badhex

Thanks for the info Ed! Yes, I've done a fair bit of research both here and CN but been unable to find anything really on that specific EP sadly. I had thought about trying to find a catalogue perhaps in PDF form but being unclear on the approximate era it might be a bit of a needle in a haystack. What year is your catalogue? Maybe I can find a PDF version of that and work from there. Conversely, I was able to find out quite a lot about the Swift EPs that came with my CF scope, and have since picked up another to try and complete the set. I've also spent quite a long time researching the CF scope (which I got from my Grandad, who in turn was given it by his local astronomy club) and managed to track down some decent info. Sadly it is currently in storage in the UK so I won't have access to it for some time, but looking forward to getting back to using it when I can!

Obviously as SW won't reveal the glass used, we're all essentially in the dark and guessing, but it seems unlikely to me they wouldn't use glass elements that perform at least as well as what is used in the Evostar, especially since the Evolux is a new and more costly series. All it would take is for a few buyers to post bad reviews to seriously hurt sales, and they have stated that the Evolux was designed with imaging in mind. Their official statement from 2018 suggests that they consider their R&D, and final design of which glass types etc. as their competitive advantage and IP, which they do not wish to divulge to competitors - this seems fair given their broadly excellent track record and low price point. Additionally, the official product descriptions for the Evolux state that the glass types are new, and configurations, lens design and coatings are all of proprietary skywatcher design. There are of course plenty of other glass types which might be used - FPL55, FCD100 and potentially other Chinese options we may not even be aware of. Anyway, all of this is completely speculative and ultimately it comes down to how the telescope performs in practice. Regarding the Evolux being faster, obviously this will make a difference especially for imaging but for visual which is the primary use case here, there is no real discernable difference in CA (ie there isn't any) on all three of my fracs using FPL53 glass - a 102mm F7, an 80mm F7.5 and 73mm F5.9 I guess @johninderby will just have to be the sacrificial lamb and report back to us 😉

That was my understanding too, so given the good performance of the Evostar for visual you'd expect the Evolux to be pretty good. Have you seen the Skywatcher webcast on the Evolux when they launched? It is Skywatcher so could be considered propaganda 🙂 but has a nice run down of all the features etc

Cheers Louis. I can't say I've seen it either in my SW 80ED but I believe that has FPL53. I had been under the potentially mistaken belief that although SW don't divulge the glass types any more, the general assumption is that they are the Chinese equivalents of well known glass types like the Ohara and Schott etc.

Thanks Pixies. Iota Cas is a good one! I've read a number of articles and posts of people saying the same thing. I'm reasonably new to hunting out multiples so my list is very short, but this certainly ranks quite highly for me too.

I would tend to agree that I fancy the idea of the EvoLux but it's a bit early in its life to find many reviews etc. The 80mm Evostar is however a great scope and this is supposed to sit between that series and the Esprit, so in theory it should be better. It's just a shame they don't advertise the glass which makes it a bit of an unknown. @AdamJ Do you know if the blue bloat was present for visual observation? I'm also interested in how these scopes perform, so if you have a link to the images it would be interesting to see them. @Ags ah the ever present handles discussion 😂 Actually, I ended up putting a handle on my 102 and it has genuinely made it much easier to take on and off the mount especially when I have the tripod legs extended more, but you might be right that it's overkill for an 80mm in visual configuration.

Thanks Mircea. I did push up to 71x, although I'm only using a 102mm frac so I suspect those faint galaxies just might not be achievable in my Bortle 7/8 skies. I'll give it another shot though!

Percussive maintenance

Great, thanks. I know I've read a few reports where people are just having sessions for specific types of objects so this would be very helpful. Regarding the split, I wasn't sure how it would work but wondered if you could do it by missing say the most northerly or most southerly portions of sky out of each volume, but not sue if that would work or even make a dramatic difference to book size! All of this said, I just weighed Turn Left at Orion and its just shy of 1.2kg so maybe it's fine anyway?

So, Northern and Southern skies presumably? Re feedback, btw, I've only really had one opportunity to use the book I had some PDF reading issues on my phone - the phone's fault more than the PDF. Hopefully will get another chance soon! One thought that does occur, how complicated would it be to also have an additional index by type of DSO, or perhaps list the type next to the name in the main contents page? As an example of how this might be useful: my recent session was proving a bit fruitless for faint galaxies, and so I spent the rest of the session looking for clusters instead. Would be perhaps helpful to see what each object is without going to the object page itself?

A few nights ago I had several hours of clear skies on the same evening as my Lacerta 40mm ED arriving! Wonders will never cease. Decided to hunt some faint fuzzies, and I may have *just* picked up M66 at 41x / 71x but couldn't get M65 and NGC 3628. Similarly, M95, M96, M105, NGC 3384, NGC 3389 did not yield any fruit. Booo. 😭 Final attempt at a faint fuzzy was Caldwell 38, but still nothing, so I decided to spend the rest of my time on clusters. Coma Berenices cluster looked great in the 40mm. I also got M3, M5 and M53 (the latter two being new targets) at higher mags. I tried for NGC 5053 but didn't get it. As my last target I tried for M13 but it was too high up at this point without adjusting the tripod so I called it a night.

Incredible! Congrats on an epic set of images 🤯

Great! I figured it was likely just those two that somehow slipped through, glad to hear that seems to be the case!

Hello both, one thing I have been meaning to contact @FLO about as a heads up was that my two recently purchased dessicant caps both had some fine metal swarf or similar along with the caps inside the packaging, possibly waste from the threads. See pic below. I've not heard of anyone else mention it so I think maybe mine just slipped through QA but do check before you pop them in your scopes just in case. I'll drop FLO an email as a quick heads up as well, unless the staff read it here first 🙂

I have the TS version of this scope and absolutely love it!

Even though I haven't used this specific scope I can give a plus one here as this scope was directly in the running (along with the none-FPL53 70mm F6) before I bought the ZS73, and I would no doubt have purchased this if it had been available at the time. The objective is the same as the 102mm, just smaller.

Yeah, the 102mm is definitely *less* portable, I wouldn't be likely to take it away on holiday, but the setup in the photo takes me <15mins to set up from scratch or 2mins to move outside if it's already set up. As it is also fully manual there's no alignment or otherwise to do. The 80mm I have is a SW Evostar, F7.5. It's a shame they don't also have a retractable dewshield as it would be a very compact scope, although SW seem to have started doing them for the Evolux series.

Haha yes understood! I probably wasn't very clear, but what I meant was that those two scopes now have different use cases as well, so purchasing the larger scope hasn't stopped the ZS73 from being useful. There are a number of scopes from different brands which are essentially identical to the ZS73, i.e. same factory - I believe Altair, RVO and TS and possibly Svbony, which may be a bit cheaper, so worth looking around, but at the price point listed on FLO for the ZS73 you can't really go wrong.

Cheers Dave! In my excitement tonight at some clear skies, I rushed out to test my new Lacerta 40mm ED and completely forgot to take the 18mm with me as well! That said if it's anything like the circle-T kellners I have, it should be surprisingly good as you say.

My acquisition of hard to find EPs continuums: Lacerta's version of the TMB Paragon 40mm. I have the TS "Paracor" (why?!) branded 35mm which I bought for my travel kit when I couldn't get the 40mm for love nor money anywhere in Europe. I also have a Panoptic 41mm which is an lovely EP but it's just too damn heavy, and I end up using the 35mm so I don't have to rebalance my scope just for search and survey. Anyway, seems like either this is new old stock, or Lacerta have taken up the mantle and are ordering in this EP once again. Either way, I figured I'd get it while I can!

From my personal experience, I would say that if you can't go for a ~100mm doublet straight away, going for ~70mm doublet definitely makes sense. I would however probably not go from 70mm to anything less than 100mm - I have 73mm, 80mm and a 102mm refractors and the 80mm never gets used any more. It's a lovely scope but it doesn't show significantly more than the ZS73, isn't as portable as either the ZS73 or 102 with their retractable dew shields, but yet requires a mount which is about the same class as that which the 102 needs. The smaller scope I have is a William Optics ZS73 F5.9 doublet which I can strongly recommend for the very high quality of the optics and build, and also how compact it is for storage and transport purposes - crucial for any grab and go. Cooldown times are minimal, the optics are remarkable - it really punches above its weight and is surprisingly good even on the planets despite the short focal length. Thanks to the retractable dewshield I can fit the scope, mount (AZ-GTi), diagonal/eyepieces and other accessories (basically everything except the tripod) in one backpack making it easy to store, and simple to take to other, darker sites when required which I have done many times. Once set up, the whole thing can be moved with one hand, although I usually use two for safety's sake! 🙂 I also have a TS-Optics 102 F7 ED (identical to the Starfield 102 F7 ED) which I got at the end of last year. I would not necessarily consider this an upgrade per se, as the larger size means it's still easily movable but will require a sturdier mount and tripod than the ZS73 and is therefore a bit less portable overall. It also takes a bit longer to cool down, but not drastically. It's a fantastic scope, great build quality on par with the ZS73, and due to the increased aperture obviously will show you quite a bit more. As pointed out by many others here in SGL, this class of refractor also has the advantage of being able to give reasonable widefield views (about 4 degrees of sky) at one end, and 200x at the other, skies permitting, which makes for a very flexible observing experience. It was was this point that convinced me to take the plunge, and I have not been disappointed. I tend now to use the 102 more at home and the 73 for travel or out of the house. If I had to choose only one, I would be torn - and reluctantly say the 102mm due to the larger aperture and observing flexibility, but they are both really very good scopes, and you would definitely not be disappointed with either. Pictures of both scopes below for reference (plus the ZS73 in backpack mode)

Great stuff @Ags, thanks!

Hello all, I recently picked up this eyepiece in excellent condition for eventual use in my vintage Charles Frank 6" reflector when I one day have access to it. Although I have a little of the "standard" research knowledge on various 0.965" EPs, which ones tended to be good etc., I've been unable to find much on *this specific* EP. The Celestrons usually talked about are the VT style (which this is not). It appears to be a double-circle-v which is likely to be Vixen associated, and some reports suggest were good but not *as* good as the single circle-vs. Anyone out there with a bit more info, such as what era, which scope it would have been supplied with etc, and any experience of first hand use? (I'm waiting for the clouds to clear so I can at least use it in a modern scope). Thanks!

+1 here for the Pentax XW 10mm, although I can't directly compare it with the APM XWA. It's a great eyepiece, tack sharp, great build quality and thoroughly enjoyable to use. I also have a 17.5mm and 4.5mm Morpheus, and have not used the 9mm but can extrapolate from my experiences with those that this would also be a great choice, per Louis recommendation. For clarity, I only do monoviewing so can comment on the binoviewing side of things.

With many phones now reading QR codes with their default cameras, they've become reasonably ubiquitous - although perhaps worth keeping the full URL printed in there as well for those without the required tech. Worth considering a URL shortening service for the latter. TinyURL is probably the best, free no-fuss service and doesn't require an account to use, although I believe the basic account is also free and gives you some additional options. I personally have used bit.ly a lot in the past but I think they may have taken quite a few features away from the free account now.