Ags

Surely the narrowband filter is blocking most of the light, thereby acting as an ND3 filter... Be careful before removing it!

Had another session tonight. Tried to hunt down some really faint targets unsuccessfully. I find the eyepiece enjoyable but not top notch optically. Particularly when hunting planetary nebulae, the lack of sharpness in stars means the search is much harder. When you are simply looking at an object, you don't notice the optical defficiencies, but when hunting for DSOs you do pay close attention to the whole view. Thinking now that I may have to upgrade to a 16mm Nagler at some (distant) point, but this Nirvana will do for now - certainly in an ST80.

An affordable Herschel Wedge? Darn it! Another thing to add to my very long astro wish list!

The mind boggles! Trying to find the end caps...

Stargazing is quite a physical endeavor for me - it involves a lot of bending, twisting and crawling about on my hands and knees. Surely I am burning loads of calories? More to the point: how many free pieces of cake do I get after a Messier Marathon?

Looking very sharp! I have an Evo 72 penned in to my 2020 purchasing plan.

@Greymouser Afaik, you can't use a Herschel Wedge with a Catadiatropic telescope, you have to use front-mounted solar film. Otherwise your secondary mirror will take 100x the power of the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_wedge Not sure if you were thinking of a wedge with the ST102 or C5?

Not if you realign the warp coils.

I've used a Skymax 102 and an ST80 as travelscope (in fact they are my onlyscopes 😀) and they both worked fine. The ST80 is easier to use and seems to gather just about as much light as the mak, but it comes down to why you are traveling. For example, I went south for the Mars Opposition last year, so naturally i took the mak (and instead it gave me great view of the Rosette Nebula, while Mars itself was hidden by the huge dust storm 😡). If I am going to a dark location, I'll take the ST80 as I need the wide FOV to find anything. I'd like to have a C6 for traveling though 😮

A patch of clear sky blew overhead tonight so I put the Nirvana through its paces on some real DSOs. Firstly I rebalanced the setup for the Nirvana - it is a bit heavier than a Super 25! First up were M13 and M92. The darker sky background in the Nirvana (and greater magnification) did make these DSOs stand out from the background better, although they are easily bright enough to be found using a 24mm eyepiece. The Nirvana also gave nice zoomed in views of the globulars when I put it in the Skymax, partially resolving the stars in M92. I find the Ring Nebula challenging to find using the Super 25: at such low magnification it is simply star-like and the poor contrast means some nights I failed to find it at all despite knowing exactly where it is! It was still a difficult spot with the Nirvana but I think at least a bit easier. Conditions were not great, when I switched to the Mak the Ring was very poorly defined. Perhaps conditions were against the Nirvana finding this target easily tonight. Tonight I was not bothered by the field curvature I noticed last night. Using the eyepiece normally, it seemed sharp and satisfying. I guess I should just avoid positioning first magnitude stars at the field stop!

I think anyone who goes through the op is really brave. I struggle to get through a regular eye check-up, so I dread ever needing cataract surgery.

I just got one of these, so I thought I would put some thoughts online about it. I am using it primarily in a short refractor (ST80), for scanning the sky for targets for closer examination in Skymax 102 mounted alongside it. I am comparing the Nirvana to Explore Scientific 6.7/82 and 24/68 eyepieces and Speer WALER 10/82. Also to a Skywatcher Super 25, which is my current finder eyepiece for the ST80. In terms of design it strongly resembles the Explore Scientific 82 line, being almost exactly the same shape and size as my ES 6.7mm. Even the pattern on the rubber grip is the same, and they are both purged with inert gasses. The 16mm is a bit lighter than the 6.7mm. First off it is a good spotting scope eyepiece for day use, giving very clear and sharp views at a useful 25x magnification in my ST80. It is really comfortable to use and look through by day. At night: So far I have only been able to test it on a few bright stars through haze. The seeing was very stable with clear diffraction rings. I would say the Nirvana is less sharp than my ES 24/68, with (first magnitude) stars going a bit fuzzy from 2/3 of the way out from the center in my F5 scope. Even in my F13 Mak I still saw some edge fuzz. I could refocus to bring the edge stars into focus, so perhaps I am seeing field curvature - understandable in an ST80 but not so much in a Mak...? Focusing on the stars halfway from center results in sufficient focus across the field, but it feels like a poor compromise and the ES 24/68 is much sharper with a bigger field. So that is a bit disappointing. Also I expected complete sharpness from the Nirvana in the Mak, and I didn't get that. The only DSO I saw last night was the double double. In the Mak the Nirvana gives 80x magnification, and it could clearly split the system into its four components, so I thought that was quite good performance on axis. The real test will come on the next available dark night, when i can test the eyepiece for its intended purpose: picking out faint fuzzies. The ES 24/68 is a superb eyepiece but the 5mm exit pupil it provides shows a literally white sky background from my city location; even very bright DSOs only show as faint hints and stars seem significantly fainter than at higher mags. So I am hoping for better contrast at the 3mm exit pupil of the Nirvana.

Nicely composed! Also, I like the balance of color.

They creep up on you. My partner was unaware she was losing sight but was stunned by the improvement after the operation.

Got this today as my new low power eyepiece for my ST80. Grey skies here today but I tried it out on a tree. Rubber eyecup feels nice, it's comfortable to look through and seems sharp across the field, by day at least. It's nice it is similar in appearance to my ES 82 and 68 EPs.

It definitely does look a lot nicer than the SkyWatcher competitor. I do feel telescopes should be white. Looking at this as the upgrade of the right hand side of my dual scope setup. I like the slight increase in aperture over the Skymax, but with 1.25" eyepieces it will never offer more than .85 degrees FOV, so it is not Double Cluster-capable.

...but it will cost a fortune ?

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Welcome from the Netherlands!

Turns out the biggest I want to go is a 5-inch mak and a 3-inch frac. People also get aperture fever with eyepieces, chasing after enormous 2 inch and even 3 inch hand grenades, but I don't want to go bigger than 1.25 inch there either. ? And some people even get aperture fever over finder scopes. My finder scope is 80mm, so i definitely have that form of the fever...

You don't run the dob any more? Also, there are far too many ones and fours in that sentence! ?

I think it is an Americanism or an Engineeringism. I thought it meant "just barely adequate" or "in name only". Like "nominal service" is not good service at all.

Yes, although the rear mirror is spherical, it matters which way it is pointing, i.e. if the center of that sphere is in line with the secondary mirror. For that reason all Maks that I know of have collimation screws at the back if they can be collimated at all. Some collimate at the front too.

It is engraved with "Time 100/Focal (mm)" - does that mean max exposure 1 second at 100mm focal length?

I don't quite agree with that. I find a wide field scope and red dot finder (and some patience) help me find objects more reliably than my old goto system ever managed.