Stu

Tried any doubles Derek? Pi Aquilae is worth a go.

I was just discussing this little sub group

They look great, you will have three amazing scopes so if you don't have to, no reason not to keep it

Definitely will vary depending on target so yes, well worth a rematch on DSOs when it is dark! @DRT has the 120ED earned a permanent reprieve?

Where is Simon (@Timebandit) when you need him?

Bless you..... Sorry, I thought you sneezed, I have no idea what you said

Touché

I reckon it will be pretty close. I'll take John's lead and not comment Looking forward to your own opinions, always fun to compare these things.

Yum!

Great service from Lunt, and good stuff to get the scope back performing as it should. Is this effectively a lifetime warranty then? Any idea what sort of age blocking filter they will replace? Good on Lunt anyway.

Looks good Derek, enjoy!

Yep @25585 would be good to see how you are getting one with some of this lovely kit. Have you managed any observing with any of it yet?

Great review Richard. I wondered what happened to that scope, and whether it was any good or not. Now I know! A lovely piece of kit, and quite a bargain too

From what I have read John, prisms struggle more with faster scopes because the light is passing through the air/glass interfaces at a sharper angle (ie further from 90 degrees). This causes more separation of the colours so more CA. I think the mirror diagonal is likely to suit the scope better as you are finding.

My concerns were/are based around the challenges of producing fast optics in a relatively low cost scope. By definition. SA and field curvature will be more pronounced than in a slower scope and that is likely to kill the fine detail that I find so appealing with white light solar at high powers. The report linked to previously showed plenty of issues in this respect but I'm sure as a widefield, highly portable scope it will be excellent. For full disk white solar viewing, again I'm sure it is very good but unlikely to be able to compete with an f10 with well figured optics for instance. They say though that the best scope is the one you use most, and these look very useable and convenient.

That's quite a stack under the eyepiece you've got there Mike! Can't quite make out what it is? Which motor focus unit is it? I had a couple of Baader Steeldrives which I enjoyed.

Same here Gerry

That's what I love about the Vixen GP mount I've got. Virtually as quick as a simple AltAz to set up, but nice stable on-axis high power views. I tend to either be doing lunar/solar or planetary observing, or deep sky for which I prefer manual AltAz so I choose the mount accordingly.

You are missing alot by not going higher, particularity on lunar and planetary. My alt az mounts are quite usable up to and over x200.

It’s worth bearing in mind the exit pupil differences too, particularly if your skies are not pristine. The 24mm will give a slightly darker background and better perceived contrast on clusters than a 32mm Plossl or the 28mm in question above. Regarding the rectilinear distortions in the 24mm Pan, I found recently when using mine with the Tak as a spotting scope, it wasn’t great, and yet for astro it works very well and I prefer the design bias towards reduced astig and field curvature. I rarely use the Pan for viewing the moon off axis so find it great for astro. Such a compact eyepiece too.

Superb idea! This year is unlikely for me, but would certainly like to head south again sometime in the not too distant future.

Doesn’t make good reading really does it Chris? Not surprising really I guess, it’s still a low cost, very fast achro and it is stuff like spherical abberation which kills the detail at higher powers. It remains to be seen how well it performs in Ha and for white light solar. I reckon a continuum filter will be needed to tighten things up enough to be decent ish in WL.

Last night’s effort, not as good as I had hoped but this was with the Samsung S9 using fonemate adaptor onto a 24mm Panoptic (with the diopter adaptor). Being weird as always, I popped the Pan into one channel of the Binoviewer with Barcon and x2.6 GPC giving the mag. When I can afford a higher power EP which takes the fonemate things will get easier. Anyway, if you squint you can see GRS . Seeing was a bit dodgy, and also I think if I use the headphones to trigger next time I might eliminate a little shake. Visual was much better than this obviously

Keep the Pan and buy the Plossl!

It’s not a strimmer is it? Sorry, couldn’t resist. Are you going to give us a clue?