Highburymark

I’ve had a few Fujiyamas. Nice, clean eyepieces, but I couldn’t see any optical advantage over TV Plossls at longer focal lengths, and have just sold the 6mm as it wasn’t getting used. I definitely need more comfort from a planetary eyepiece when sustained observation is necessary to wait for those bursts of steady seeing. I only have the 5mm in the XW range, but I can see why they don’t come up often in the classifieds - beautiful eps and so comfortable to use. It’s the comfort factor that really distinguishes the TOEs (and presumably HRs). You can forget you’re at the eyepiece and just concentrate on observing. In that respect, they are the ‘anti-orthos’. Have to credit Vixen for making the breakthrough.

Going from 8” to 4.7” did it for me…..

Would be interested in your views if you ever get the chance to test one John. Yes, was using TSA-120. Someone, somewhere should line up the HRs and TOEs against the best orthoscopics and see how they compare. Would make a nice feature for one of the astro mags.

Interesting new H-alpha product from Baader/Solar Spectrum: Sundancer II - a Quark-like filter that can be slotted into a standard refractor. Pros: the etalons should be better quality than most Quarks. More adaptable too. Cons: price - almost £3k. See FLO or Widescreen Centre websites.

That LZOS scope of yours is a seriously lovely thing. I’m tempted to get the 4mm TOE and sell my 3mm and 4mm Delites. The only justification for keeping them is wider fov for lunar.

You know you can unscrew the green section ahead of the focuser to shorten the light path for binoviewers? Makes things more flexible. Pic shows FC-100DC with sectioned removed next to TSA-120.

Another great night for the gas giants. I thought upgrading from a 100mm to 120mm refractor would mean using less powerful planetary eyepieces, not more. And yet again tonight it was clear that under decent skies, my two Tak TOE EPs (3.3mm and 2.5mm) are on a different level to anything else I’ve used for the Moon or planets. Moving from 5mm XW and 4mm Delite - two evenly-matched EPs giving 180x and 225x - to 272x with the 3.3mm TOE, and the view clearly improves. The planets get slightly sharper, more detailed and more involving - an odd experience when you’re dialling up the power. Going up to the 2.5mm under steady conditions, no detail is lost on either planet at 360x - a considerably higher magnification than I was ever able to use with an 8” SCT. And they’re 52 degrees and as comfortable to use as a mid range plossl. I have no experience with any of the hallowed Zeiss/TMB/XO planetaries. Neither have I tried the clearly outstanding Vixen HRs. But I cannot recommend the TOEs highly enough. They don’t get written about much on SGL, but deserve a wider audience, particularly among apo owners.

One of the Lunt 130mm double stacked solar scopes makes a pretty good case as a single instrument solution, if you’re fortunate to get top performing etalons: also doubles up as a 130mm triplet nighttime scope. Just add night vision and a Herschel wedge and you’re all set!

Me too Mike. I bought a pair of rare Zeiss microscope eyepieces from him for a decent price. On the other hand, there’s an eyepiece on his site at the moment that’s £25 more than the best new price. But surely anyone who doesn’t do a simple price comparison before buying a new piece of gear can’t have too many complaints?

That’s disappointing if that’s the case - in general there seems to be better uniformity and reliability with Solar Spectrum filters than Daystar, but no guarantees as you say. I had a Quark that was excellent for proms and poor on surface detail.

Wow - very impressive! Looks like you’ve got a great filter.

Thanks Jeremy. One compromise you have to make with night vision is even the best image intensifier tubes produce haloes around the brightest stars. You can see it on virtually all NV images. At the eyepiece it’s less obvious, particularly with apo refractors - and this seems to help increase definition on objects like globular clusters. So the TSA works very well on star targets - extra aperture and star sharpness. Doesn’t mean that well figured achromats can’t also do a good job though.

How do people cope with 4mm Plossls and orthos? Must need cleaning after every session. And how do you clean a piece of glass so tiny?

It’s great in summer - do most of my solar observing out of the heat, sat next to a large fridge!

Spurred on by this thread, I also checked Iota Cassiopeiae last night. What a beautiful sight. Used TSA-120 with TOE 3.3mm, Delite 3mm and TOE 2.5mm to go up to 360x.

This is another option which works well - available from FLO. Leaves a more pristine surface with less of a smear than some others I’ve used. First remove dirt and dust with blower as mentioned above, apply and clean with q-tips, and finish by breathing onto the lens and polish with cloth. Using eyepieces for solar work means you need to clean them much more often - every few weeks in my experience. As long as there’s nothing to scratch the surface and you are reasonably careful, you won’t do any damage - eyepiece lenses are pretty tough.

It’s often an advantage to buy secondhand when you’re starting out - you get the chance to try before you buy. PSTs and Lunt 50s come up pretty regularly in the classifieds for £400-£700 - both great scopes.

They are a 2 minutes job on the DC - very easy to fit - presume the same on the DL. Don’t need collimation, and no to the last question - it’s a precision instrument and although the cost of the adapters is hard to swallow, it’s worth it.

Agree. I have a 3” R&P now which is great with a 120mm scope. The 2”. Crayfords are far more appropriate for the svelte FC-100s

My heart bleeds for you Mike! Barely worth going out, really……

Brilliant Alan - great to read your post - solar Ha is the most dynamic and exciting form of amateur astronomy in my view. And right now the Sun is comparatively inactive - there was much more going on last week. Hopefully you can keep your borrowed scope until we get a few active regions and larger filaments. Solar ha etalons are immensely complex and expensive pieces of kit, so it’s not surprising we have to pay a lot for top quality filters. Solarscope makes the best etalons that I’ve used. The only Solarscope price lists you’ll see are on overseas websites (try APM or Astroshop in Germany - the prices will make your hair curl). In fact they are much more affordable to UK customers - though still pricey. I bought double stacked Solarscope SF70 filters a while ago for less than the equivalent Lunt (LS80DS). Lunt prices are very expensive in Europe. However. there are affordable ways into the market - find a good entry level Coronado PST or Lunt 35/50 secondhand and you have a fantastic, affordable instrument that will provide years of joy.

I didn’t like the Baader Steeltrack I had, but it wasn’t the most recent model. The fine focus kept seizing up. The MEF is ok but pretty basic for the money. There’s also an offering from More Blue now - sold by FLO, similar to the Tak MEF. The FT blows them all away…. at a price.

After last week’s report on night vision in the dark skies of Norfolk with a small refractor, tonight I had the chance to see what a 120mm frac could deliver from a particularly orange corner of London, with patchy cloud to round things off. Scope: TSA-120, night vision device: PVS-14 with Photonis 4G tube, eyepieces: 18.2mm Delite, 32mm and 55/67mm TeleVue Plossls with Baader IR pass 685nm and Chroma 3nm Ha filters. All from my kitchen - may be the last time this year I can observe from indoors due to temperature differences inside and out. Just a very quick 15 min session. Started with M92. 32mm plossl gave a nice view, though at this power it was a little small. Outer stars were resolved, but the core of the globular was fuzzy. 18.2mm Delite opened up more stars, but the cluster was too dim to justify more attention. After M92 I wasn’t expecting too much from M13, but it was beautiful. Resolved to the core with the 32mm plossl, I really felt the benefit of the scope’s 120mm aperture here. Definitely the best globular result I’ve ever had with night vision from London. I moved over to M56, which was disappointing, though cloud was beginning to gather by this time. I swapped filters to enjoy a surprisingly prominent Dumbbell - this is an object that night vision brings out very well, though of course it’s best from a dark site with no gizmos to help. Cygnus was just too high to try for any of its nebulae. So I packed up. Love this scope! Further proof you don’t need fast astrographs to enjoy pleasing NV views from the city.

The thing that the EVscope appears to have got right is ease of use, for people who don’t want to learn too much technical stuff to produce results. Unfortunately night vision is both expensive and requires some technical ability (at least to use afocally with a telescope). There have been two attempts to launch a popular night vision astronomy product in the US, both of which failed to take off. And even with a specialist retailer now selling night vision gear for astronomers in France, it’s still only a tiny part of the hobby. There will definitely be more attempts to popularise night vision astronomy, but cost will remain a barrier. Having said that, you can buy a nice NV tube for £3-4,000, still a lot of money, but no more than people spend on a top refractor, or even a fairly average solar scope. Main thing is to try and get more people to experience night vision, so they can see what it delivers, and how the experience is exactly the same as normal visual astronomy.

As a relative newcomer to higher end optics, certainly compared with many on this thread (I bought my first semi-apo about 7 years ago), one of the things that’s really impressed me about many of the older telescopes discussed on forums is how they remain absolutely competitive optically with modern equivalents. Seems like much of the progress has been in other areas, like reducing bulk, but it’s good to know that most top performing optics bought 15-20 years ago hold up very well against today’s scopes. The annoying thing is why we have to reach an age when our backs and eyesight are packing up to afford more expensive kit.