Louis D

Svbony is having a 32% off sale on ebay US right now on them.

Quintessential British stiff upper lip, I presume.

For me, it's the super short eye relief of orthoscopics at short focal lengths that really bugs me. I have enough astigmatism that taking my eyeglasses off even at a 1mm exit pupil causes a noticeable drop in resolution for me. As such, I stick with my Pentax XLs, XWs, and Delos. I know I'm giving up a bit relative to TMB monocentrics, ZAOs, TAK TOEs and Vixen HRs, but I'm willing to live with it for comfort sake. During the latest Mars opposition, I found much better resolution to be had with my entry level Arcturus binoviewers and 50 year old B&L microscope wide field eyepieces than with my best monovision wide field eyepieces. At lower powers, it's simply no contest. My 25mm Edscorp Abbe Ortho is simply no match for a 22mm Nagler T4 or 30mm APM UFF in edge to edge sharpness at f/6, especially when you figure in the vast difference in field sizes.

All the same issues being regurgitated over and over again on page after page of this CN thread. Apparently, us Americans are in a much bigger froth over it than folks on the other side of the pond.

Having all but the 3.2mm in the set, I would suggest 25mm, 12mm, 8mm, and 5mm making for powers of 48x, 100x, 150x, and 240x. I tend to skip straight from widest field to mid-high power in a Dob of that focal length. As such, the 18mm and 15mm get skipped and are too closely spaced in power at 67x and 80x, respectively, to either the 25mm or 12mm to make sense to buy them as well. That, and they're both fairly weak performers compared to the 12mm and below. I would pool the money saved on the 15mm and 18mm toward getting a 30mm APM UFF or equivalent (Altair/Meade/Celestron) in the future. Perhaps under UK skies you might have a point. 240x is not an issue here in my part of Texas. For 185x at 6.5mm, I'd recommend the recently discontinued Meade HD-60 if it can be found second hand. I've measured mine to have a 64 degree AFOV, so it competes strongly with the older Pentax XL 5.2mm I have. A zoom eyepiece coupled with a decent Barlow might also be a high power option for the OP.

By keeping prices low for two decades, they've managed to push out almost all non-Chinese competition. Now they can raise their prices to a sustainable level for themselves. This is also happening in solar cells and rare earth metals production.

That might work for short term outages, but not for days long outages. Our gas stations were running out of fuel due to lack of tanker truck deliveries because of the icy roads. Modern generators automatically start and run diagnostics weekly, alerting you via wireless connection if there's an issue. The biggest issues I've read about are when the starter battery dies and this check can't happen and making sure to have the engine oil changed/maintained. I'm not concerned about natural gas not making it to our house because we had a continuous supply despite it not making it to all the critical NG generators. Maybe we just got lucky? I've read proposals to use PEVs in a distributed manner to store electricity generated at night for use in the daytime. Of course, this presumes you don't want to use that electricity to actually drive somewhere and back each day.

I just had an epiphany. At 15.5mm and 75 degrees, it will most likely have a wider true field of view than the typical 8-24mm zoom at 24mm and 44 degrees. It will also be wider at the short end as well. It should yield a very useful range of magnifications and TFOVs.

Adding a focal reducer to a Newtonian will probably just exacerbate the inherent coma of the desig, add field curvature, add other edge aberrations, and reduce back focus to such a point it may not be possible to bring most eyepieces to focus. If you really want a fast Newt for wide field views, go with an f/3.9 astrograph with a TV Paracorr T2 instead. The large central obstruction will limit its contrast for planets, though.

If the dewpoint is quite low outside compared to inside my house (often the case during winter here), I'll cap my eyepieces and close my airtight cases before bringing them in to prevent them from instantly dewing over. If it's damp outside, I'll bring them in uncapped and open cased to let them dry out before storage. The scope(s) are brought in uncapped in either case because they're not airtight. I don't want moisture inside the house accumulating on them while capped and not temperature equalized. Finders come off before bringing in the scope(s) to avoid catching them on the door frame. I generally carry the scope(s) and associated mount in one go since they're under 50 pounds.

I'm thinking of getting a standby generator for the house instead of more astro gear since we lost power for days during the winter storm two weeks ago.

I know Astro Physics keeps decades long waiting lists for when they restart production of certain in-demand scopes. If they decide to restart a certain item, they will approach each list member in order, and ask if they still want to buy that item. If they do, they ask for a 50% down payment to hold your spot in the line at that point. Perhaps this could be the new normal for retailers with months long wait times for popular items. If they receive word of an item due for unloading and customs, they could go back to the wait list and ask for down payments to hold their spot in line for a few more weeks while the item clears customs.

I bought solar eyeglasses direct from Thousand Oaks to ensure I received genuinely safe filtration for my family. I am so horrified by your story. My heart goes out to her.

Back to OP's original query, have you received your 30mm APM UFF?

You'll need a field derotator for DSO photography with an alt-az goto mount. Alternatively, you can stack lots of much shorter exposures. I believe there's a thread on SGL covering this technique. Another alternative is electronically assisted observing using night vision technology.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. Due to trees and buildings, I have very limited low elevation viewing options from my backyard. I'll probably get the Lunt for visual instead.

I just realized that using the Lacerta in summer at 30 degree north latitude where I live would be a nightmare of contortions to view the image. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at solar noon on the summer solstice, the sun will be at 90 - (30 - 23) = 90 - 7 = 83 degrees elevation for me. Given the Brewster angle of 56.6 degrees for the Lacerta wedge, this places the eyepiece at a angle of (90 - 83 - (90 - 56.6)) = 7 - 33.4 = -26.4 degrees. That is 26 degrees below horizontal. Am I missing something here? The Lacerta wedge would only be useful for me for when the sun is no more than 56.6 degrees in elevation. This eliminates viewing for quite a few hours around solar noon during the late spring to early fall months. Is the Lacerta wedge that much better than using two linear polarizers in the Lunt to justify the contortions?

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It must be a US/UK thing, but when I was going into the office pre-Covid, I drove 1 to 1.25 hours each way each day, so driving 1.5 hours each way to pick up a scope is not a big deal at all.

Actually, it's the opposite in pretty much all zoom eyepieces. The apparent field of view (AFOV) narrows considerably at lower powers, necessitating a separate widest field eyepiece such as a 32mm Plossl or 24mm superwide. At higher powers, most zooms have nicely wide AFOVs.

Looks like you both need a Sony E-mount T-ring adapter. They're available from multiple vendors.

You'll want to budget for an all weather cover if you're going to leave it outside. I would just get an 8" Dob and have the kids download SkEye app or similar to their phone(s) to help them learn the night sky in real-time. If the 8" Dob blows over in a gale, it's not likely to be damaged like a scope up high on a tripod. That, and they're so bottom heavy they're less likely to get blown over. With eyepieces that you'd want to bring inside when not in use, you should be able to come in well under £1000. The problem is lack of astro stock right now. It's been dribbling in from China, so get on several waiting lists to hedge your bets. Also, make sure to put some sort of paver blocks under the scope. The Dob base's MDF board warps when in contact with wet ground or grass.

I've blown $15 on far more ill-advised purchases. For example, I still have an Orion flexible red/white astro flashlight from the late 90s that quickly broke. The switchable red filter in front of the bulb won't move into position rendering it useless at night. I should have chucked it 20 years ago, but I had spent a decent chunk of change on it back then, so I couldn't bring myself to do it.

They really shine in binoviewers for max field for those of us with wide nose bridges and deep eye sockets thanks to their diminutive size. Since I generally use a 3x equivalent Barlow to reach focus, they are great across the field in my refractors and Dob. Their light weight is also most welcomed in this usage to ease balance issues.

I use the projection method followed by trigonometric calculations to get each eyepiece's AFOV to within a degree or so accuracy. Once I have a baseline of reliable values for eyepieces within a given AFOV range, I can then use comparative analysis of my images of the AFOV to further refine the values within a group. I divide the width in pixels of the most accurately known AFOV by two to get the opposite side value, accept the half angle from the projection method as accurate for the subtended angle, and then back-calculate the virtual distance to the image circle to get the adjacent side value. I then use this virtual distance as constant across images and use the half-widths of the other AFOV images to calculate their half-angles for AFOV. The AFOV calculations are accurate within the group. Whether the AFOV values are absolutely accurate depends on the accuracy of the original eyepiece chosen as having a well known and measured AFOV. That's how I got the values for my 26mm Meade MWA report. Projection methods failed utterly with its massive SAEP. There was no good way to measure the value via projection accurately for both full field with raging SAEP and easily seen field with minimal SAEP. The main problem was the very indistinct exit pupil point that covers 12mm of distance according to Ernest in Russia. This made measuring the adjacent value difficult. Ernest made no attempt to measure the easily seen AFOV in his review that I could discern.