Louis D

Generally, the central 50% may be indistinguishable except on challenging objects like planets, globular clusters right at the verge of resolution, unequal doubles, and close doubles. It's the outer 50% that differs markedly between pretty much all zooms and premium primes, especially in fast scopes. Even at f8.3, I would imagine the zoom's outer part at 8mm should be easily bested by the 8mm Starguider. At 24mm on the zoom, the view is so narrow that there isn't likely all that much outer field degradation. You're also limited by the chromatic aberrations of the achro to some extent. No eyepiece is going to correct that. If you ever move up to a fast APO or really fast reflector and spring for premium widefields like Pentax XWs, Delos, Ethos, etc., you will be astonished at the difference in the views between them and an f8.3 achro with a Starguider 8-24 zoom. The images are very sharp across the field revealing dimmer stars that are blurred out by lesser optics, the apparent fields of view are satisfyingly wider, and polish/coatings/baffling is so much better leading to darker backgrounds, better stray light control, and less scatter around bright objects.

Sorry, can't help you. More of a Corvette mid-life crisis kind of guy. It's an American thing.

Looks like KUO may be making the APF UFF line based on the marked similarities between this updated 28mm UWA and the 24mm UFF.

That's just the nature of the beast due to the center edge to flip left for right. Just avoid viewing bright point sources at night with it. Use a planar diagonal instead of those objects.

Try a one or two step step stool.

No, this would be a toy telescope. I actually bought one for $25 a few months back. It comes with non-standard fittings (looks like 0.965", but it's not), a wobbly table-top tripod, super long barlows, two 30mm aperture stops, one behind the 70mm achromat and one midway down the focuser tube, and Huygens eyepieces. I bought it for the 70mm achromat and metal tube that are actually pretty decent. From that, I've been adapting it to a 2" diagonal finder.

There is nothing wrong with aluminum legs when done properly. I really like using the Manfrotto 058B tripod under my DSV-2B mount for alt-az.

I've been eyeing it. Given Meade's bankruptcy, I was waiting to see if there's a fire sale at some point.

I was tempted to pick up a 20 year old 10" Meade LX200 off Craigslist locally for $400 about 5 years ago. A friend had given it to the guy, and he had no interest in it at all. I just couldn't figure out where I would store it.

Either an extension tube or switch to a 2" diagonal.

Reminds of a review done years ago: Which is Best - Refractor, Reflector, or Catadioptric? I wonder how a C6 and 150 Mak would have compared in that shootout.

You can always build an equatorial platform as described in this thread to add tracking to any Dob for an hour at a time. The OP of that thread has a nice pdf describing his build.

You should have a 0.83 degree true field of view with supplied 25mm Plossl. 50 degrees AFOV/(1500mm telescope FL/25mm eyepiece FL) = 0.83 degree Thus, the moon at 0.5 degree should easily fit in the eyepiece field of view.

Not once you apply enough power. M22 is just barely visible as a smudge at low power in my southerly skies on good nights and completely indistinguishable on bad nights, but jack up the power to around 200x, and it starts to resolve and becomes quite apparent. Luckily, I know where to look for it among the bright teapot stars of Sagittarius, but this is not the case for many DSOs which are often nowhere close to any brighter stars, so that's where having DSCs come in handy. As far as full goto, however, I've found tracking is only a necessity for group viewing and sketching. I can manually track objects at high powers in wide field eyepieces using Dobs and alt-az mounts by nudging and letting the object drift across the field of view. I also find I see more detail in a moving target than in a stationary target. I may even jostle the scope a bit to make a faint fuzzy pop out from the background better. After all, it's easier to see a well camouflaged animal when it moves than when it remains still.

I spent forever trying to nail down Uranus and Neptune with my Dob, but I was never quite sure if I was on target since I wasn't quite sure what they should look like. I added DSCs to my Dob as a result and nailed both on the first try out. I then went on to find various planetary nebula that had eluded me as well. Soon after that, though, I was satisfied and have used them rarely since. They have gotten handy again as light pollution has increased in my area over the last 10 years since I can't even see basic constellation stars on some nights due to haziness and sky brightness, so star hopping is all but impossible.

Or what brand of focuser if an aftermarket unit.

Technically, there is a third, hybrid type, catadioptric which uses a combination of lenses and mirrors such as SCTs and Maks.

With all this talk about putting eyepieces in cheap wooden boxes, I would probably recommend reinforcing the edges and/or corners of them with metal brackets after finishing them. It would be crushing to have the bottom or a side pop out/off sending the contents tumbling.

Are they using harmonic drives?

I picked up a B&W Type 1000 Outdoor Case for $10 on sale from Fry's to put my 6 Paradigm (Starguider BST) eyepieces in vertically. Perhaps you could find something similar from a discounter near you.

I wonder how well the new crop of low cost, Chinese 50mm and 60mm finder scopes with helical focusers work for guide scopes. Anyone tried one?

The 23mm aspherics are pretty decent and very light. I really like them when binoviewing. I don't have the 10mm aspheric, but it's supposed to be pretty good as well. The 4mm is not well regarded. The 6mm and 9mm 66 degree eyepieces are generally regarded as pretty good but suffer from SAEP, so eye positioning can be critical to avoid kidneybeaning. The 15mm and 20mm are basically Konig or Erfle variants and do well only in slower scopes. The 15mm and 20mm GSO SuperViews are generally regarded as better performers for not a lot more money.

I don't find myself using filters with my 2" eyepieces very often, if at all, so I wouldn't worry about that criterion very much. I think I used to use a 2" OIII on the Veil Nebula with my 27mm Panoptic and my 15" Dob with a 1900mm focal length years ago, but that's about it. For shorter focal length scopes, I mainly use 2" eyepieces for wide field star sweeping, viewing large open clusters, and for centering objects for viewing at higher powers. I have the 35mm Aero ED, and it's pretty good for the weight and money. It probably performs at least as well as the 36mm Aspheric for a lot less money. The discontinued 35mm Baader Scopos Extreme was sharper, but narrower, far heavier, and now discontinued. The 30mm APM Ultra Flat Field (UFF) is an excellent eyepiece all around. It pairs well with the Delos and Morpheus lines as far as correction, field of view, and ease of viewing with eyeglasses.

I assume you realize that that is the secondary mirror shadow. If not, take a look at the front of your scope. Do you see that big assembly in the middle of the corrector? That's the secondary mirror assembly on your Mak. It reflects the light from the primary back to the hole in the center of it so the eyepiece can form an image at the back of the scope. You have what is known as an obstructed system. That black dot will always be there, although it gets squeezed down to a tiny pinpoint at best focus. If you clearly see the dot, you're out of focus. For fun while out of focus, spread your fingers apart on one hand and slowly wave them in front of the corrector while looking through the eyepiece. You'll see a shadow image of them in the out of focus star image. An if it's a cold day, you should see thermal currents rising off them as well.

I would add the 17.5mm Baader Morpheus. It's supposed to be a top performer as well for less money than the Delos.