Louis D

Generally, if you can remove the dew shield by either sliding it off or unscrewing it, the screws holding the lens cell in place should become visible. The trick is figuring out how the dew shield is attached. For some, you need to unscrew the tube part from the rear reducer part by grabbing the two and twisting them gently apart. Others, the entire tube and reducer unscrew from the main OTA tube. Some are just slip fit and need wiggled off as a whole with some gentle back and forth twisting. Do some online research to see if you can ascertain how yours is attached.

Interesting that the ghosts coincide with one of the secondary spider vanes' diffraction spikes' axes. Perhaps the eyepiece is somehow picking up the bright diffraction spike and imaging it. Try rotating your eye and eyepiece each relative to the focuser to see if anything changes. Ideally, I'd say rotate the OTA and see if the ghosts follow it, but that would be difficult without rotating rings. You could put an edge-on ruler across the front of the scope at a different angle from the vanes to see if that introduces a new diffraction spike and more ghosting.

Have you tried other eyepieces to see if the ghosting changes or goes away?

Probably, though multiple people have noted some black debris on the internal lens surfaces (QC issue?). The Meade HD-60s are reportedly the same optically, but have not had any such reports. I have a set of both the HD-60s and the AT Paradigms (BST Starguiders), and both are good. I've reviewed them here. However, that was at f/6, not f/4.7 as with your scope. They might perform a bit worse, especially the longer focal lengths, in your scope.

Yes, there it is, the centered tension screw I mentioned. I just couldn't see it in the photo due to the lack of any reflections off of it.

Are the spike tips retractable for use on concrete? Is the leg angle variable or fixed based on chain length? Is there a variable height center post available? They don't seem all that different from a surveyor tripod. I like to sit at a fixed height so my feet are on the ground and then adjust the telescope height to suit for wherever it's aimed at. Typically, I start with the height comfortable for about 35 degrees altitude by adjusting the leg spread angle and then raise the center post to raise the eyepiece if the altitude of an object becomes too high that causes the eyepiece to become too low to look into comfortably. Since the minimum height is only 39 inches on that Berlebach tripod, I have no idea how I'd get it down low enough to use sitting without new chains, assuming the leg pivot points would allow for that spread angle. Here's the setup I use:

I've had good luck putting Sorbothane pads under each foot of my aluminum tripods to dampen settling time from 3 to 5 seconds to 1/2 second. Perhaps wood might improve on that, but it's good enough for me. I find non-adjustable tripods really annoying for astro observing. You can't vary the leg spread, you can't increase or decrease the mount height, etc. That's why I went with heavy duty photo tripods with high load capacities.

I would guess based on previous focuser experience that those two set/grub screws directly centered over the pinion axle on the bottom plate determine the tension. Typically, there's a single one centered near that silver locking screw, but yours appears to have two. I would also guess they have to have equal tension, so after backing them off with an allen key/hex wrench, make sure to tighten them in small increments and equally to suit your liking in tension.

Based on this list from CN, Stef from the UK (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK) bought one: #005 – Stewc14 – Pueblo West, CO #014 – Joe47 – Tucson, AZ #018 – Starman 1 – Los Angeles, CA #020 – J A Volk – Monrovia, CA #026 – RichF – Mid Atlantic, USA #036 – Ac2aj – Bayville, NY #047 – Sanbai – Baton Rouge, LA #049 – Vanc0051 – Minneapolis, MN #061 – fmasa – Osaka Japan #074 – Roragi – Madrid, Spain #075 – Tamiji Homma – California, USA #080 – Dave Bush – Parker, CO #084 – Daryel Stager – Spring Valley, CA #086 – Starvagabond – Verona, Italy #118 – Stef – Suffolk, UK #119 – TomDey – Springwater, NY #151 – Esso2112 – Magnolia, TX #165 – Jeff Struve – Iowa, USA #179 – Ares53405 – Racine County, WI #183 – Peter A. – Simi Valley, CA #187 – AstrOceanOmy – Sultanate of Oman #198 – Tamiji Homma – California, USA (yes, a second one!) #222 – Stewc14 – Pueblo West, CO Seek him out and ask him to join SGL and share his thoughts on this new eyepiece.

Or try nylon or teflon strips if you can find some thin enough to fit. You could also try shimming with strips of plastic milk jugs. Remove the focuser from the main telescope tube first before you start playing around with it, though.

Don't worry about it. I've done the same with my 127 Mak and the results look spectacular to the eye. It's way better than operating at 3x with a Barlow element to reach focus which works out to 4500mm, unless you're trying to go for planetary views with 32mm Plossls (11mm equivalent), then it's fine.

You're probably operating up around 2000mm to 2200mm or so for focal length with the binoviewers in the path, or about 1.4x nominal. You're also losing some clear aperture as well as adding some spherical aberration and increasing the percentage of central obstruction by diameter.

Probably not a bad idea to put weights on the end of a bolt sticking out 180 degrees to the eyepiece and on the other side of the pivot point. That would keep it balanced for heavy eyepieces as the scope angles up toward the zenith. I have something similar on my alt-az mount.

Yes. The rackless focuser on my AT72ED slips at high angles with a 2" diagonal and 2 pound eyepiece despite tightening up everything. It's not reliable at 2+ pounds (1kg). The R&P focuser on my TS-Optics 90mm APO doesn't slip at high angles if I tighten the two tensioners (one on the actual tube and one on the pinion axle). However, they need to take a page from Manfrotto's 475B center column and redesign the R&P so it can't unravel under load even without anything locked down. I'm guessing there's a worm gear or something similar in there perpendicular to the actual pinion axle. You can put 40 pounds on that center column, and it won't slip downward unlocked.

I could see that. It is quite tall with a large radius, so it might push you eye up too high and off center because it hits the bridge of your nose before you're centered within it. Both are non-issues for me since I observe with glasses and the eye cup is folded down. Everyone who talks about observing with a hood to block stray light in lieu of eye cups has never tried observing under Texas summer skies where it can be 90°F+ and 80% humidity. I would start dripping sweat all over my eyepieces and scope trying to use a hood in the summer (which stretches from late April to mid October). We're expected to hit 90°F by Wednesday here for goodness sake! I often use a large box fan blowing on high perpendicular to the scope across me to keep myself cooler and to blow away biting insects.

The two likely manufacturers are Kunming (United Optics) and SharpStar. Kunming tends to be the larger, higher volume producer of the two while SharpStar is smaller and tends to concentrate on higher end scopes. Both produce very good scopes, but SharpStar tends to get the nod for being slightly better and more consistent. Pay close attention to the mount rings and the focuser to distinguish the two.

What's your budget and size requirements for transport? Does it need to fit in carry-on luggage? The Astro-Tech AT92 f/5.5 Triplet APO would probably meet your needs for compactness, rigidity, aperture, and image quality, but at a price. I couldn't afford it, so I picked up a used TS-Optics Photoline 90mm f/6.6 FPL53 Triplet APO. It's case is probably just a bit too big for carry-on, so it would have to go in a different case. It's been a fantastic scope visually. I can't speak to its photographic potential since I'm visual-only.

I did a daytime, photographic comparison of the BST Starguiders to the Meade HD-60s last year . I also posted some impressions of using them under the stars further down in that same thread.

Can you imagine if phones required you to open a terminal window, and then type in all of your commands at the command line as was common 30 years ago and is still common in Linux? No one would buy them. Yet Synta continues to sell scopes with clearly outdated focusers and people continue to buy them. I'm guessing because the buyers just don't know any better.

After many years of this, it's kind of fun being able to aim a telescope at objects just because you know where they are on the sky and knowing how to sight along a scope in alt and az, even when it's from the hip. It's sort of the same as shooting a bow and arrow or gun from muscle memory and not really having to use sights to put the projectile on the target.

I love wide field, 2" eyepieces for scanning star fields and for initial centering of objects. They're also useful for observing large objects like the Pleiades, Hyades, Collinder 70, etc. For your scope and budget, I'd recommend the 35mm Aero ED.

You might be right about the solid tube imaging versions, but the Flextube versions, even with SynScan, appear to have the old focuser:

Wow, all it takes is one off-topic post to totally derail a thread. I think this technology discussion would be better served by starting a new thread in the Lounge area. Since I'm a Luddite at heart despite having multiple advanced technology degrees, I have no desire to start such a thread. As far as finder scopes go, I've been having fun modding a $25 70mm aperture, 300mm focal length scope from ebay for use with a cheap, spare 2" diagonal and 2" widest field eyepiece to see what is possible. I already had leftover PVC bits and spray paint from previous projects and just needed a couple of nylon screws, a finder dovetail foot, and a cheap ball head to mount it. The weather's been terrible here the last two weeks, but it looks promising for use as a cheap, richest field achromatic refractor/finder at about 8.5x70. It's heavier than I'd hoped, so I may end up mounting it on the other side of my alt-az mount using a vixen plate, again that I had sitting around unused.

Correct. Just divide your scope's focal length (1200mm) by the eyepiece focal length (12mm for instance) to get the magnification (power) of 100x. Obviously, a bigger denominator (eyepiece focal length) yields a lower power. As the focal length drops, the power rises in bigger and bigger jumps.

20 pounds seems about right for a 132 triplet. It's the 126 doublet that seems heavy at 22 pounds. I'd expect it to be more in the 15 to 16 pound range. It is slightly longer and has a bigger dovetail plate as well as a carrying handle, though. I'd probably get the 125mm TS-Optics/Altair Astro FPL-53 doublet instead if weight and price are issues.