HollyHound

27 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

It certainly looks the part mounted. 👍

That's a lovely scope 👍

54 minutes ago, John said:

I'll have a small bet with myself on how you will find them - so I'll await your findings with interest to see if I've guessed right

I hope you win your bet... I have a feeling you might, but I have to scratch this itch 🤞🤣

25 minutes ago, John said:

It will be very interesting to see how you get on with 100 degree eyepieces. The APM 20 / 100 is an excellent way to find out

 

Exactly, it's a no risk introduction to the 100 degree world and I can compare it to both the XW20 (70 deg) plus it gives about the same FoV as my XW30 but with shorter focal length and smaller exit pupil... interesting comparisons to follow 🤔

Part of me wants to really not get on with 100 degrees at all, as I realise if I am blown away then the call of the Ethos will be next and I'm remarkably comfortable with XW/Delos right now 😬🤣

Arrived this morning, fresh from the esteemed @Dantooine, thank you 👍

An APM 20mm 100 degree... now to see if I can get on with these super wides or not 😬🤞

53 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

They certainly receive raving reviews, super. I don’t need to know how great it is against the APM 20 though 😉

Likewise, as I will shortly be the recipient of @Dantooines original APM 20, I'm happy to remain in ignorant bliss as to how good this Nagler is 😀

Another lovely Celestron Plossl to add to my "lightweight" set collection... thanks to @F15Rules 👍

1 hour ago, Dantooine said:

It’s not a bad time for thinning out as most vendors don’t have any in stock to sell. 

That’s probably because we’ve got most of it🤣

6 hours ago, Synchronicity said:

I ordered a Optolong L-eNhance filter and a  Filter Cell Adapter for my Esprit 80 and for a laugh asked them to send me the cloud free versions.

The box has just arrived...

The moral of the story is the need to be specific when placing an order!  ☁️🌨️❄️❄️❄️❄️  😉

Michael

 

Quite accurate forecast this last week or so too ❄️

25 minutes ago, Dantooine said:

I’ve been naughty that’s why 😁

it’s a very good eyepiece.. but I’ve pushed the boat out even further. 

His loss is my gain, I've been meaning to try the APM eyepieces for months (after many recommendations), and I suspect he's got something rather special incoming to replace it🤔

6 minutes ago, Dantooine said:

It’s been a few hours since I have 🤣

Minutes only for me now 🤣

However, I am shortly going to be thinning the eyepiece herd significantly very soon, as I am settling into a set that I use almost all the time and some hardly used at all now... so keep watching the "For Sale/Swap" section 🤔

1 hour ago, Dantooine said:

There maybe some more! I’ve ordered a 22mm T4. Had to be done, they were fighting in the case. 

You and I need to setup an “Eyepieces Anonymous” group... “it has been at least a week since I bought my last eyepiece” 🤣

1 hour ago, Dantooine said:

Yes.. another “Final” eyepiece 😉

Until the "Sequel" of course 🤣

1 minute ago, John said:

I'd like to try one of those again. It's been a long time since FLO loaned me one to compare with the Nagler 31 and the UWAN / Nirvana 28mm - 11 years in fact

During the intervening period Pentax / Ricoh have dropped the 2 inch XW's, the used prices sky rocketed, and then recently they re-launched them again !

If the time ever comes when I decide that I want to settle on a single range of eyepieces for all my scopes / needs, I strongly suspect the XW series would be "it" 

 

As I've said before, once this lockdown is over, we will find a way to see each other at one of these meets, as we're quite close and happy to let you try any of the eyepieces I have and hopefully vice-versa 👍

Likewise, with the exception of the Delos 14, my main set is XWs and I will be adding the 5mm and 3.5mm sometime very soon. I am even keeping the XW14 too, because (if you ignore the small amount of field curvature) it performs superbly for DSOs in the dob, and dare I say it... just a teensy bit more light gathering than the Delos 😬

On 20/01/2021 at 20:11, AlexK said:

Which "way"? I'm just explaining to Alan how the high-tech market works. My initial point was that a high priced sophisticated looking (PCB with "microchips"? Wow!) piece of electronics does not necessarily means the best solution you can apply to a specific problem if at all. "Cheap" means "Very easy to manufacture all the way to having a bucket of these for just a buck" mostly because of the mass production scalability (these circuits are printed, including with the "resistors ink" in about 1 minute per PCB). Alan has missed the point obviously, so I felt a bit of explanation is in order. No offence.
Sorry for grounding this "Happy thread" a little bit  
I believe that hobby forums like this great forum are to "ask before buying or building" as our hobby is not cheap. While the underlying knowledge is rather scarce, which is leveraged by "marketing gurus" all the time.

It’s all fine... as I said, I have no doubt it could be done simpler, cheaper with some time and effort,  but I’m happy to just buy something now that works reasonably reliably.

It’s not even lack of technical expertise, I built my first computer from a kit in 1982... still have it in fact. Learnt to code on that, self published my first game at the age of 17 and have spent the last 37 years writing various software and apps for the simulation and navigation market (if you have a TomTom, you're now running some of my 3D code 👍). But for stargazing or any other hobby, whilst I will mess about a bit, but generally will just buy what gets the job done.

We all have different outlooks on how much time we can or want to invest in these things and we’re all different, so no worries and certainly no buyers remorse either 😀

On 21/01/2021 at 11:26, Saganite said:

Traded all of last  years FLO vouchers for a long coveted eyepiece.  It will be mostly used in my 12" Dob, but will grace each of my scopes !

You’ll love it in the dob... mine works brilliantly in my 10” Bresser 👍

Unbelievably, we had a clear night last night, the moon was out and nicely positioned/phase for testing my new (and now permanent) lunar observing rig 👍

I've been dabbling with a pair of WO binoviewers for the last 10 months and using various pairs of eyepieces... Naglers, Panoptics and Meade Plossls. All of these have worked well, but the biggest source of frustration has been swapping eyepiece pairs when wanting to change the magnification. Sometimes I like to just pan across the lunar surface at a relatively lowish magnification and then when spotting something of interest, move to a higher magnification for more detail, and this means swapping two eyepieces, which sometimes loses the moment.

Barlow/Extenders can be used, but this is also fiddly as the whole binoviewer needs to be removed, which can mess with balance too!

The answer was obvious and don't know why I didn't do this months ago... zoom eyepieces 😮 Fortunately, I already had a Baader Hyperion zoom and when used with my Mak 127 (my primary lunar scope) at f/12, this gives very nice views indeed. I'd already established that I find FoV between 50 and 70 to be perfectly fine for me and this zoom, although having a fairly narrow 45 degs at 24mm, opens up to 68 degs at 8mm.

Another Hyperion Zoom arrived a few weeks back and all setup ready (see photo) to explore the moon... and then of course the weather played its part to prevent this from happening until last night.

With the Mak 127, binoviewer and two Hyperion Zooms and a WO star diagonal, mounted on the ScopeTech Zero and Report 372, along with a lovely simple little 6x30 right angle finder, I was able to spend a glorious two hours just soaking in stunning views of the moons surface, usually with 16mm on both zooms, but then zooming in to 12mm or 8mm when required for closer detail. After a short while the binoviewer just disappears and it became both effortless and (I think) more detailed, due to using both eyes... truly the only way to view the moon for me now 😀

The only slight issue is that the binoviewer, prism and zooms back quite a heavy backend for the scope and so needed to be moved quite well forward in the saddle to maintain balance. With this done, the Zero mount is more than capable of not only remaining easy to move by hand, but also still retaining slow motion control to move over the moon surface.

I did also try a WO erect image prism I bought last year, but whilst it was nice to have things "the right way round", I found it degraded the fine detail on the moon surface too much, so reverted back to the WO star diagonal. I will also be trying my Baader prism, which if it's the same or better, can be mounted to the SCT ring on the back for a slightly shorter/permanent solution 🤔

I did also briefly have a look at M42 with the same setup, and did a decent job of DSO viewing too, although I couldn't really see any advantage here to the binoviewer setup... perhaps will try this on the Bresser 10" dob sometime.

All in all, highly recommended and this scope, binoviewer, zoom combination will now be left permanently as my lunar observing setup, either as grab and go with the mount/tripod described or on the iOptron AZ Mount Pro if I want to be super lazy and observe with tracking. This may also be useful for planetary too... we'll see when they're better positioned again...

Cheers

Gary

3 minutes ago, callisto said:

Some of us are just plain ole vain     😁

13 minutes ago, AlexK said:

I'm always been puzzled why folks are resorting to these complicated to fit china cheap circuits for heating while a short piece of proper size NiChrome wire would do the trick much better, e.g. using the Telrad's own battery pack, and without obscuring the view and without ghosting reflections? Just for sophisticated looks?

I think it's just simple laziness for me... I spent ages in my youth messing with electrical circuits and building PCs (before they were PCs), so nowadays I just like to buy the kit and get on with 😬😀

7 minutes ago, Alan White said:

The first DewControl Rigel Quickfinder heater, from Tim built after discussion with him

Now available from DewControl

That's very nice indeed, thanks for the heads up 👍

Reminded me that I forgot to post when this arrived last week, bought from @Skipper Billy (thank you 😀)... a Telrad fitted with DewControl heater module  and dew shield... just need this cloud to go away and give it a go sometime 🤞🤣 

37 minutes ago, SStanford said:

Interesting that it came in the ZWO Planetary Camera box...

Mine did too, must be a ZWO packaging thing 🤔

Just now, Dantooine said:

What are the bodies of Morpheus made of? They must be a fair bit bigger than the Es 82’s. 

They are significantly bigger than the ES 82s. Taller and wider. I think they are CNC aluminium 🤔They also have the usual textured grip too.

6 minutes ago, JOC said:

There are not many reports on SGL of people that have tried them and not liked them.  From what I read of ranges of EP's many of the decent types appear to have a couple within the range which are superb and others which are just very good, I see relatively few reports on SGL where decent brands of EP's have sizes which seem to drop into the 'good' or lower category.  I suppose then it becomes do you covert a matched set of EP's (guilty as charged)? Or, are you prepared to own a box where you cherry pick the one or two 'superbs' from each line, but will never get a matched set?  

Agree with that... I read lots of excellent reports about Morpheus. I will say that (for me) the Morpheus 14mm didn't quite fare so well, when put up against the Delos 14, mostly due to field curvature and a bit of colour... but then the Pentax XW 14 wasn't much better (again field curvature). At 14mm, it does seem like the Delos is the right choice. 

The Morpheus 17.5mm is excellent 👍

Again these are my own findings and others may have different experiences of course 😀

13 minutes ago, Dantooine said:

I did have the 82’s as a first set. Gave most of them to mates when I moved into Delos. Then sold the Delos when I went to 100 degrees glass. It’s just that the 82’s are cute but hard hitting at the same time. I suppose they are close to nagler performance but I’m sure someone will correct me on that 😁 I’ve still to try a Morpheus and wonder if I’d like those. 

Although I haven't had a chance to try the ES 4.7mm 82 I bought recently, it does seem very well built but compact at the same time.

The Morpheus are good too, I'm keeping the 17.5mm as it's such a lovely comfortable view and (kind of) slots in between the XW20 and Delos 14. I have considered a Delos 17mm, but as the Morpheus is so good, there seems no point changing for (possibly) little gain.

I think Morpheus would make a good seconds set and I'm sure others here (with more of them) will chime in and agree 👍

53 minutes ago, bish said:

Great books. The only downside is that they  fuel your aperture fever!

Indeed... Fortunately I bought the Bresser 10" dob a month or so before getting these, so I'm holding off thoughts of bigger scopes for a good while yet 😬

15 hours ago, Dantooine said:

I could easily buy the 1.25” 82’s back for a nice lightweight set. 

Ah ha... the "second set" idea is happening. Had the same thoughts, but as I literally only have to move 30 ft with any scope, I have been able to resist 😬 

A zoom works well for a grab and go scope too 👍

37 minutes ago, Jason B said:

 

This so true, mostly... I love also with DPD they give you a profile of your driver... ours is married with 5 kids... makes us feel part of a team 🤣