Louis D

You're probably okay because the Powermates are telecentric magnifiers that don't leave the ray bundles diverging.

You'll have vignetting with widest field eyepieces because the barlow will spread the beam outward, allowing some of the ray bundles to slam into the tube walls and be lost forever. The reducer will then recollimate the central diverging rays and bring them back closer to their original angles of incidence with the exception of those edge bundles which are gone forever. As a result, the edge near the fieldstop will fuzz out to darkness. I actually use a barlow/reducer combination to reduce the power of my home-brew binoviewer OCA/GPC. I put a Meade 140 2x nosepiece on the front of my 1.25" diagonal and a 0.5x reducer on the nosepiece of my binoviewer. I get about 0.7x and severe vignetting in 26mm Plossls with this setup, but the views are wide. Without the FR, I get 3.0x, so a massive reduction in power. For my Dob, I put 45mm of spacer rings between the two and get exactly 1.0x and severe field curvature but no vignetting at 26mm. 32mm Plossls vignette anyway due to the 22mm clear aperture of the binoviewer, so those lost edge bundles aren't a big deal for this application.

I'm confused. Doesn't the eyepiece have helical focuser on it to bring the reticle into focus? I'm guessing it's the ribbed ring right below the eye cup and just above the illuminator ring. Does it not turn? If not, you've got a defective eyepiece. If it does turn, focus the reticle first and then use the knurled rubber helical focuser on the diagonal to focus the objective onto the reticle. I found a description of the eyepiece by itself here. It says in the description "Can be focused by twisting the top portion of the eyepiece". That would refer to the ribbed section. Grab the illuminator ring in one hand and the ribbed section in the other and give it a good counter-clockwise twist first to see if it will go up. If it appears to be all the way up, try twisting it in the opposite direction. Pretty much all reticle eyepieces, even the cheapest ones, are focusable.

I would try downsizing to an 8x40/42 bino or even pick up some vintage extra-wide field 7x35 binos off ebay. You want wide angle and hand-holdability and probably no more than a 5mm exit pupil given your light polluted skies if you want to scan for constellations. Next, buy a reclining lawn chair. You will be much more stable laying back like the kids in that cover illustration.

Here's my images of and through my 13mm to 15mm eyepieces. The BST (Paradigm) does well, but not as well as the shorter focal length BSTs. It is the smallest and lightest of this group by far, so it has that going for it. 😁 The full view images were taken with an ultrawide angle camera of lower resolution and resampled to match image scale in the central region. The Meade suffers from SAEP, thus the darkening.

I have the 35mm Aero ED, and it is nice and light, pretty decent over 75% of the field, nearly maxes out the TFOV in a 2" eyepiece (44.4mm field stop), but a bit tight on eye relief if you wear eyeglasses to observe at low powers. It's also relatively inexpensive. The Vixen is nice, but nothing special given its price. If I were going to spend ~$200 on a 30mm eyepiece, I'd definitely get the 30mm APM (Altair) UFF. It is nearly perfect in all respects. Here's a few comparison images of and through my 29mm to 42mm eyepieces so you can see how they perform center to edge and how their relative sizes compare.

Not only that, I've found that my brain can compensate for slight differences in power between the two eyes and merge the images successfully. This whole thing about finding matched sets of eyepieces is completely overblown as it relates to magnification. What's more important is making sure they focus at the same height relative to the tops of the eyepieces. You physically can't compensate for one eyepiece being 5mm closer to one eye than the other eyepiece. You can't get to both exit pupils simultaneously, so you see only part of the image in the one too far away. I've run into this buying a second eyepiece years later for binoviewing and either the field stop location has moved up or down relative to the shoulder or the eye lens recession has changed relative to the first eyepiece.

My version of that scope has four 1/4"-20 mounting holes in the dovetail plate, so yours probably does as well. You should be able to find one that gives you decent balance on your tripod and attach your tripod head to it there. The 5kg limit may assume mostly horizontal usage, so it may struggle with it tipped way back and may want to turn turtle at high altitudes. Be prepared for such an eventuality and to catch it in the act. Never leave your scope unattended on one of these tripods since you're pushing its limits and your luck. Beyond that issue, the biggest usability problem with low cost photo tripods is the head. They have sticky, jumpy motions. They don't lock down well. It's difficult to set the tension so you can smoothly pan in either motion. The connection between the head and the center column tends to be wobbly. If it's all you've got, by all means use it, but be aware of its limitations and temper your expectations. Even professional grade fluid video heads struggle with a telescope tipped way back. There's a reason most alt-az mounts put the telescope on the side of the mount rather than above. It allows for the scope to remain mostly balanced as it tips skyward.

Absolutely! I use a pair of Celestron Regal zooms in mine. They allow you to quickly dial up the power when conditions allow or dial it back for when conditions deteriorate. As far as getting them at the same power, I turn them simultaneously and then fine adjust one to match the other in power after refocusing. It's pretty amazing how easily your brain figures out the moment when the two views are identical and you can stop zooming.

To answer your original question, the Orion is Synta made (PRC) while the Zhumell is GSO made (ROC). Both have good optics and similar construction. The Zhumell definitely has the better focuser (dual speed) and a nice optical finder worth over $50 alone. The large trunnions on the two ES scopes I mentioned will make for much improved altitude motions over either the Zhumell or Orion. I don't know much about the ES focusers, though, or who makes their scopes. I assume JOC (PRC) since they own ES, but I could be mistaken.

I used my 20 year old ST80 and Baader Solar Film for viewing the 2017 eclipse's partial phases and, with the filter off, during totality. I also took it to work and set it up in the parking lot to glimpse the recent Mercury transit between passing clouds. It worked just fine for both, and I didn't notice any CA or SA, but I wasn't pushing the power above 50x, either.

@New Young Star I forgot to first say welcome to SGL, so welcome aboard. You're not the first to mistake our post count rank name for our username/handle on here. Look up in the gray (grey?) bar above the post rank nickname and avatar for our username/handle on here. I'm Louis D. 😃

As the old US cereal ad might have said to the 127 'If you eat your WheatiesTM, you'll grow up big and strong like the CC 8"'. 😁

I would also consider the Explore FirstLight 10" Dobsonian due to the large trunnions and rotatable tube. Another option is the Explore Scientific - Generation II - 10-inch Truss Tube Dobsonian Telescope for $50 more than the Zhumell. If storage space or transport space is an issue, the truss design can't be beat.

Try this trick on Orion. After you have it centered at a low power to really concentrate the light into a small, bright region, shine a bright light onto a white sheet of paper and stare at it to sensitize the color sensing cones in your eyes. Now extinguish the light and quickly look back at Orion. You may see a hint of green before your cones fade away and the rods take over again.

Hold the eyepiece up to a brightly lit window. Now bring your up to it until the flipped up eye cup touches your eye socket. You should be able to see a bright circle surrounded by blackness. You may need to move the eyepiece in or out relative to your eye to avoid blackouts and maximize the view. That is the proper distance to use that particular eyepiece. Now point the scope at a distant object and rack the focuser all the way out and lift the eyepiece up out of the holder while looking through it. The distant object should start to come into focus. The distance at which it comes to focus gives you some idea of how long an extension tube you'll need to reach focus. Hopefully, the scope came with one as @johninderby suggests. If not, you'll need to buy one of the appropriate length. I'm guessing they did this so you can attach a DSLR to the scope, but it means they had to use an oversized secondary mirror which leads to reduced contrast.

I think the quoted focal lengths are assuming the use of a 1.25" visual back and diagonal. The fact that they supply it with two inch accessories doesn't change that. I'll agree it's probably misleading.

That should be interesting. I've only looked through BHZs at star parties. While decent, I thought that the eye relief was a bit tight with eyeglasses. I always unscrew and remove the eye cup on the Celestron when observing with it to maximize eye relief. I don't know if the same work-around is possible with the BHZ.

Here's my write-up about the Starguiders and the Meade HD-60s.

I would recommend buying from SGL's sponsor, FLO. They offer 10% discount on 2, 15% off on 4, and 20% off on 7. It will help keep this site running during these troublesome times.

Nice, the Synta 127 Maks require a step-up ring to fit SCT accessories.

Can it be fitted with a 2" SCT visual back?

That's one possibility if there's some play in the fit. The other is the clamp has one or two screws anchoring it to the main scope tube. Loosening those two may allow for realignment left/right by twisting and shimming up/down at the front and back and then carefully tightening it down again. These dovetail clamps are not always aligned very well at the factory.

It's still a good deal when you pick up the OTA used for $200 and tell yourself it's really a 118 Mak.

Thanks, I couldn't find them. I would recommend to the OP either the Skymax 127 AZ-GTi or the Skywatcher Star Discovery Pro 127 Wifi Maksutov Telescope due to that feature.