DeanCJ

I have never really tried to copy and paste a link before , so hope this works. I don’t know if this will help, but it includes some photos of your mount with the cover removed, the topic is very similar to yours.

Your scope looks to be a fair way back in the mount. Have you balanced the scope? I have the same scope and mount, and as there is no clutch, I found that if the scope wasn’t correctly balanced it would slowly drop. I had to find the balance point of the scope using a pencil on a nice flat surface, then I marked the balance point on the dovetail bar, then align the mark with the dovetail clamp screw. Make sure you fit your diagonal and an average weight eyepiece, and dew shield if you have one, before balancing. Dean.

This may seem like a bit of a daft question, but what about a good set of binoculars? Are you allowed to purchase any? They are great for sweeping the night sky. I still use mine they are only 7x50s but will still show Andromeda, and to be honest I prefer the view of the Pleiades in these than my telescopes. Dean.

I bought a used Skywatcher ed80 case, for around £40.00 I think. The ed80 and the ST102 are essentially the same tube with different lens cells so the Star Travel fits perfectly, and there are cut - outs for a diagonal, 9x50 finder scope, and a few other bits and pieces. If you could find one for a good price, I can recommend one, maybe try a wanted ad ? Dean.

I also have a Vixen 30mm npl and I find it to be a very good eyepiece, especially the twist up eye cup. I find eye placement much easier and do not struggle with kidney beaning etc as I did with a 32mm plossl.

Speaking of internal reflections, @Don Pensack has posted some excellent photos and comments about some kind of retaining ring? inside Vixen SLV eyepieces which has no paint or anodising applied to it, causing strange reflections. General opinion seems to be that this was on early production eyepieces, so if you are considering buying used I would try to buy as new as possible.

I have a 127 Mak, and also a large collection of Vixen SLV’s. I have a 8mm Vixen NPL 50 degree plossl which I find very nice but the eye relief is quite short and at the limit for me personally, I also have an 8mm BST Starguider 60 degree which is a good eyepiece and has much better eye relief. I find 8mm really good for the moon and on nights of good seeing I have used it on Saturn with good results. I also have a 7mm Vixen LV which I use mainly for lunar on exceptionally good nights. Skywatcher also do a 7mm 58 degree planetary eyepiece which I found to be a surprisingly good eyepiece. I have used 8mm more than I expected and to be honest I think that with 7mm I have probably reached “empty magnification”. I am a big fan of Vixen eyepieces, and with the Mak I really like the 30mm Vixen NPL, the twist up eye-cup is great for eye placement and helps reduce kidney-beaning, and has a good fov. I am still very much a beginner and am sure other members will give you better advice than I can.

Hi Stuart, I have a Meade lx65 mount and tripod. I work in engineering and am in the process of making an adapter plate for the tripod so I can attach different mounts to it. I have had to drill and tap some threads, and on my tripod, all the threads are, being American, - UNC . UNC has a thread angle of 60 degrees and British Standard Whitworth has a thread angle of 55 degrees, so BSW will fit but not really vice versa. I would personally use UNC , the sizes are imperial ie 1/4 5/16. 3/8. etc. eBay sell UNC nuts and bolts. If you have a digital vernier that would help. Hope that’s some help. Dean.

Hi Aquavit, when I bought my 127 Mak, I also purchased a 32mm Skywatcher super plossl which I found to be very nice, but, like you I had difficulty with eye placement. I do not wear spectacles and the eye relief was just too much, resulting in black outs and kidney beaning. Having read quite a few reviews, I bought a 30mm Vixen NPL plossl. This eyepiece has a twist up eyecup which extends quite a long way and I no longer have any problems at all with eye placement. The slightly smaller 30mm fov is hardly noticeable and the views really are bright, clear, and sharp, it even works well in my f4.9 102 Star Travel. I am still very much a beginner and find it hard to spot subtle differences in eyepieces, but I found this eyepiece so much to my liking that I have swapped most of my other eyepieces for Vixen SLV’s, which I really do like, and they also have similar twist up eyecups, which for me, provide very good eye placement.

Another download, many thanks.

Hi miketw, I have two alt az goto mounts, and just like you and your son, my wife and I share the eyepiece. One thing to note about goto, is that you don’t necessarily have to align the scope every time you set up. Sometimes I simply set up pointing roughly north and level, manually turn on tracking via the handset and simply use the up and down buttons to find a target using my lowest power eyepiece, the mount will then simply continue to track. We really like the ability to do both, especially tracking, as we can talk about and share our observations, for instance my wife thought she had seen a double star within the Beehive Cluster that I hadn’t, we then increased the magnification and and had a real good look in that particular area. One other good thing we like about tracking is that if we have to pop indoors for some warmer clothing, or perhaps a rum and coke, when we return the target is more often than not still within the eyepiece. I fully appreciate the financial side of this hobby, it really can snowball, so I have purchased a lot of my equipment second hand, and I genuinely think that 99.9% of the members who post in this forum’s for sale section are honest, genuine and fair, so it is always a good place to look. Dean.

Hi Sluke, Before you write off the zoom eyepiece, I would definitely try it without the 2x Barlow. It may be that with the Barlow, there is simply too much magnification. As far as eyepieces, the first ones I bought were a mix of skywatcher super plossls and Celestron omni plossls. FLO sell both these I think, and also Astro Essential super plossls, all at really good prices, a 32mm should give you a nice reasonable wide fov without going to 2” eyepieces. For a little more money BST Starguiders have a wider fov, and get really good reviews, FLO also sell these. Also check out the ‘astronomy tools’ fov calculator https://astronomy.tools/ it’s very good and should give you a good idea of how different eyepieces will work with your telescope. Dean.

Hi Isaac, my wife and I are also big fans of the Pleiades, one of our absolute favourites is M44 Beehive Cluster, it is a most wonderful collection of stars, the more you look, the more you will see a myriad of different coloured stars, under low power some even look like doubles. With your scope the 25mm eyepiece should frame it nicely. I have just checked SkySafari and it rises around 18.00 hrs but it is very close to the moon at the moment, so I would recommend you wait a little while.

Forgot to mention eye relief, @Louis D is right, at 8mm even though I don’t wear spectacles I find it very tight, I would say probably my personal limit.

My wife and I have a Celestron 8se and having read the above SLV review by @John we decided to give them a try, (at the time FLO had a good offer on). We now have SLV’s from 9 to 25mm. I find them sharp across the entire FOV, nice and bright, show colours really well, very good eye relief and comfortable to use, and have good contrast especially when viewing the moon. As far as strange reflections go, we have not noticed anything particularly odd, but I must add, we are still very much beginners, so it is possible that we don’t know what to look for. we only have one BST Starguider and that is the 8mm, for a comparison we bought a Vixen 8mm NPL and to my eyes the NPL is much better, the view is much sharper and somehow seems cleaner if that makes sense. Overall, I would say, in the 8se the improvements with the SLV’s are, for us good not massive but subtle, and worth the money. As a bit of a side note, we also have a Star Travel 102 for wide-field viewing which I believe has a focal ratio of f5 and is generally considered as fast. With this scope the SLV’s work really well, a big improvement, I guess better corrected may be the term.

I also have a 127 Mak, and when the time came to upgrade the diagonal, I opted for the 1.25 Skywatcher dialectric that you have listed. For the price I cannot fault it, physically it is solid and well built, visually the improvements are for me, more subtle, but better compared to the kit diagonal. The most noticeable improvement for me though, is that the image is slightly brighter, personally I find that when I use eyepieces below 15mm I start to struggle with the smaller exit pupil sizes and the accompanying image darkening, especially when viewing dso’s, for example, on a really good night, with this diagonal I can view the Ring Nebula with direct as opposed to averted vision which I could not with the kit diagonal. I should also add that after 30+ years of welding my eye muscles are now weakening and both my eyes are scarred due to a small incident at work some years ago, so you may well see better improvements than I have. Overall for me, worth the money 👍

Thanks again everyone for your replies. As you all seem to be happy with your prisms, I am now convinced that the prism my son has given me is the cause. To be honest prism looks old and well used, it was in a large box of spares and accessories that came with a Dobsonian he bought a while back, everything was like new except the diagonal. Once again thanks all.

We bought the Se as an Ota only with a 1.25 visual back, glad you mentioned the Mak though as I haven’t tried it with this yet.

You’re right, stock does seem to be very thin on the ground. The annoying thing is that I could have bought one at the beginning of the lockdown, but although I am a key worker I was unsure of my income and my future health so I held off, as it turns out my income was cut for a while so with hindsight I should have bought one when I had the chance. I mainly looked at the T2/32 as we have no plans to use 2” eyepieces so 32mm vs 34mm and the lower price makes it a very attractive buy.

Hi John, thanks for your reply, that’s exactly what I have read, so we would use it only with the 8se as it is f10 I assume this should be fine, and it gives the best planetary views of the three scopes we have.

Hi, sorry I’ve been slow to reply, I have just spent a good hour setting up for the GRS transit and right on time it’s clouded over !! but yes it is a cheap plastic body type, and unbranded. It’s a shame as it does provide good views on targets that are not so bright. I have been looking at the Baader T2/32 as the price seems very good especially for the kit package, the Zeiss Prism is a touch out of my price range and I can’t remember when I last saw a used one for sale, although there is always the wanted section but I’m not sure if I can post there yet. Thanks for your quick reply much appreciated.

Hi everyone, I will try and keep this as short as possible, so here goes. My wife and I have three telescopes, a ST 102, a 127Mak, and a 8”SCT, but only two diagonals, a Skywatcher 99% dialectric, and the standard Skywatcher kit supplied, both 1 1/4”. We are now looking to buy a new diagonal for the 8se and having read many reports and reviews, such as BillP’s over on CN, we have decided on a prism diagonal such as a Takahashi, or Baader T2. In the meantime we have been loaned a well used, unbranded non amici prism. I must say Jupiter’s cloud bands do seem to be better than the dialectric diagonal, slightly more contrast with a richer colour, not massive but subtle. Now here’s the problem, horrendous reflections from my eye, and of my eye, in the 15 to 30mm range. We use Vixen eyepieces, Slv and Npl, so I tried a couple of Skywatcher super plossls and exactly the same, change back to a mirror diagonal and no reflections. My wife particularly finds this a problem. We have replicated this maybe a dozen times and can only assume that the diagonal is the cause, perhaps poor or no coatings at all ?? My question is this, before we spend our money, is this a common issue with prism diagonals? any advice would be very much appreciated. Dean.

Hi Philip, like you I also have a Skymax 127 and also a Celestron 8se. Having quickly learned how narrow the fov these scopes produce I decided to buy a ST102. The views of open clusters are stunning, stars being nice and sharp and the colours, in such as the beehive cluster are wonderful. I would be very interested to know how an ed doublet compares to an a achro on low power wide field views, as I am really visual only with the odd iPhone on the eyepiece photo. I would not use it for high power lunar or planetary work, or for that matter, astro photography as it is obviously not suitable. One thing you should be aware of though, is that the ST focuser is very poor, I have stripped, cleaned, greased, and adjusted everything twice now and it is not much better, the only option for improvement is to purchase the OVL dual speed replacement. I am loathed to do this as it turns a £165.00 scope into a £300.00+ scope, and therefore for a few £’s more puts you into the ed80 price range, this is something I really should have thought a little harder about.

I also have a 127 Skywatcher Mak (on the az GoTo mount). The first eyepiece I bought was a Skywatcher 32mm super plossl, as @johninderby says, it gives a nice wide fov, but I personally didn’t like the long eye relief, I was struggling with kidney beaning and black-outs, so having read a review on here, I then bought a Vixen 30mm npl which has a twist up eyecup and I find this to be much more comfortable to use. Most people say at f12 a Mak is quite forgiving on eyepieces, so on this basis, I then purchased a mix of inexpensive Skywatcher super plossl and Celestron omni plossl eyepieces and I find these work well, however eye relief gets tight below the 12.5mm. I also have a couple of BST Starguiders, these have a 60 degree fov against a 52 degree for the plossl eyepieces. I find these work very well also. As far as diagonals, I bought a 1.25 Skywatcher 99% dialectric. The difference between this and the standard is not massive but to my eyes it is slightly brighter with a slight contrast improvement, so for me a good buy. As far as high power, especially lunar, on really good nights I have pushed it to 250X or approx a 6mm eyepiece and the views have been surprisingly good. I struggle a bit with pasting links I’m afraid, but I’m sure all of the above are available at FLO. I have purchased from them previously, and cannot recommend them enough. I hope you have nice dark skies, as I think you will be surprised at what this cracking little scope can do, I certainly am. Whatever your choices, be patient and enjoy.

Hi Simon. My wife and I have had a Symax 127 for a year or so now and have found it to be a cracking little scope. Saturn and Jupiter along with their larger moons are no problem with medium to high-medium power, as far as the GRS and Cassini division go, with patience, we have only seen these a few times when the seeing has been very good. We have also seen Uranus and Neptune, although small in the eyepiece, there is a definite hint of colour. We can never agree on the colours (blues and greens seem to be reversed for us) The brighter Messier objects are also no problem for this scope either, and the smaller star clusters are a delight, as far as double stars go, I prefer this to our 8se they seem to be sharper. Lunar views are stunning and it can handle quite high magnification. It does need cooling, I find 30 minutes to be a minimum but 45-60 perfect, also the aperture is really 120mm not 127mm and the fov is quite tight, so much so, we bought a Startravel 102 for wide field views. I have never done astrophotography but the focal length of this scope is 1500mm with a f11 ratio which I gather is not ideal. Some people describe Maks as planet killers, the 180 may well be but the 127 maybe not?, others say Maks punch well above their weight, I suspect this may well be correct but I don’t have enough experience to say, other than I find this scope for visual use, fantastic especially for it’s size and cost.