means in reality I'm not certain, but I suspect its more to do with spectral range beyond the visual?? I can't tell the difference between the DC/DF and the DZ visually, but I had to find out for myself at great expense. I'd be more than happy with a Starfield 102ED, and am pretty certain it would do everything my Tak could do, even at the silly high powers I sometimes like to use. Though I do believe the writing on the Tak's lens cell goes all the way through the tube, like the writing on a stick of Blackpool rock. I'm not sawing it in half to prove it though!

I wouldn't worry too much about the glass type. It's pretty safe to assume its a fluorite glass of some type, and so will perform to a large extent like a fluorite crystal lens. The more important factor would be the lens figure. When thermally stable, and under steady seeing, does the Starfield 102 show a near identical, perfectly circular stellar diffraction pattern either side of focus at 200X? If it does its perfect.

Starfield 102!!!! It's lightweight, short and easy to mount, will give you a significantly wider field than your other scopes, and will give you textbook perfect star images at 300X and some. Sharper than your C5, and I doubt you'd use your F13 much once the apo arrives, and I'd also be surprised if it didn't soon become your most used scope ever. Comet seeker/ RFT to high power visual lunar, planetary, & double star scope all in one easy to handle package. It would leave you speachless when studying the Moon through a binoviewer. However, don't let me try to influence you.☺

That looks fantastic Michael. It makes me want one too. May be you'll get a pop at comet Leonard, and drool your way through some glorious star fields using your 42mm LVW when the skies clear.

I keep my finder directly opposite the counterweight arm when on an eq. That keeps the finder in an accessible position without the need for two finder shoes.

I only need one refractor. A 250mm Takahashi Triplet on a Takahashi Mount, but I'm waiting until I can afford a country manor house with a beautiful domed observatory in the grounds to house it. And below just for scale:

The Vixen HR's do seem to circulate from time to time, although I imagine they will eventually settle in the hands of those who find them most useful, and so become quite rare on the second-hand market. Tak do a similar, though more expensive alternative in their TOE eyepieces. I think the TOE's may have more elements and a slightly wider field? I'm not sure why your DC isn't reaching focus with your barlow attached. Is there any chance you could post a pic so we can try and assess what the problem might be?

I cant remember struggling to reach focus with a barlow in the DC. Takahashi offer a 2X barlow that goes before the prism, or can be used after the prism to give (i think) 1.6X. I tended to use a SW delux 2X or old 2X Celestron Ultima SV, usually attached to my binoviewer. I did struggle to get enough inward focus with the DC and a 1.25" Lunt Herschel wedge. I removed the green extension tube to reach focus at low power with my binoviewer without barlow. With my DZ I get 500X with my Vixen 1.6mm high resolution eyepiece, and 1000X with a 2X barlow. That was fun! With my DC I could get 474X with a 1.6X extender Q and 2.5mm Vixen LV eyepiece, which gave an impressive view of a large crescent Venus, as well as a subtly detailed view of a sub 5 arc second Mars. You don't need to buy an extender Q though, as there are barlows of similar amplification available at a fraction of the cost. Using a longer focal length barlow or power mate can give a comfortable alternative for reaching high powers.

Compressed air can also contain refrigerant, which can shock the lens.

I don't see why not John. I remember when a friend brought a new 4" F5 Helios for me to try. It was early 2004 and rapidly shrinking Mars was low in the west after sunset. So i aimed the little refractor at Mars, added a 3X Telvue barlow, and working at F15 was amazed at just howmuch detail was on view. Of course using a Tak extender-Q in your DL will get rid of all that abominable residual CA and flattens that atrocious field curvature. 😂 Every time i look at that picture of my DZ with the extender Q attached, it reminds me of something that Marvin the Martian would use to disintegrate the earth.

Thanks for that James, it was fascinating. I missed the program but I'll keep my eye out for a repeat of it. ☺

I've owned a wonderful Vixen 102mm F13 Pulsar achromat, which i adored. Also, much later, an Antares 105mm F14 achromat. Sadly I've lost any pics I may have had of either. Here's an unusual one - a Takahashi FC100DZQ F12.8. (That is a FC100DZ F8 with a 1.6X extender-Q attached).

It's so easily done. 😊

I feel your frustration. It might also be that she has a northern English accent, which had one American actor completely baffled and in hysterics, when the two were on the Graham Norton show. You could take a crash course in northern English, by watching Wallace and Grommet's Grand Day Out, and other Wallace and Grommet films. 😊 The town where I live, Burnley which is on the Lancashire Yorkshire boarder, has such a specific accent that on more the one occasion while on holiday, people have said " I know exactly where you're from!" And its true that within a very small radius of my home town, accents change dramatically. A friend of mine who is from Radcliff, Lancashire, had a heated discussion with a lady in a cafe while on holiday in the USA. She asked "Where are you from?" My friend replied "England!" She said "Yeh, but that isn't English. I teach English, and that isn't English!"

You have a TEC and a APM so I'm sure you're not missing anything, but I understand the temptation, especially if its a refractor that fills a gap.

You are very kind. There is a printer not far from me who I could use to self publish. It would be a case of deciding which and how many observations to include. I don't suppose there would need to be masses of text, as a picture speaks a thousand words, but instruments and techniques would I think need to be included. I'll have to look through forty years of sketches, so it might take a while. 😊

Quite some time back when I was involved with the planetary section of the S.P. A, Springer asked me to write a book entitled Mars & How To Observe it. I was all for it until finally, I was informed the book had to be written using American (simplified) English. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Americans who read English, as opposed to American English, would have little difficulty in understanding it. Would an American author write in English for my benefit? Some might call it principled, others stubbornness or foolishness. I think it's called biting ones nose off to spite ones face. 😁 I still feel the same way though about watering down the English language. I think I've proved my willingness to be flexible, in that I've spent the last 20 years learning Kidderminsterese, so I can converse with a very dear friend without the use of an interpreter. 😂

That's humorous 😁 There are of course many SGL visual observers who grace the sketching forum with their amazing drawings made using various telescopes. May be FLO should compile a nice selection to be published in a FLO visual observers guide?