IB20

I love the clarity and sharpness afforded by orthos, certainly not wistfully either. I have both those eyepieces and you won’t be disappointed with the views, particularly on the moon and planets. I remember my best ever views of M5 was with the 10mm BCO.

These do look great, I must admit. I’m still hoping they start selling just the bracket and software licences.

Went back to the scope straight after posting the above and now some mad solar vortex is kicking off on the other side. 😅

Some fabulous prominences today. A huge Pegasus wing-esque prominence has broken off from the surface and appears suspended off the solar limb. At its base there is so much activity ongoing. Looking further round the disc, a huge arc of plasma is spewing out, creating a superb archway. Earlier on there was a brilliant bright flare right on the sun’s edge, an incredible morning’s viewing.

Those gas giants…

I don’t think at these FLs I’d be overly tempted. The only one I might look at is the 12.5mm. I have a beautiful Celestron Ultima in that length which would make an interesting comparison. I’d like shorter FLs but I suppose that would come with lot tighter eye relief. Guess I’m still dreaming for those 5 & 6mm TOEs…

Loose translation here…

From the Starbase website: The TPL series is a standard eyepiece that is the successor to the Abbe series and the LE series, which has been discontinued. We have repeatedly verified various types of eyepieces and completed Takahashi's original Pro-Cell type eyepiece, which is the best in this class. Using high refractive low dispersion glass, the chromatic aberration in the center is about half of the Abbe series, about 2/3 of the LE series, and an optical design that can deliver the image quality of the objective lens to the eye as it is. In addition, a multi-layer coating that transmits more than 99% of the entire surface of the lens in the entire visible light range, and a high-quality matte coating is applied to the hardware configuration that is resistant to stray light, so you can enjoy watching the starry sky with a high contrast view. It is a high-performance eyepiece made in Japan that can bring out the performance of high-performance objective lenses. The extremely sharp image is connected from the center of the field of view to half, and the aberration and image surface curvature are suppressed so that the deformation of the surrounding image is also small. The star image in the periphery is designed to swell to a natural shape, so it is compatible with high-quality borough lenses and realizes a flat field to every corner of the field of view. The TPL-12.5, TPL-18, and TPL-25 to be released this time inherit the style of the conventional Takahashi 31.7 eyepiece, and are made with ease of use in mind, such as the same focus design and the adoption of a foldable rubber look.

Agree 100% with this. Also, you can never have enough EPs. 😁

This is superb, many thanks for this resource.

Great stuff, AR3363 is a real monster. I had some dog seeing this morning but it was still mighty impressive, showing a slight Wilson effect in the PST too. Plenty of faculae visible around the sunspot region and on occasion I saw lovely detail irradiating from the umbral centre. Granulation was somewhat washed out with the breeze though. I left the PST out all day and around 5-6pm noticed how clear the surface detail looked around then so the seeing certainly improved. Really looking forward to monitoring 3363 over the next few days, such a great time to be solar nerds!

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Very nice purchases; the 15mm BST is an exceptional eyepiece. You’re going to have a lot of fun with that scope. Not long for the gas giants too. 😃

Had a morning of white light solar and did a little comparison. I will caveat this with that atmospheric blurring and turbulence played their part throughout the morning, seeing isn’t great! Both 76Q and 102ed-r looked really sharp at 95 & 102x respectively; both through XWs with the 7.5nm continuum filter - I couldn’t really tell them apart. The absolutely huge sunspot AR3363 at the solar limb looks astonishing, plenty of surrounding faculae and at high 238.5x on the Tak, showed beautiful umbral spindles on odd occasions. I couldn’t quite get the Starwave to support much higher mags than 102x; it never quite reached the views of the Tak but it is quite breezy and there are heat plumes in my local environment when not windy. I was reading about atmospheric blurring and resolution last night and it’s something I’m experiencing more with larger apertures, the 76mm isn’t impervious to it but certainly seems to cope with poorer or sub-optimal conditions better! So a small win for the Tak, hopefully there’ll be opportunity to do this again when the seeing is better but it’s immaterial today as both scopes have lost out to the might PST Coronado. 😅

Very impressive! It’s certainly got me thinking!

As it’s quite windy and Venus is approaching my neighbouring rooftops, I thought I’d have a quick glance at the planet through my 15 x 70 bins. Not expecting much, other than a bright point of light with some CA, I was pretty taken aback with how clearly the crescent phase was showing. Obviously it wasn’t as stable an image as through a scope, (perhaps I need IS binos…) but it was still a great sight. I don’t know why I’ve never tried bins before, I always just reached for my g’n’g scope first. This gives me great opportunity to track Venus’ phase when it’s at lower altitude and becomes out of reach with a scope for the remainder of this apparition.

Superb work, I was watching that huge wide prominence for most of yesterday. The energies involved in these must be enormous!

Puts a smile on my face looking through it or looking at it.

All today, in between the breeze and cloud, I have been out sun worshipping with the Coronado PST. There are several large proms to catch the eye but one in particular seems to be jettisoning off huge amounts of plasma into space that seemingly is suspended in the sun’s gravitational field, such is the time scale of the event. It’s pretty hard for me to comprehend the sheer scale of these large prominences and the massive amounts of energy that must be involved. The sun really is a fascinating object to observe, particularly with its current activity. Some events seem to go on for days yet some can be over within 20 minutes. It’s great to be able to throw a solar scope outside and just periodically check in on what’s going on. Keeps the Astro bug well and truly alive through these light nights.

Solar action in abundance; filaments, proms, sun spots and faculae galore! WL through the Tak 76Q & 10mm XW and Solar Ha through the PST & 11mm TV plössl. Afocal images captured on ProCamera on iPhone 14 Pro and processed in LR.

A night of two crescents. Seeing is really quite wobbly but there were still splendid lunar views on offer, particularly around Fabricius (looking a bit like a clown’s face!) and the large gouge of Vallis Rheita. Venus getting ever slimmer but its hard to make out any cloud or contrast detail as it loses altitude and heads towards the rooftops.

Wonderful sketches Malcolm. Pretty much exactly what I saw last night with the 4mm TOE. Nice to have my observations corroborated!

Not quite daylight but I have just been observing Venus in the lightest conditions this season and for the first time I could see irregular shaped darker areas close to the terminator. Not too dissimilar to Mike’s sketch where darker patches extended from the terminator region into the remaining lit part of the planetary disc. Amazing!

Venus is looking splendid now it is showing less than 50% phase. Strikingly beautiful, for the first time I have seen some irregular shaped contrast around the terminator which is a thrill. Again using the Tak 76Q as it seems to handle Venus with such ease.

It was actually reports from yourself and @Highburymark that has taken me down the TV plossl road for Ha, so thanks! 👍🏻