Louis D

The 24mm and 30mm APM variants appear to be selling at about the same prices they were introduced at despite recent inflation and (dare I say it) newly added, targeted tariffs. The list prices in the US have increased, but the selling prices have remained more or less constant. I can't recall EU pricing, so someone else will have chime in on them.

I'm thinking early adopters like myself helped reimburse Marcus for his UFF R&D expenses. After that initial period of higher prices, it appears that the line will be offered at lower prices by others. A similar thing happens in the pharmaceutical industry. It can cost billions to bring a single new treatment to market when accounting for all of the dead end ones that get shelved. As a result, these R&D companies have to make that money back while their patents are still valid. After they expire, the generic manufacturers jump in, manufacture them, and sell them at slim margins since they don't have very much R&D expenses to recover.

According to this CN post, Mark Ackermann of the US designed the 30mm (and I believe the rest of the APM UFF line) at Markus's request.

The LV line has super stiff, roll-down eye cups. The rubber tends to crack with age as well. My 24 year old 9mm has yet to tear off, though. The LV line has slightly longer usable eye relief because the eye cup can be rolled down completely flush while the NLV/SLV cup only twists down so far, robbing a few millimeters of usable eye relief. Personally, I hate the roll down eye cup. I'm always putting a fingerprint on the eye lens trying to get it to roll down. The supplied eye lens cap only fits when rolled up. Back in the late 90s, I ended up going with the Pentax XL line for 3x the money per eyepiece and never regretted that decision. They were more enjoyable in almost every way. My 9mm LV does view a bit "dark" for whatever reason. It might be due to coatings or glass types used. It views very much like the Pentax XL/XW line, just 50 degrees wide. Stray light is well controlled. I've never noticed contrast or ghosting issues.

Well, that and country of manufacture. The LV and NLV lines were made in Japan while the SLV line is made China. This matters to some folks. Orion USA also sold the LVW line as the Orion Lanthanum Superwide series. These often go for less on the secondary market because younger folks don't recognize them for what they are.

ROR is also popular, at least in the US. Here's a posting I made that breaks out the various cleaners' ingredients according to their MSDSs:

I just saw this thread, and since I had just cobbled together a holder for SkEye usage a few months back, I thought I'd describe it here. I used a spare phone clamp from a low cost afocal adapter similar to Starslayer's to start with, but only the clamp part. The key thing is it needs a 1/4-20 female thread at that clamp, which seems fairly common with these. I then attached that to a cheap photographic ball head sourced from ebay to allow it to be angled in any direction. Lastly, I bought a dovetail foot from ebay along with a short 1/4-20 socket head cap screw to thread through it and into the base of the ball head. If you don't already have a dovetail base, you'll need to add one to your scope. Here's an image of the assembled holder to help you understand how it all fits together:

My Meade 140 2x bare nose piece operates at 3x in my Arcturus binoviewer.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I use a Barlow to reach focus, slow down the light cone, and enable using long eye relief, long focal length eyepieces at the higher powers needed for planetary viewing, which is the majority of my binoviewer usage.

I tend to call it the insertion barrel to distinguish it from the upper barrel holding most of the optics. I don't know that anyone else uses that term, but I wanted something unambiguous when describing eyepiece parts. Next question, what do we call the point where that barrel ends and flares out to prevent the eyepiece from going in any further? I tend to use the term shoulder, Tele Vue calls it the reference surface.

It's often related to how well I can center and level the camera relative to the eyepiece. Remember, I'm doing this by hand, taking several shots, and selecting the best for release.

Substitute negative focal length group for Barlow to make the statement more generic. Even tele extender/magnifiers use an initial negative focal length group. Notice that even in positive only designs like 19 (Panoptic-like), a negative power element is used for the field element to improve field correction.

Notice in the following eyepiece raytrace diagrams that the field lens group (small diameter group on the right in each diagram) in pretty much all of the UWA and HWA eyepieces (diagrams 20 through 28) diverges the incoming rays just like a Barlow:

Try them during the daytime to see if SAEP (kidney-beaning) is more of an issue with one than the other. I've repeatedly read that the 9mm UWA (at least the older gold band version) has strong SAEP that becomes obtrusive with small entrance (iris) pupils. This can happen during white light solar observing, lunar observing near full moon, and daytime spotting scope usage. It's the main reason I've never bought the 6mm and 9mm UWAs despite their low price, wide field, decent eye relief, and good field correction because I'm hyper sensitive to SAEP. Alternatively, I've found that some shorty Barlows can induce SAEP in some longer focal length eyepieces, so the 18mm+Barlow combo might also exhibit SAEP.

Appears to also be out of stock across the US (as the Explore FirstLight) as well. ☹️

Online order a pair of single vision distance glasses with the lowest index plastic possible and use them strictly for astronomy. The advantages are that the entire field will be in focus at once, off axis chromatic aberration will be minimized (higher index lenses have higher dispersion or prismatic effect), cost of the glasses will be minimized (the higher the lens index, the higher the cost), the lenses won't develop microscratches from daily wear that become visible at high power with tiny exit pupils, and if you do manage to ruin them, they won't be expensive to replace (my pair was under $20 from EyeBuyDirect a few years ago). The downsides can be thicker, heavier lenses because of the low index and lack of close vision for bifocal wearers. I don't know about UK laws, but in the US, your optometrist must provide you with a copy of your vision prescription when asked; and it is perfectly legal to order prescription glasses from online vendors. I've found the frames and lenses to be just as good as those sold by my optometrist. In fact, I've had several of the latter's frames fail within a year while none of my online frames have had any issues.

Going to a 2" visual back and 40mm SWA eyepiece easily overcomes the increase in focal length to get to a wider field of view with a Synta 127 Mak with about 40% vignetting near the edge.

I'll second the Night Sky Planisphere recommendation. I've had mine for 23 years, and it has held up very well. Here are recent scans of the front (north) and back (south) sides of my large plastic version for 20°-30°N latitude:

Yep, my father-in-law downsized to a Chevy Suburban a couple of decades ago from a full size 1990s Chevy Van like the one below after empty nesting. He absolutely loves it. Suburbans are referred to as Texas station wagons (estate cars) around here. However, full sized pickups are more popular due to their utility. Interesting, they're considered a compact SUV by Texas standards.

Are you implying I was loading my AT72ED with photographic gear? I'm not sure, but it sort of sounds that way. I'm just loading it with a 2" Dielectric diagonal and 17mm ES-92 or 1.25" diagonal and binoviewer with two eyepieces to exceed 2 pounds in a hurry. It's all but impossible to make a focuser slip on a Dob because it never comes close to being in a vertical orientation, so that's a non-issue even for astrophotography with one on an equatorial platform.

The only gripe I've got with a smooth rack "Crayford" focuser is with the one on my AstroTech 72ED. It slips horribly near zenith with any load over two pounds (~1kg). If I tighten down the tension as much as I dare, it won't slip, but it also can't raise the load without me putting my thumb under the diagonal to coax it upward. By comparison, the 2.5" R&P focuser on my TS Optics 90mm APO has none of these issues. I know that the MoonLite and Feather Touch focusers don't have these lift issues despite not having a geared rack, so it's just a matter of having a well executed, quality design. I do have an original style R&P focuser on my 1990s era 15" Dob that wobbles horribly, so just having a geared rack does not guarantee a quality motion.

I'm guessing this adapter was added to the back of the Mak to bring it up to SCT thread size for the BCL.

Try putting a foam grip for handlebars or foam tape over the end of the peg. I've found it helps dampen the contact shock from your fingertip as you search for best focus. Check Amazon and/or ebay for ideas.

Not quite accurate. Meade was failing financially when it was bought by Ningbo Sunny in 2013. As a result of an antitrust lawsuit against NS (and several other companies that settled before trial) brought by Orion USA for suppressing competition and conspiring to fix the prices of consumer telescopes in the U.S., NS lost and then was found to be acting in bad faith (transferring cash out of the country to avoid paying the settlement when explicitly ordered not to, etc.). NS then had Meade declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying the settlement amount. To partially recover the amount of the court ordered settlement ($16.8 million), the Meade brand was awarded to Orion USA by the courts. Orion USA owns the Meade brand, but never actually bought it. I have no idea which Chinese/Taiwanese optical firm Orion is contracting with to manufacture Meade SCTs now.

The Hyperion line is more or less a lower cost, Chinese interpretation of the Japanese Vixen LVW eyepieces. A comparison by our own @John of the two lines can be read here. Both lines, along with the Pentax XL/XW, Baader Morpheus, Tele Vue Delos, Omegon Redline, and several other lines, use a two stage eyepiece design. First, they all use a long focal length, positive upper section that forms the image seen by the eye. It has both long eye relief and a 65 to 76 degree apparent field of view. Second, they all use a negative lower section similar to a Barlow or Smyth lens that magnifies the incoming image for presentation to the upper section. The larger upper section remains relatively unchanged across focal lengths, decreasing manufacturing costs while maintaining a similar viewing experience through each variation. It is the lower, negative section that varies wildly from focal length to focal length. Some of the most advanced designs actually use an intermediate lens group between the two sections to further refine the image correction. Here's a diagram of the older Pentax XL line: Ignore the XL40 design, it was a unique 2" design. Here are two diagrams of the Pentax XW line: Again, ignore the XW30 and XW40 designs as they are unique 2" designs. Even then, it's clear the 30mm has a weak negative section feeding a near copy of the 40's positive section. Take note of how similar the 1.25" eyepiece positive sections (the bigger ones on the right in each diagram made up of four lenses in 3 groups) are across all focal lengths. Only the 20mm/21mm/28mm versions vary a bit in the field (left-most) lens of the positive group. The other two groups remain basically unchanged, keeping down manufacturing costs. Now notice how wildly different each negative section (the smaller ones on the left in each diagram) vary from focal length to focal length. The shortest focal lengths actually split it into two groups to create what appears to be a telecentric magnifier like a Tele Vue Powermate (left-most group magnifies by divergence, right-most group brings the light bundle back together again, but at higher power). This allows for high magnification without sending wildly diverging beams into the positive section. Wildly diverging incoming beams can cause vignetting and eye relief extension, among other issues. Also notice how the 7mm, 10mm, and 14mm XW versions each have an intermediate lens group not found in the earlier XL designs. I believe they were added to improve field correction in going from 65 degrees for the XL line to 70 degrees for the XW line. The upshot of all this is that to maintain long eye relief and wide field of view requires a large positive section with a somewhat distant negative section feeding it a magnified view. This results in a rather large eyepiece as you discovered.