Louis D

I'm going to try adding a light blue filter I have on hand (it might be an 82A, I'll have to check) to the #12 yellow to see if I can block some of the spurious red without losing the yellow/orange part of the spectrum as with the green interference filter and without dimming the overall view too much. I've been researching interference shortpass filters that cut-off at 600nm to combine with the #12 yellow to broaden the passband of the green interference filter while eliminating the unfocused red light. None are particularly cheap and might be a bit small (1 inch) for 1.25" usage in stock sizes. The #12 yellow already acts like a pretty good longpass filter with approximately a 500nm cut-off. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a Wratten equivalent for blocking red wavelengths. I'm not sure what color the eye would perceive all spectral colors combined except for red. I'm thinking it's sort of a teal blue-green. None of the Wratten spectral graphs look like a horizontally reflected yellow filter. I'm guessing it's an undesirable color, so no one ever thought to make a filter in that color.

Even with reflectors that don't suffer from increasing chromatic aberration at faster f-ratios like refractors do, figuring an f/3 paraboloid is much more demanding than figuring an f/8 paraboloid. In fact, the f/8 barely differs from a spherical mirror, so very little parabolization is required.

I'd go with an ED refractor for daytime use. CATs yield low contrast in daytime usage as well as really weird out of focus highlights for bird watching thanks to their central obstruction. Non-ED refractors have so much unfocused violet and far red that the view is again low contrast. Daytime features are much lower in contrast than nighttime features. A ship on the horizon is much like a comet on the horizon at sunset. It is very low in contrast. You need a high contrast scope to pick either out from the murk.

I have one, and you're right, it doesn't get used much. I tend to transition to my binoviewer at very high powers instead. The 3.5mm XW is faultless, though. It's just that with my floaters, two eyes are much better than one.

If you have a bit of loose P&P foam saved from this case or another case, just wedge it between the two eyepieces to guarantee they don't bump each other. I do this with some of my eyepiece cases that aren't well organized. It comes in handy to hoard those P&P foam bits in a grocery bag at the back of the closet for this reason. I also sometimes use them to shim holes when a new eyepiece is narrower than the one it replaced.

Most folks who use nonmotorized alt-az mounts allow the object to drift from edge to edge to get uninterrupted observing time. At higher powers, wider fields of view become critical. Trying to use a 30 degree monocentric at 300x under these conditions would be maddening. However, using a 110 degree HWA is quite doable.

Most of the Morpheus range actually measure out to have 78 degree AFOVs. The lone exception is the 17.5mm at 74 degrees. The ES-82 range have measured AFOVs of between 80 and 85 degrees, so only a bit wider in some cases. The eye relief is much better with the Morpheus if you have astigmatism in your vision and need to wear eyeglasses at the eyepiece. The Morpheus may be better corrected to the edge. Some focal lengths come close to Delos and XW levels of correction in f/6 and slower scopes. The ES-82s tend to have slightly poorer correction than their Nagler equivalents except in slower scopes where the difference is negligible.

Definitely go with a visual back with 2 thumbscrews. The fit is so much more secure than with just a single screw. 3 screws doesn't buy you anything, so avoid them.

Look to see if the adapter is already on your 127 Mak's rear port. If it does, it can be screwed off to verify what I'm saying if you grab it with a rubber jar lid grip to avoid cutting your fingertips on the threads. The factory did not change the rear port opening or thread size, they just included the SCT thread adapter with newer Maks. I have one 127 Mak that I had to buy this part to bring it up to SCT thread size, and a newer 127 Mak (for my adult daughter) that came with the exact same adapter already installed. Have you tried threading a 2" SCT visual back onto the existing rear threads to see if it fits? My daughter's Mak came with a 2" SCT visual back from the factory. Perhaps yours came with a 1.25" SCT visual back.

Perhaps you can explain why the 8" CC at 18 lbs is about the same weight as the 180 Mak at 19 lbs when the latter has both a thick meniscus corrector and primary mirror moving hardware for focusing of which the former has neither? I can't imaging moving from 50 sq. in. of mirror to 64 sq. in. of mirror adds as much weight as a 180mm+ meniscus corrector and mirror moving hardware. Is the CC focuser incredibly heavy? Are those tube baffles incredibly heavy? Is the secondary support incredibly heavy? Do all the differences simply add up to the same weight? It just seems like the CC should be sooo much lighter, not just a single pound lighter, than the Mak.

I tend to leave my fine focus side pointed downward on both my 72ED and 90 APO. That way, I'm generally coming in at it with my fingertips from underneath rather than the sides of my fingers from over top. It looks like you might not have enough clearance with your mount at zenith to do this, though. Enjoy that scope. I had debated getting it as an upgrade to my 72ED (FPL-51 doublet), but decided to upgrade my aperture to 90mm at the same time. The triplet part was just a bonus as one showed up used for a great price. I did find out that 90mm triplets acclimate as slowly as 127 Maks and 8" Dobs though. 🙄

Just a follow-up to myself. I ended up getting a good deal on a used TS-Optics Photoline 90mm f6.6 Triplet FPL-53 APO for Christmas 2019. It basically has no false color in focus, but out of focus images are tinged red and green on either side of best focus, so it's no reflector when it comes to color correction. It is quite sharp at all powers, and the 2.5" R&P focuser has no slip issues at zenith even with heavy BV or 2" eyepiece and diagonal loads. The fine focus is a bit spongy, so it's no Moonlight or FT focuser, but it's fine for visual observing. I really like the camera angle adjuster at the end of the drawtube, so I can safely change the angle of the diagonal without changing the focuser knob orientation in the process. Overall, it's a fun little scope to use once in a while. I still prefer my 8" Dob for most observing, though.

You might check AliExpress for the Maxvision branding. Some of the focal lengths are available direct from China. There's also the Opticstar XL version which also has a few focal lengths available.

Not every zoom eyepiece has filter threads. My Celestron Regal 8-24mm zoom does not as it was intended for spotting scope usage. I'm guessing the Leica ASPH, Zeiss Vario, and Swarovski zooms don't either since all were intended for spotting scopes.

I would like to see someone commercialize Mel Bartel's ZipDob design. A 13.2" f/3 Dob with a ~1000mm focal length that collapses into a sub-25 pound box via a few folds sounds great. Of course, eyepieces that perform well at f/3 tend to be expensive.

It is if you want an all around scope that can go from wide fields to high power. A fast/short f-ratio reflector with an extremely well figured primary and coma corrector can do both. However, it will be bulkier than an equivalent aperture CAT unless a minimal truss design is employed. It will still require some extension/assembly before use, so the CAT is more user friendly in that regard. Again, compromises. No one scope is good at everything.

CATs are compromise scopes by design. To achieve a compact form factor, they necessarily have long focal lengths and large central obstructions relative to reflectors of similar aperture due to their folded optical path. Of course, refractors have no obstruction at all. Large central obstructions reduce contrast. CATs also have the issue of having to use baffles to prevent light from going straight into the eyepiece bypassing the optics because the eyepiece is looking along the optical axis instead of at a 90 degree angle. These baffles reduce the maximum true, unvignetted field of view in smaller CATs relative to their reflector and refractor equivalents. This compounds the narrow field of view caused by the long focal length previously mentioned. This is not an issue with 14" and larger CATs due to their large rear ports when using 2" eyepieces. The long focal length is caused by their slow/long focal ratios. This leads to making it difficult to achieve maximum exit pupil size for narrowband filter usage (think OIII nebula filters). Thus, filtered nebula images can tend to be somewhat dim. Maks don't scale well beyond 10" for amateurs (20" for professionals) because the meniscus corrector becomes quite large and heavy. There's no way to reduce its bulk. It's similar to why no refractor was ever made over 40". SCTs have really thin correctors, so they do scale well up to about 16" to 20" for amateurs and 54" in a professional setting (at least as a Schmidt camera). Cassegrains (classic, RC, DK, etc.) scale very well since they have no front corrector. The Hubble ST is an RC Cassegrain, and it is 94.5" aperture. Pretty much all professional observatory class telescopes are Cassegrains of one design or another. The Cassegrain design places the focal point in a convenient location for instrumentation. Typically, there are tertiary mirrors and relay optics to bring the image out to the side along the altitude axis so the instruments can simply ride along on the azimuth platform. Derotators take care of image rotation during tracking.

Try reducing the exposure when taking images of bright stars. This will reduce bloating and sharpen the image.

Check the leg extension locks on the tripod. Several I've looked at had broken clamps. You can live with a broken clamp as long as you never need to extend the lower leg section, but ask for a discount if it wasn't disclosed.

Belated welcome from another Texan.

I would recommend some sort of tarp or drop cloth to catch small parts if you drop them in thick grass. I accidentally unscrewed a thumbscrew from an eyepiece holder all the way, and it slipped out of my fingers into the grass. Not being ferrous, I couldn't find it with a powerful magnet. I've never found it and replaced it with a American made, steel cap head screw. These Asian made screws seem to be formed by die casting pot metal based on one I sheared off just by over tightening it with my fingers.

Do you have a garage or similar perhaps that you could leave it setup in on a dolly/trolley/wheely bars/scope buggy and wheel it out to the driveway to observe? Someone on SGL recently converted a broken motorized mobility chair into a motorized scope buggy to make moving it even easier. If you're handy with wood, a non-motorized version isn't too hard to put together.

Put it on dirt/lawn to get decent dampening if you don't have any pads.

Try putting some vibration suppression pads under each tripod foot to dampen the oscillations.

So, were you involved in the sheep and telescopes advertising campaign? If so, what was that all about?