Louis D

The 40mm Aero ED is discontinued and unavailable anywhere in the world. The next widest option is the 35mm Aero ED which is pretty good as well, and priced well. I compared it to some other longer focal length eyepieces I own in the following through the eyepiece photo:

I measured the effective apparent field of view (what you plug into equations to get true field of view) for my 18mm Meade HD-60 (reportedly same optics as Celestron Xcel LX) to be 59 degrees rather than 60 degrees based on my measured effective field stop of 18.5mm. As such, the moon's image might be clipped a bit. It would also depend on the focal length of your SCT at your focus position for your primary. If you have a long path (2" diagonal, filter wheel, rear Crayford focuser, etc.), you could be extending your focal length by a significant amount when moving the primary forward to reach focus. This would clip the image further.

Okay, all sorts of wrong here. First, there's not enough volume in amateur astronomy sales to justify building a factory in the US. If there was, Celestron and Meade would still be American made, owned and operated. They had their own factories in the US, but there just wasn't the volumes at the necessary price points to support US manufacturing. Second, Orion is unlikely to see a fraction of their judgement once Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization and appeals null out much of the judgement. Certainly not enough to build an optics factory. Third, the Chinese government has been dumping a lot of money into all basic industries. It's very difficult for a purely profit driven company to compete against a heavily subsidized company. Fourth, the US does have optical manufacturing capabilities in PerkinElmer and others. However, pretty much all of their manufacturing goes toward military contracts and high-end corporate customers willing to pay big bucks for the finest optics available. If you're willing to pay $4000 per eyepiece and $50,000 for a telescope, perhaps PerkinElmer might be able to enter the amateur astronomy market. Until then, it's not going to happen. There's just not enough profit margin to bother with. Fifth, the Meade brand will reemerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy probably still owned by Sunny. I'd be surprised if they were forced by the court to surrender the brand to Orion. They'll be back as new-Meade much like new-General Motors 10 years ago. Old-GM got stuck with all the old GM debts and union retirement commitments. Sixth, Televue uses factories in Japan and Taiwan for lens grinding and assembly. They do no business with the PRC because they would clone their designs and undercut them just as they did to Thomas M. Back and his TMB Planetary eyepieces. Seventh, Sunny is the parent company of Meade, so any bankruptcy reorganization of Meade will have no effect on Sunny and any of their other customers including Lunt. Meade was simply purchased to be a brand for Sunny's products in America and elsewhere in the Western world. Eighth, Sunny products are not going anywhere. Even if the court ordered the assignment of the Meade brand to Orion, Orion is still left with having to buy products from Sunny, Synta, Kunming, Long Perng, etc. I have no idea if the court ruling does anything to prevent future collusion between the Chinese suppliers. I doubt it, though. All they can do is order fines or block products from being sold in the US. The latter would pretty much shut down Orion's rebranding business. Ninth, if you really want an American made telescope, buy from Astro-Physics, TEC, Teeter, Obsession, or PlaneWave. If you want American made eyepieces, buy Brandon eyepieces from Vernonscope.

For planets, there's no substitute for aperture because aperture determines theoretical maximum resolution. Even the finest 6" APO is put to shame by a similarly priced C14 EdgeHD when imaging Jupiter under ideal conditions.

I prefer Stellarium on a tablet or a 3-in-1 laptop when assessing what to search for on a given night. If I'm having issues identifying an object like Neptune or Uranus, I'll zoom way in with Stellarium and bring it outdoors to look at the adjacent star patterns to figure out what is a star and what is a planet (or planetary nebula) in the eyepiece view. Since it's free, it's great for beginners on a budget. Essential accessories for a Newtonian of any sort would include basic collimation tools such as a collimation cap like a Rigel A-Line and a sight tube with crosshairs. That, and reading online collimation guides like Astro-Baby's. Other accessories would include eyepieces for low, mid, and high power views to start with. I generally recommend a 2" eyepiece between 30mm and 40mm for finding the general vicinity of objects or observing large objects, a 12mm to 17mm eyepiece for most objects at mid-power, and a 5mm to 7mm eyepiece for high-power views of small objects. I'd hold off on filters because they're mostly useful for viewing nebula in light polluted skies. Start by observing the moon, the planets, and the brighter showpiece objects such many of the Messier catalog objects and a few he missed. Some object categories like nebula and galaxies are nowhere near as visible from most populated areas as they were 200+ years ago when he put his list together, so temper your expectations accordingly. An observing chair or stool is handy for comfortable viewing with Dobs. Many folks on here recommend using water butt stands to jack-up Dobs a bit off the ground. A unit power finder such as a Telrad or Rigel QuikFinder is handy for putting the scope on targets and for star hopping.

My grown kids clued me into FOMO last month. I'd never heard of it, either. Apparently, my daughter's future father-in-law has FOMO in a bad way and often goes to concerts and other events in case the performer never tours again or gives the performance of a lifetime that night.

Haven't some too big to fail companies been nationalized in Europe rather than let them go under? I think they are sometimes re-privatised once they get on their feet again?

YOLO and FOMO come to mind.

But working with the same two kids each outing would not equate to a public outreach event's experience. My oldest daughter quickly picked up how to track with the Dob as a grade-schooler. My wife, on the other hand, has no desire to touch a telescope, but still enjoys a peek at solar system objects occasionally, so I have to constantly recenter the object for her. My other two children never showed the slightest interest in astronomy, so I have no idea if they could track with a Dob. One thing I've noticed with tracking is that the view is more static. Without tracking, you realize just how fast the Earth is spinning under your feet making the view more dynamic and interactive.

Correct. Bankruptcy rarely means going out of business in the US. More often, it is used as a legal reorganization tactic to get out from under debts, union contracts, and court judgements. I have no idea what the equivalent is called in Europe. Ironically, had the Chinese manufacturers not bought US companies Meade and Celestron and had simply colluded overseas, they would have been outside the reach of US antitrust laws.

Dobs are also far more stable dollar for dollar at equivalent aperture than an EQ mount. It takes a massive EQ mount to hold an 8" newt as rock solid as a Dob mount, for instance. This translates to faster settling times after touching the scope to move it, focus it or simply from contacting the eyepiece when observing. 11 and 13 year olds should be able to take to controlling a Dob in short order, so I wouldn't worry about having to constantly jump in and adjust it.

I compared the Meade HD-60s to the Paradigms/Starguiders in this thread a while back. Below is an image through each eyepieces (except for the 3.2mm BST for which I have no use) in an f/6 ED refractor. I think the 12mm and 15mm are too closely spaced to recommend getting both. I'd get the 8mm, 12mm, and 18mm if three was the target number. If you wanted to add a fourth, I'd get the 25mm since it comes close to maxing out your true field of view in a 1.25" eyepiece. Remember, if you buy 2 or 3, FLO gives you a 10% discount. For 4 to 6, a 15% discount. The focal reducer will allow your existing eyepieces to provide wider true fields of view, so you can avoid buying 2" eyepieces and a 2" diagonal to achieve the same result. However, you'll want to remove it for high power viewing rather than stacking a barlow behind it.

I created a DIY unit power OCS/GPC by combining a Meade 140 2x barlow nosepiece at the front of 40mm of spacer tubes (IIRC) and a GSO (or generic?) 0.5x focal reducer at the back end and then screwing it into the nosepiece of my Arcturus binoviewer. I'll have to double check sometime, but I think there is some vignetting with widest field eyepieces and obviously some field curvature/distortion issues. However, it reaches focus in my Dob's limited backfocus focuser. It's startling to see with two eyes how much sky is visible, even if it's not perfect, compared to the 2x barlow nosepiece by itself which yields about 3x in the BV. That's nine times as much area on the sky visible at once!

I totally agree, but I also wear eyeglasses at the eyepiece when using all but the very highest powers because of very strong astigmatism in my observing eye; so I am a bit biased. I can make the 32mm GSO Super Plossls work in binoviewers, but just with only 15mm of usable eye relief. I cannot comfortably use my 26mm Sirius Plossls with only 11mm of usable eye relief. However, the 23mm aspheric 62 degree eyepieces are super easy to use with 17mm of usable eye relief once the rubber eye cup is pulled off. I so want a pair of those 32mm smoothie Meade Plossls. All that beautiful glass right near the top. Perhaps the manufacturers of recessed eye lens eyepieces could have had a screw off extension akin to the latest Morpheus eyepieces that could be removed by those seeking the maximum usable eye relief?

I tried one out at a recent star party. An advanced amateur had a couple of these setup for the kids to try out. He'd picked them up from Goodwill for $20 apiece. Being on a table intended for little kids, I couldn't get low enough to sight along the tube, so I shot from the hip, so to speak, and lined it up on Jupiter before it set. In the dead center, you could just make out the Galilean moons and Jupiter's disk, but not much else thanks to the massive spherical aberration of the mirror. Pointed at a star field, not much was visible because most stars were smeared out to imperceptible faint smudges. It's no wonder they were donated.

That's because the eye lens is very recessed, effectively having a built-in extender: Compare it to an original smoothie version from Japan which would have more in common with the Televue 32mm in question:

Are the TV 32mm Plossls easy to use with eyeglasses due to the long eye relief? The GSO 32mm Super Plossl is just usable with eyeglasses despite having a recessed eye lens.

Here's a link to the patent description. There's no assignee, so I'm not sure who is manufacturing it. A good guess might be GSO since they're based in Taiwan. However, the markings look different from their focusers. The innovation appears to be the addition of hardened steel tracks for the bearings to ride against. However, Starlight Instruments Feather Touch focusers use hardened steel rails for the bearings, just in a different location than these rails. See US patent 6,069,754.

Someday I'll have to see how orthos stack up against Pentax XW/XL, Delos, Morpheus, HD-60, and Starguiders at shorter focal lengths with an undriven Dob to see if the added sharpness is worth the loss of field.

Yeah, it's tight on eye relief with eyeglasses. You've got to push in with glasses to see the field stop. I imagine the same with a Dioptrx would be true. The 22mm Panoptic might be easier to use with Dioptrx given similar eye relief but smaller AFOV.

Here's a comparison review of the Vixen 2.1x42 Super Wide Constellation and Kasai Trading 2.3x40 Wide Field Binoculars.

We can thank my dear, departed dad for making sure I left Iowa with plenty of yardsticks years ago. Every once in a while, I come up with a good use for them. Does anyone still give away yardsticks these days? They were a staple handout at county fairs in the 70s and earlier.

So something along these lines would probably work for your husband:

On a refractor, it doesn't matter much which size you use so long as the front of the focuser tube doesn't have to be racked in so far that it starts to cut off part of the light cone. Aside from using a binoviewer with a really long focuser tube, this usually is not an issue. On catadioptric telescopes that focus by moving the mirror, the smaller ones are often designed to work best with the optical path length of a 1.25" diagonal, and moving the mirror to accommodate the additional path length of a 2" diagonal can add some minor spherical aberration in SCTs and possibly something similar in Maks.

It's alive! This thread is alive! Seriously though, what you have to watch out for is the working distance. Most field flatteners have a working distance of 55mm like the one you referenced. It would require an eyepiece holder that attaches to T-mount threads. That, and you would need quite a bit of in-focus to make it all work. Alternatively, you could try what I did with my AstroTech 72ED. Buy a TSFLAT2, a 15mm SCT nosepiece, and a 2" GSO/Revelation dielectric diagonal. Remove the original nosepiece from the diagonal, screw the SCT nosepiece into its place (it may not want to thread very far I've found, but it's still solid), and screw the TSFLAT2 into the SCT nosepiece's M48 threads. You'll have a nearly perfectly flat field with your 72ED scope.