Louis D

Based on my experience with the 14mm Morpheus relative to the 12mm BST, the Morpheus has much better eye relief, much wider field of view, somewhat crisper views, and somewhat better contrast. It's also quite a bit more expensive, so it should offer some improvements. Whether you should upgrade depends on what you want to improve.

Only if you put the original focuser back on before selling it. I doubt any buyer would balk at a few extra holes in the tube if it means getting a better focuser in the deal.

Get a quote from a local machinist to fix the bend and send it to the seller requesting reimbursement for having to make it right locally. Remind them of those UK consumer protection laws. The seller may come back with a counter-offer to make it right after all.

Try adjusting the pinion tension by tightening the grub/set screw in the center of the plate holding the focuser shaft. This should fix the focuser losing focus the moment you release the focuser knob. To reduce focuser tube wobble, I recall reading that it might be possible to shim the side opposite the pinion shaft with lengths of milk bottle plastic or similar set 120 degrees apart from the pinion and each other. Simply tightening the pinion shaft tension might be sufficient, though. There are further mods you can make to it mentioned in this video:

Nope, I haven't driven in Britain yet. I'd probably screw up the whole left/right side of the road flip and crash. 🤪 Your roads are probably similar in condition to Michigan roads where my wife is from. They go through dozens of freeze/thaw cycles every winter which destroys their roads.

Oh, I'm not arguing that at all. My 2009 Pontiac G8 GT beat the heck out of my back on backroads going to a new job back in 2011, so I bought a 2011 Chevy Impala just for commuting. Problem solved! However, I still love driving the G8 on evenings and weekends on good roads, and the Impala has been passed along to my daughter as a college graduation present.

If they really are 56mm in diameter as I've found online, that would be pushing it as far as IPD and trying to get the bridge of your nose between them unless you're flat faced. That, and you're looking at 658g for the two of them, making for a rather heavy load in the focuser when coupled with the BV's weight. Would you be using them with or without an OCS/GPC/Barlow? If with, the higher effective f-ratio will allow you to use lower cost (and smaller and lighter) wide-fields to good effect. I use a Meade 140 2x Barlow nosepiece with my BV for an effective 3x magnification or f/18 f-ratio. I've recently found that the new Svbony 20mm 68° Ultra Wide Angle work really well as a BV pair at f/18:

I tried a 90mm Mak, but found the views just too dim and low resolution to be fulfilling. Jumping up slightly to a 127mm Mak improved matters considerably without going overboard on weight and size. I would agree with others in this thread that a 130 or 150 Heritage would probably work well for your needs. Neither will be perfect, but what telescope is?

I put together a camping outfit for my grown daughter two Christmases back. It's a 127mm Synta Mak (Orion/Celestron/etc.) riding on a spare DSV-1 mount I had laying around. I put it on a barely used Manfrotto 3033 tripod from ebay for stability. It takes up very little room in the back of her Chevy Equinox which is important considering all the other camping gear back there. I also mounted a 60mm finder scope I had laying around to it to bring in wider fields of view for finding objects. Everything fits in two bags, a mid-sized gym bag and a long tripod bag. Neither attracts much attention with the rear hatch open at campsites. The tripod and mount are way heavier than the telescope, but both are super rugged. They're easy to carry slung over the shoulder in the padded tripod bag. You don't want a wobbly alt-az mount as it will ruin the entire stargazing experience.

It's a matter of ignorance is bliss. I literally had no idea what I was missing in clarity of view with poorly corrected eyepieces until I looked through premium eyepieces at star parties. Same thing with coma correctors and field flatteners. Once you've identified what eyepiece (and optical chain) flaws look like, you can't unsee them. It's similar to cars. Until you've driven a high performance sedan or sports car, you really have no idea what you're missing driving an econobox. That visceral experience is intoxicating and addictive, just like viewing through high end eyepieces and telescopes.

As Ron White pointed out, "You can't fix stupid".

My son just graduated college (with a minor in Russian no less) and furnished his new apartment in San Antonio entirely from Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for under $500. It's all vintage to antique stuff, so very well built. He just borrowed my Chevy Astro van for 2 months to haul everything. Hopefully, Russia has similar places for classifieds. With the money saved, you might be able to afford some nicer eyepieces.

Just wait until your neck and back are so stiff with injuries, age, and arthritis that you can't bend around properly to use a unit power finder (RDF/QuikFinder/Telrad/Sighting along tube/etc.). A green laser sight has been a game changer for me.

If you mean less dwell time on target when manually tracking with a Dob, then yes. The narrower the true field of view at a particular magnification, the more often you have to nudge the scope. Generally, true field of view aligns with apparent field of view, but there is some variation due to distortion issues. Doubling apparent field of view doesn't generally equate to doubling true field of view due to increasing edge distortion.

You might look for something in the 5mm to 7mm range to get above 200x on nights of good seeing. Since you don't seem to need long eye relief, that opens up a lot of options for you. Within the APM XWA line, there are a couple of options in this range (5mm and 7mm). At the long end, you probably won't find yourself using a widest field eyepiece nearly as much as a mid-power to high-power eyepiece. I mostly use my widest fields as finder eyepieces to help center objects for higher power observations. I'll admit, though, that I do sometimes enjoy sweeping rich star fields at low power just to see what I'm missing at higher powers. However, the 1600mm focal length of your scope doesn't lend itself well to this usage. As such, I wouldn't spend big bucks at those focal lengths. A modestly corrected, widest field eyepiece will be good enough for quickly centering bright objects like planets and the moon before swapping it out for a better corrected, higher power eyepiece.

It's a well executed UWA eyepiece using old school design techniques that don't do well in fast scopes. Apparently, the polish and coatings on the lenses are phenomenal, so the central region is exquisite with the outer region framing it for context in your peripheral vision. If you always observe on axis using a tracking mount, you might never be bothered by the outer region aberrations.

I don't know about SGL discussions (I can't find a single user report here), but it was extensively discussed on CN 4.5 years ago: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/562496-masuyama-32mm-85-deg/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/585719-31mm-nagler-type-5-vs-32mm-masuyama-85-degree-at-f7/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/568762-32-masuyama-vs-30-xw/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/555445-initial-impression-masuyama-32-mm-85-degrees-under-the-sky/

Make sure the batteries are inserted the correct direction. Try another battery, especially one known to be working in another device. Do not use rechargeable batteries. They only put out 1.2V. You need 1.5V for these. Screw and unscrew the battery holder section while holding down the button. Sometimes, slightly loose works best. Try scraping the contacts with a jewelers screwdriver. Tarnish may have built up in storage or transport. Shim the battery compartment with a card stock sleeve to better center the battery. The positive contact on these can be troublesome.

Zarkov Cloud Gun to the rescue. 😉

Entry level binoviewers with ~22mm clear aperture have around a 100mm to 110mm optical path length. Simply measure how far out your focuser is relative to its most retracted position with an eyepiece you would use in a BV focused at infinity in a 1.25" diagonal you already have. Subtract that distance from 110mm if it is smaller. The result is how much distance you need to remove from your current optical path to reach focus natively with the BV. If you are already racked out more than 110mm at infinity, you should be in good shape to use a BV natively. My APO refractor has a removable tube section ahead of the focuser to aid in reaching native focus with BVs. It's one of the reasons I chose it over other options.

Now that is what I call a positive attitude. 😁

I should think not looking at this comparison chart of average high temperatures for Leeds versus San Antonio, TX: And our mid-October to late March does indeed roughly correspond to the peak of your summer temps.

Decloaking my mushroom top ES-82 30mm dropped the weight from 1369g to 973g, a 29% weight savings. The process is not as reversible for it since the glue holding the stiff rubber eye cup wouldn't let go causing some damage while it was being pried up to access the helical screw. I still have to tip my head sideways to get my eye up to the eye lens. Below is a group shot of it on the far right with other ~30mm eyepieces. I don't think I have any before pictures of it.

I need to come up with a way to block sunlight from directly hitting my body during the summer here in Texas while solar observing near noon. Within minutes with no hood, I'm dripping sweat on everything, so I retreat to the AC of the house to cool down. A box fan blowing across me helps to delay this a bit. Wearing a broad brimmed, well ventilated hiking hat helps block sunlight from the eyepiece while preventing excessive heat build-up around my head and sunburn to my exposed skin. As a result of all this, I tend to solar observe mostly from mid-October to late March. That reflective solar blanket might prove useful as long as I can get decent ventilation under it. I'm guessing it's quite a bit cooler in Europe during the summer based on folks using hoods while solar observing. I'd love to try early morning observing when it's much cooler, but I've got solid trees to the east of my observing site. To the west are houses with heat waves radiating off their roofs, so solar noon it has to be.

According to Company Seven: William Optics Corp. was founded in 1996 as "Optical technology Limited" by brothers William and David Yang for the purpose of making astronomical telescopes for use by the more demanding amateur astronomer and birder. The company is based in Tapei, Taiwan, with optical production of their telescopes in Taiwan. William Optics has established offices and distributors overseas including in the USA. Unlike many other companies based in China or Taiwan at the time the Yangs set out to develop telescopes that are more refined in terms of performance and durable, with features that appeal to the more demanding amateur. The William Optics company subcontracts their designs for production by other companies, and also resells products that are sometimes marketed by other companies too.