Paz

Thanks for posting this review. I'm a visual find-things-manually observer and have kept on using a sky watcher raci diagonal in preference to a mirror diagonal and a tak prism diagonal simply because I get tied up in knots with flipped images both in terms of finding things and in terms of working out what I was looking at after a session, particularly when it comes to lunar features. I'm going to give my own diagonals another direct comparison in the field to see if I experience much difference in quality (I've compared directly in the past but not under helpful conditions) Unless the quality is noticeably worse in the raci then I'm up for a better quality raci diagonal like this APM, which I am sure is much better quality and bigger aperture than my 1.25" sky watcher.

Here's my ST120 doing a bit of daytime lunar observing. It may well feature previously in this thread but has had a few upgrades.

Thanks very much, with skills like these maybe I should get into astro photography! ?

I was looking at the moon this morning and took this photo with my phone. It's through a st120/10mm slv/solar continuum filt. I like to think it's got an arty Andy Warhol effect to it.. or you could say it looks like a giant bogey.

I had a nice set of SLVs plus a 32mm plossl and I could handle having a different eyepiece at the low end, but now I've got an 8mm bst to fill a gap in the slv range and the disruption to the continuity of my slv set is starting to make me twitch!

Here's my books, the only one not on the shelves is Antonin Becvars Atlas Coeli which is too big!

Here's a recent outing of my maksutov...

I've got a 31mm nagler specifically for the long eye relief and it is good. The rest of my set for the vx14 is a 22mm nagler (also 19mm eye relief) and then Delos (20mm eye relief) at shorter focal lengths.

Here's one... I use them with glasses ok.

I've just got back from Wales - here was my travel kit. On this occasion I was able to smuggle the ST120 into the boot of the car. See if you can spot it in the first photo. It's not as small or exotic as the other travel set ups here but it did a good job and I got one good observing session. I use a big towel to wrap things up in the travel bag to stop things knocking around. here it is...

That's a very nice photo - I bet Takahashi would pay money to use that one for their advertising!

Here's my Mak in action with a makeshift solar finder...

Here's mine to add to the pantheon. The big case is mostly for use with the vx14, the little toolbox of SLVs is for use with the small scopes. Everything hinges on long eye relief and prefering not to use Barlows / powermates. Probably my favourite is the 22mm Nagler.

The sun taken with an LG5 phone through a MC-127 Maksutov with a Baader solar continuum filter. It's struggling a bit with the contrast in brightness... and with focusing... and ghosting/scatter... and it doesn't look round for some reason... but apart from that I'm happy with it.

me quality of image every day, and this is especially true on planetary and lunar observing, where you are trying to pick out as much fine detail as possible . The diagonal to many seems to be a bit of a infill and IMO there is no point putting effort and money into a great scope and eyepiece and then put a so so diagonal into link . As the quality of image is only as good as the weakest link in the optical chain. This is why I picked up a televues diagonal when one came up used to try and get a optical chain that was IMO equal in quality to each part in the link. Give me optical quality every time IMO. In time I may come around to this view - getting a quality refractor at some point and getting more experience under my belt to appreciate the extra quality could swing it.

I am in the correct image camp for diagonals, I really can't get on with reversed images from mirror diagonals. The reason being they simply don't represent what the object looks like. In a Newtonian the image is rotated 180 degrees so although it looks upside down the image is internally consistent and that is also fine with me I.e. if I stood on my head everything would look fine. I got a Takahashi prism diagonal to try out and although the quality is better than my stock sky watcher correct image diagonals, 95% of the time I go for the correct image diagonals in the field.

The only specific written note I've got is of an "easy split" with the VX14 and a 22mm eyepiece so about 73x, but I'm fairly certain I have split it at 52x with the VX14 and at even lower powers with the ST120.

I haven't compared those filters personally but I got the semi apo after reading about them. I use it in the ST120 and ST80 for medium to high magnification of bright targets. I find it tidies things up very well. At low magnifications I find that stopping down the aperture and not having any filter works fine for me.

That's a really good target added to my list. Thanks for posting.

Surely that is an epic shot of Venus!

Here's a couple from my dob of the moon and saturn with a phone. I humbly submit the saturn shot as being in with a chance of a prize!

Here's mine, but this is its second appearance in the list!

Very exciting to hear your first report. I was checking out m57 a week ago in your old vx14 and to me that was a really in-your-face detailed image compared to what I'm used to, and I would guess what you can see in the 20 is yet another huge step up.

Looking really good, well done!

Here's the ST120 and VX14 in action.