Louis D

You're right, I'm only seeing the bare turret available around the US and Europe.

Personally, I would skip the 3.2mm Starguider. The resulting exit pupil would be 0.46mm, which is extremely tiny. The 0.71mm exit pupil with the 5mm is the smallest exit pupil I'm usually comfortable observing with in any telescope. I would probably load up with the 25mm, 12mm, 8mm, and 5mm eyepieces. That would give you 22x, 46x, 70x, and 112x. Get the Baader Planetarium Q-Barlow if you really must have higher powers.

Does anyone know the weight capacity of the Baader Turret? It's made of good quality plastic, but it is plastic none the less. Geoptik makes a near identical one in aluminum that would probably have a higher weight capacity. I ask because the bundled Baader eyepieces if you buy the set weigh a combined 354 g or 12.5 oz. The four Starguider/Paradigm eyepieces (assuming 12mm instead of 10mm) would weigh a combined 730 g or 25.8 oz which is more than twice as heavy. Has anyone tried the Baader Turret with a full load of heavier eyepiece to check for flexure or other issues? I know I wouldn't trust it with my Delos, XW, and Morpheus eyepieces.

You should be able to see the current phase of Venus quite easily right now just after sunset. Even in my crappy ST80 at 60x, it was quite obvious with a #56 green filter. Try using such a filter to cut down on the false color due to both the atmosphere and/or the scope to sharpen the image.

I had kind of thought you had saved up enough for the Terminagler. Since the S50 is $300 less than the Terminagler, I figured you had enough to pick up a 30mm APM UFF for $200.

Unless you're dead set on the last 6mm of field stop diameter and 9 degrees of AFOV, I'd get some variation of the 30mm APM UFF. I much prefer it to my 30mm ES-82 for many reasons (lower weight and bulk, greater eye relief, near perfect edge to edge sharpness, lack of ring of fire, etc.). That, and you'll save a nice chunk of change.

I recently picked up both the KUO 152mm fast achromat and a GSO 6" f/5 Newtonian. Side by side, I much prefer the Newtonian. The false color on the achromat is excessive on bright objects. It doesn't go any deeper on DSOs than the reflector that I could see. It's also way heavier and much more expensive. On bright solar system objects, the reflector stomps all over the fast frac with sharp images. The fast frac's unfocused violet and red ruin its solar system views. I have to heavily green filter the frac to see anything sharply. In summary, on dim objects, the fast frac shows nothing more than the fast reflector (which doesn't show diffraction spikes on dim objects) while the reflector shows sharp images on solar system objects compared to flaring messes in the fast frac. To see DSOs best, just get a large, fast reflector. I have no idea what to do with the fast frac now. It doesn't really fit into my observing style at all. Maybe I'll save up for a 150 ED to see if it shows anything more than a fast 6" or 8" Newtonian.

I haven't used one yet, but from this post of mine from last November, it appears to need 32mm of focuser in-travel in 1.25" mode to put the focal plane of the eyepiece at the focal plane of the telescope. By way of contrast, it only needs 8mm to accomplish the same thing in 2" mode.

Funny you should mention a long, Japanese made Barlow. The best affordable Barlow I've owned and used is a 1990s vintage Orion Deluxe 2x (Japan). It's about 6 inches long, baffled, and has a full aperture negative lens in a very thin barrel. In direct comparisons, I found it to be sharper and has less scatter than my 1999 vintage TV Barlow 2x, 1990s vintage Meade 140 APO 2x Barlow (Japan), and 1990s vintage Parks GS 2X Shorty Barlow (Japan). The latter is the same as the Celestron Ultima Shorty and Orion Shorty-Plus. The problem is, it's only usable in Newtonian telescopes due to the required insertion distance. I suppose it could be used in a Mak or SCT, but I've never had the inclination to double their already long focal lengths. In my refractors, I prefer the Parks Barlow because I never have trouble reaching focus, and it is basically as sharp and contrasty as the Meade and TV Barlows without causing exit pupil issues.

If we're going to list them, here's mine: 2.5mm Aquila Planetary II SW 3-8mm SVBONY Zoom 3.5mm and 7mm Pentax XW 4.5mm, 6.5mm, 9mm, 12mm, 18mm, 25mm Meade Series 5000 HD-60 5mm, 8mm, 12mm, 15mm, 18mm, 25mm AstroTech Paradigm 5-8mm SPEERS-WALER Zoom 5.2mm and 14mm Pentax XL 6mm and 20mm Huygens 7.2-21.5mm Surplus Shed Zoom 8-24mm Celestron Regal Zoom (BV Pair and a travel spare) 9mm and 12.5mm Kellner 9mm and 26mm Meade Silvertop Plössl 9mm Vixen LV 9mm and 14mm Baader Morpheus 10mm Tele Vue Delos 12mm Meade MA Astrometric 12mm Pentax XF 12mm, 17mm, and 22mm Tele Vue Nagler Type 4 12mm and 17mm Explore Scientific 92° Series 12.5mm Celestron Microguide Ortho 12.5mm APM Hi-FW 13mm, 17mm, and 22mm Astro-Tech AF70 14mm Meade Series 4000 UWA 16.7mm (15x) Bausch & Lomb 31-15-74 WF (BV Pair adapted from 23mm microscope barrel) 19mm Gary Russell König (BV Pair) 20mm RK (Reversed/Rank Kellner?) 20mm SVBONY 68° Ultra Wide Angle (BV pair) 20mm Orion Centering SWA 20mm/30mm Agena Astro 80° UWA 20mm Meade Series 5000 UWA 23mm 62° Aspheric (BV pair) 24mm and 30mm APM Ultra Flat Field 25mm Edscorp Abbe Ortho 26mm and 32mm Orion Sirius Plössls (26mm BV Pair) 26mm Meade MWA 27mm Panoptic 28mm Edmunds RKE 29mm (2"), 35mm (1.25"), and 38mm (2") Rini Modified Plössls 29mm Explore Scientific 92° Series (12mm missing Smyth group) 30mm Explore Scientific 82° Series (original mushroom top) 30mm Kasai Super WideView 90° 32mm GSO Super Plössl (BV Paired with 32mm Orion Sirius Plössl) 32mm US Military WF (surplus) 35mm Baader Scopos Extreme 35mm Aero ED 40mm Meade Series 5000 Plössl 40mm Meade Series 5000 SWA 40mm Lacerta ED 40mm Pentax XW-R 42mm Rini Erfle

8

Sounds like I've got some work to do.

Sorry. As a Brit, you're not covered by it. Time to fess up.

75 not including bino duplicates. Here's a somewhat out of date group shot including Barlows and BV. The Svbony 3-8mm zoom and Aquila Planetary II SW 2.5mm are missing, possibly others as well.

Come on down to Texas, then. We haven't had clouds in weeks/months. No rain, either. 100+ for weeks, 105+ for 10 days and counting. I tried to go out and observe for a little while last week, but I was dripping sweat on everything within minutes even with a box fan blowing on me because it was still 97 degrees and 70+ degree dewpoint at 10pm. * All temps in Fahrenheit.

With smaller SCTs and Maks, you will get vignetting in the outer field of 2" eyepieces having field stops larger than the rear baffle/rear port diameter. The human eye is rather insensitive to this, especially if your attention is focused on-axis. 2" eyepieces can be useful to provide context for objects, or to get them centered for higher powers.

If you plan to look at nebula with a line filter (OIII filter, for instance), then a 1.25" 40mm Plossl might help by increasing your exit pupil and making the nebula appear brighter despite being smaller. It does this by concentrating the available light into a smaller area. The difference in exit pupil with a 32mm vs. 24mm pupil wouldn't be great enough to warrant purchasing a 32mm Plossl for this reason only.

You can't go wider than 50 degrees at 32mm. It's a physical limitation of the 1.25" barrel's inside diameter where the field stop is located. Your SCT is quite slow at f/10 and is therefore rather undemanding of eyepiece quality. Your BHZ will certainly serve you well in it. You also don't want to go much shorter than 8mm for an eyepiece because the exit pupil becomes very tiny with an f/10 scope. The various 24mm Ultra Flat Field eyepieces would also be a good option for you for a widest field of view at the low power end. Even the 25mm Starguider Dual ED performs decently well at f/10.

Going even further in the wrong direction price wise: VariMax™ Variable Eyepiece Projection Adapter w/ 1.25" Barrel I had never even heard of these before. Looks like some pretty decent quality as you would expect for the price. Paul Van Slyke of Van Slyke Instruments near Colorado Springs, CO, used to make high quality hand made astronomy gear in his home machine shop until a forest fire totaled it about a decade ago. His stuff wasn't exactly cheap, though.

Because they use a wide collar, not a narrow compression ring, that avoids snagging in undercuts. The Antares 2" to 1.25" Twist-Lock adapters are similar:

Because they would cost as much as the MaxView adapter, and no one would buy them. That is what happened to the MaxView, and now they are no longer made. Instead, they sell small, cheap adapters that don't work with modern eyepieces to hit a certain price point.

It's your focuser that is the problem for having a compression ring to snag in an undercut according to him.

Plossl in that the image forming section is two doublets. Beyond that, it is a highly optimized negative/positive design of 5 or 6 elements:

I would have you reach out to my alma mater, Iowa State University. They have an entire Agronomy Department. 😉

So, excellent on axis, terrible off-axis? They're probably intended for driven mounts and planetary observations done on-axis. Probably a poor choice for a large, f/4, undriven Dobsonian.