Peter77

I can only agree with the others, they are excellent. I have the 3.2, 5 and 8mm myself. Planning to buy the whole set. They are very good. Well built also, very high quality feeling.

Thank you! Tried to take as informative pictures as possible. By the way, I mailed a bit with TS right after my order, and they said that they had a few boxes like this that had been open and shown, so they're still available for €999, just thought I'd mention this if somebody else was interested. My plan ahead now is to build an imaging rig around it incl. guidecam etc. But first I am going to spend a good while getting to know the scope and enjoy it for visual observations.

Hi all! The purpose of this unboxing/review is to.. 1. Show you the fit and finish and the physical appearance of the equipment 2. Also to give you an idea on how well it is packed 3. Of course also review the optical performance, to the best of my ability, when this damn lid of clouds that has been covering the south of Sweden, clears up. Warning: long thread Previous experience with telescopes: Celestron Nexstar 102 slt achromatic refractor So I've been in the market for an apo for quite some time now. Wanted to get a good middleground scope to serve as both imaging scope and for visual use. So my eyes fell on the TS Optics 115 triplet F7 apo. Stated OTA weight is 6.5kg. Not sure though if it is with or without tube rings. Teleskop Express had them on offer for €1349, an already good price. Suddenly an exhibition ex appeared for €999, which was opened and shown to customers in their store. So last Friday I placed the order, the same evening at 18pm it was shipped. Today, Monday, it arrived in Sweden the day before New Years eve. Pretty good Other than the apo, I also ordered a bundle with 38mm 2" 70° eyepiece and a 2" 99% diel. diagonal, and a deluxe findershoe to fit on the focuser. Today I've been walking around with a smile all day I've added lots of pictures both on the products but also on the packaging, which I feel is very good and protective. The overall sense of quality, fit and finish is beyond words, simply outstanding. And yet this is not an expensive apo. The coating on the tube is matte white which I believe is powdercoated. The focuserpart is piano black with a finish that I could lose myself in. Focuser motion is stupid smooth. And the diagonal and eyepiece also give a very good impression. I cannot wait for first light! I hear that there should be some holes in the clouds tonight, but I've got a mancold so frankly I am not up for it. Glass used in this is Fpl51/lanthanum glass. Focuser is 2.5" rated for 5kg load vertical. I've read good reviews on this scope so my expectations are high. Also I believe it is the same scope as Astro Tech 115 F7 triplet and Altair Astro 115 F7 triplet, although they come with more accessories. Okay folks. This is all for now. Hoping to be able to test it under the stars soon. Hope you don't mind all the pics. Cheers.

Hello everybody. I have now received the TS Optics 20x80 Triplet Semi-APO bins. It arrived in a sturdy case with locks and what appears to be quite simple keys, but the case itself seems quite substantial and the interior is padded with a thick foam exactly matching the shape of the binoculars. The general impression is that it is a high quality binocular. Rubberized cover which gives a nice grip. The lens covers are good. The eyepice cover is one cover that covers both lenses. The covers for the objective lenses are insertable covers that sits firmly and don't fall of. They're quite hard to fit into place though. Objectivelens diameter seems to be not a full 80mm but rather 77-78mm. Coating on objecctive lenses and eyepieces seems to have a reddish-purple hue to them. Okay so what about the quality of the image? Now I have only had the chance to try this in daylight. Not very good daylight though, a bit foggy and cloudy but the impression is that it gathers a lot of light. It has a ring on the right eyepiece to adjust for dioptrydifferences which is a must since my eyesight differs a lot between the left and right eye. It has a very sharp focus, very much more than my 16x50 non apo bin which I feel is very hard to get an acceptable focus with. I have tried to look for false color by looking against tree-stems against the snow, and there is none visible. Also I can see very much less curvature of straight lines than with my 16x50 non Apo, so it appears that the image is quite flat across the field. I will continue this review regarding the quality of the image once we have a clear nightsky here in the south of Sweden, and with what I've seen so far in daylight, I expect it to give good views. Looking forward to it. So what can be said about the weight and size of this bin? Well they're not that heavy to hold steady as I expected, even though they're more than double the weight of my 16x50. I work out a lot and am quite strong in sholders which I feel helps a lot here. Most people recommend a tripod though, but I will try it laying down in a sunchair. I observe a lot with the 16x50 bin lying down and it is quite heavy too, but lying down is very relaxing and enjoyable. Some images. Bottom pic shows comparison between 20x80 and the 16x50 bin, the image speaks for itself regarding the difference in size. Will come back with a part two of this review once I get the chance to take it out under the stars. See you then and hope you find this review helpful thus far. // Peter

Hello, Forgot to mention the aperture in my original posts. But yes, I shot them at F5.6 so fully opened att 300mm. There is very little information regarding the D version but a few reviews on the DG version and non of them astrophoto related but people seem happy with it though.

Don't think you'll regret it. I got the older D version without AF. At the time I didn't care, because it was only for Astrophoto, but in retrospect I should have gone for the DG version (with AF). That way it would be more useful for daytime shooting as well but it is how it is now. Was looking at the tamron 70-300 as well, but in reviews I read they suffered from CA, and besides that, I really wanted to try an APO lens. Glad I did.

Thanks. Really like the APO lens. Weren't that happy with the shots taken with the Nexstar 102 Slt scope, but with this APO lens the focus and the colors are fantastic. Gotta look into this with flats again. Tried it once but didn't get good results.

Doublecluster Celestron Nexstar alt-az goto mount Nikon D3100 DSLR  Sigma APO 70-300 @300 ISO 800 34 lights x25secs No calibrationframes

M42 Celestron Nexstar alt-az goto mount Nikon D3100 DSLR Sigma APO 70-300 @300 ISO 800 53 lights x30secs No calibrationframes

Hello, Sorry for bumping this corpse of a thread Just want to thank you for this review. Reviews of this bino is hard to find. Been drooling over these for almost a year on a Swedish astroshop, thinking "should I or should I not". I already have a non apo 16x50, an older bino and it is okay but it has some CA and this steals some focus meaning that finer details are lost. When I finally came around to ordering it, it went out of production so my order was cancelled. Only the deluxeversion with clip in nebulafilters are still available. But I was lucky enough that a fine gent from the UK had them on astrobuysell in mint condition. So after contacting with him and we agreed on price and shipment, they're now on the way which feels really good Will write a few lines here on what I think of them once they arrive. And in case you're wondering why it's cloudy all the time, it's because I received my bino

Nice to see the thread is still cookin' Went out again last week to have another go at Andromeda. This time 93 lights @ 1600 iso 30 secs each. 20 flats and 20 dark flats. Processed final image a bit in Deep sky stacker and then processed it a little more in Gimp Windows version. A little bit better than last pic with ~60 lights only. I feel that I need either even more exposures on the object or longer exposures. But this is alt-az, so... (and I don't have any other mount anyway:P )

Hello there, Unfortunately I don't have Photoshop. I've recently gone over from Linux back to Windows after 3-4 years of absence. I have Gimp, the Windows version which is not limited to 8bit with jpegs. Do you have any experience with Gimp and if so, do you know if there is a similar feature perhaps? Quite new to image processing in general and astroimaging processing in particular.

I will try a larger bulk of exposures along with flats and darks as well. I was actually done yesterday and on the way to take the gear in. And then I saw the pleiades and thought "hmm", let's try a few shots at those also. Andromeda proved to be a quite hard target to get the colors right. It would be fun to try stack some different sequences of the pictures I shot. This time I stacked them all. But yes, I will definitely give Andromeda another shot. By the way, I managed to get much of the red out of the double cluster picture. Putting both up for comparison. I liked the vibrance of the first picture but there was too much red in it.

Hello, I've been out again and having some fun. Targets were M31 and Pleiades. M31 a grand total of 65 pictures and Pleiades a grand total of 47 pictures. The bulk of them were 30 sek exposers, also mixing in a few 25 and 20 sek exposures. Varying between 1600 to 800 iso. Gotta got my Bottom of the wagon to do some proper darks and flats, but quite happy with the results nontheless. Mostly with the Pleiades, nice colors. But it's nice to have captured M31 as well. It's been a dreamtarget. Had a little lightpolluted area of the sky aswell but not too bad anyway. Shot through Nexstar 102 slt on Alt-az goto mount with Nikon D3100 in prime focus.

Hello kappy-kat, Yes I will do that. I just gotta get a larger memorycard first. And I gotta remember to change back the camerasettings to normal settings after I have used the camera. My fiancė was going to photograph the kids and cousins. And I had set the camera to 30 sek and 800 iso and 10 sek delayed shot. Lol. So she called me and was like "what the f*** have you done with the camera. It starts beeping and then it takes a long shot and the picture gets all white. I'm trying to take a shot of 6 kids that won't sit still like 3 second" I've been seeing that people talk about darks and flats and such. Gotta read into that 'cus it's an entirely new thing to me. Yeah I think the Doublecluster is a really interesting object, and in pictures like this is interesting to observe, you can really figure out things about what's going on with the stars and their connections to eachother. And the picture got so vibrant, there's a lot of depth and energy. Next thing I want to get a good image of is Andromeda. That's going to be a challenge. I really hope this thread can live on. I love to watch pictures of the universe

I'll check that. Thanks. Really happy with DSS though, very simple to use. But I will check the guide and hopefully do a picture of the same in for comparison.

Hello, Many great contributions in this thread, and it's nice to get inspiration as to what you can do with simple means, it's really uplifting to see some of the pictures, they're all amazing. I have a Celestron Nexstar 102 Slt myself and have began to experiment a little with a Nikon D3100 connected to the scope. I run linux on all my home computers, and there aren't that many good stacking softwares. There is Siril, but either I don't understand the program fully, or I don't know, but I haven't got any results that I'm happy with. But I tried installing a VM with Win7 as a Vdi on my harddrive, and under that I can run Deep Sky stacker. I did a stack with 31 pictures yesterday, that I shot in the evening 28 to 29:th september. I aimed the telescope at the doublecluster and plugged the camera into the back. The doublecluster are one of my absolute favourite objects in the night sky. The first time I saw it, my jaw almost fell to the ground. I simply couldn't believe what my eyes were taking in. I was in such bliss that I had witnessed this true masterpiece of nature. I just stood there out in the night and whispered "Wow, wow, wow". Yesterday I played around in Deep sky stacker and let the program digest the 20x 30 sec, 8 x 25 sec, 3 x 20 sec @ iso 800 that I shot the day before. I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the final picture. It's not perfect, this is my first real result and the pictures were in jgp, but I'm happy with the picture nontheless. Here it is. I hope it doesn't get too big on the screen, if so, let me know mod and I'll edit the post. Thank you all for sharing your great pictures. Keep em coming.