iPeace

Let's face it though - What have the Refractors Ever Done For Us? Apart from...etc.

"After you tire of examining those five bodies in our solar system, what's next?" Well Mr. Fleck, I'll cross that bridge when I find it.

Yes, I read about that. As for me, I'm enjoying this newt so much that I'm sure I'll want another, perhaps a 200mm f/6, in due course. Keeping this one a bit longer will fit in well with that. Just waiting for the Moon to return...

Still looking forward to trying a 150 f/6?

Show you my what? Ah, I see... I only have the one. TS/GSO 150mm f/6. Losmandy AZ8 on Berlebach Planet.

Another very nice bit of Japanese glass, this time safely delivered thanks to the excellent care of @Tonynexevo925 Thanks, Tony!

Nice to see them in their own case; they deserve it. Did you replace the bottom caps? Mine came with black ones.

Got mine directly from Baader. They're friendly enough - a smaller scale operation than it might seem, methinks. Definitely easier not to have to go via a retailer if you're planning to return a few of them until you're satisfied.

Just drop the Borg out there and enjoy!

Weight is specified as 20kg. That's probably what the gearing mechanism can safely raise and lower. In practice, it might be a bit more, but not a good idea to overcook things... Not currently, according to the Berlebach web site. It might not make sense, either: any load up to 20kg can be easily supported by the UNI.

So am I, at least that - but I wouldn't be surprised if I turn out to be shrinking. Yes. This is what I got it for. The maximum specified height, fully extended is 210 cm - and that's without the mount head. I haven't done any measurements, but it's tall enough for observing standing upright, even at the zenith.

Berlebach describe it as helical gearing which acts as an automatic column brake. It's very stable.

I have... I don't recommend it, though; far too much fun.

Hurrah! My spreadsheet is correct!

Allright. You win. Yours is worse than mine. Well done!

Don't you just hate having that? Mine's a tyrannosaurid nuisance.

A new favourite of mine. Just so nice.

I agree - and was surprised myself. I'm not saying the views are identical, but very close and equally enjoyable. The DeLite has the larger lens and eyecup which makes it feel like an Ethos on a diet - with view quality to match. The Panoptic seems to have a way of "cutting through" which sets it apart. It's certainly as good as the 24mm Panoptic.

By a strange coincidence, I am (just barely) managing an ongoing shoot-out between the 19mm Panoptic and 18.2mm DeLite. It's just too close to call. I'm quite ready to give up and keep them both.

Thoughtfully packaged by @Davesellars and safely delivered today. I must be feeling optimistic about its chances of staying on - I've already assigned it a sleeping bag. Thanks, Dave!

I have thought about this myself and have abandoned a couple of attempts to keep a log. I do keep a target list in SkySafari - so no gap in the clouds is safe from me - and I do keep a mental log of what I observe during a session, but it's only afterwards that I decide whether to write it up. It depends on whether I feel that my mental notes will be of any benefit to others, or whether I feel what I have to share is worth it. I find that I need no encouragement to take closer observations. This is something that slowly grows over time. At first, I was zipping around the cloudless parts of the sky, trying to assure myself that my favourites were all still there. Now, gradually, I am slowing down and taking more time and it's rewarding in a different way. But it's only now that I'm ready for that. So I'm inclined to suggest you just enjoy the ride and trust your own inclination to either log or not and have faith that you will slow down and look for more detail when you're ready.

You really like it, so keep it, simples. I was really lucky with my first one. When the second one was not as good, I thought there must be something wrong with it. Then the third one was just like the second one had been and I began to realize that the recipe for these things doesn't give the exact same result every time. Eventually, The Man at Baader opened boxes for me until he found one as good as the first. This of course involved a lot of friendly, persistent e-mailing, etc. I was content to go through all this faff because I had the first excellent one safely in possession. In your shoes I would be inclined to keep and enjoy the APM and perhaps gradually over time gently embark on a low-key odyssey to see whether anything better could be acquired. Especially in the 2" format, "pickins are slim" - Baader's 2" offering has been unavailable for years now. Mine are the T2 size and can be configured with a 2" clamp and nosepiece but you're not getting 2" of pipe throughout, so to speak, so that's a compromise if you use 2" eyepieces (I chose to switch to 1.25" exclusively for other reasons). Even if you only use this one on the Moon, as a Lunar enthousiast (I believe you do dabble? ) what you've got is definitely worth having. You could also consider getting a standard, non-correcting prism diagonal for non-lunar work, which will give you the star colour etc. without the spikes and (probably?) without the bloat. Baader has an excellent 2" model which I really enjoyed using before I passed it on as part of my migration to the 1.25" format.

Sounds great! I share your enjoyment of all the advantages. The two Baader T2 amici prisms I currently have do not show any artefacts on bright objects - but I did return two of them that did! It wasn't horribly bad by any means - a ghostly line extending horizontally either side of Jupiter - but since my first one didn't show this, I reckoned they could find me another. Baader insisted that these variances in performance are within their established production tolerances, which is fine with me as I now have two which to my eyes are perfect. I took from this that it's very difficult to get a correct-image prism produced to a consistently exacting standard - and that I'm a pain in the Aries when it comes to such things. When it comes to Lunar observation in any detail, any such artifacts are simply not visible and it's all grand.

Sure. Just browse around at FLO. Skywatcher offers at least one that can be used both in equatorial and alt-az mode. There are many others, and can be as expensive as you like.

I think many of us here in the gallery were expecting that as well. Thanks, they will as they always do, just never mentioned it before. My thoughts are with both of them Indeed. In retrospect, I've been inclined to factor in overall comfort anyway, as it tends to be a deciding factor for my own enjoyment. I like to describe it as "enlightened laziness" - basing decisions on what will make things easiest on the old bod - the final, most critical component in the optical chain and the sole means of getting anything done at all. I wiil stand or sit, but not crouch. I will sit for lunar and planetary, but will stand for widefield and fuzzy hunting. When standing, every practical consideration is given to eyepiece height (finally got a UNI tripod with geared central column - soooooooo comfortable ). If I'll need to move the setup around a lot, it will have to be lightweight and compact. It all adds up... It's not so bad, considering the alternative. Besides, many of us seem to appreciate things with increased profundity as we get on. I sure do.