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Just an example of a typical quick observing session for me, trying to fit it in around 'life'! I have a baby due in a couple of weeks so we are manically preparing the house and nursery for the arrival. I set the TV76 and PST up in the garden early on Sunday morning, and during rests from painting skirting boards had some lovely white light and Ha views. My mini giro rig is working very well now, more compact with the shorter CW bar and L bracket. During breaks from assembling a flat pack IKEA wardrobe (AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH), I realised there was a double shadow transit on Jupiter last night so thought I would chance my arm at a little evening session too. I popped the PST and Herschel wedge away, put the longer CW bar on and away we went. It's amazing the detail visible with such a small scope. Earlier on GRS was clearly visible, with nice detail around where it nestles into the belt, whilst the Ganymede shadow transit was stunningly clear, really jet black. Nice details in the other belt too in moments of good seeing. I tried a variety of EPs, and settled in the 3.7 Ethos earlier on (x137) when the seeing was better. Later on the 4 mm radian gave sharper views at x120. I watched the double shadow transit at its mid point, Io's shadow smaller and less obvious but still very clear. That's a first for me I think. My last view was as Ganymede's shadow was about to exit the disk, but the seeing had dropped off by then. Packed away very quickly and off to bed. It's great to be able to view these events with minimum hassle. I know the detail is not what you would get in a larger scope, but if the choice is that or nothing, I'll take the small scope option every time. Cheers, Stu

Hello, I wanted to reach out to everyone here for some advice. I currently have a Tele Vue Nagler 4 17mm, viewing on a Celestron Nexstar 8SE, and am interested in an EP with a longer focal length. I really like the 82 degree AFOV, so I was immediately eyeballing the Nagler 4 22mm or Nagler 5 31mm. And this is where my problem is... which one do I choose if money isn’t a factor? I have reviewed the specs between the two, but without trying them out, I can’t visualize which would work out the best. Is going 31mm too much of a leap from 17mm? Thanks All!

Hi, i have made a video where i show a coople of eyepieces that i use and like, and also show how a barlow works, compared to the "Powermate" from Televue. And how is the FOV affected when changing the magnification with different eyepieces? Feel free to comment and give me feedback - I hope you like the video! /Daniel

Hi all, This is the first image i post here. It has been taken in August/September from my backyard. It is one of my first image taken with my new Moravian G4-16000 CCD camera. Taken with my TeleVue NP101is modified with a new focuser : Modifications can be viewed here : http://www.poigetdigitalpics.com/photo-equipment3.html SH2-171 in LHa - R(ha)GB : Full resolution image in 4k x 4k at this link : http://www.poigetdigitalpics.com/G4-16000/sh2-171 New Version.htm Enjoy, Florent ?

Hi Guys, I present you the second image taken with my Moravian G4-16000 camera mounted on my modified TeleVue NP101is. Images and technical information below. M13 globular cluster and its galactic area : Full Resolution image 4k x 4k here : www.poigetdigitalpics.com/G4-16000/M13.htm Full Resolution image here : http://www.poigetdigitalpics.com/Fichiers_Divers/M13new_image_Annotated.jpg Enjoy ? Florent

Hi I have a Skywatcher 200PDS. I managed to get images of saturn, jupiter with the telescope and the ASI120MC-S camera. However, to get a bit more magnified image of these planets I got myself a Barlow Tele Vue 3x and Revelation 5x. I am having trouble with this setup and really disappointed now. I am not able to achieve focus with any of these barlows using my planetary camera. I have added extension etc. but no luck whatsover. I just see a blank black video preview in SharpCap. I have seen people using the same setup and getting good images out of those. Any help highly appreciated. Thanks and Regards, Yogesh

As part of enhancing my 150 MATSUTOV and Skyris 132C for planetary imaging I'm looking at getting a TVP as a replacement for my cheap 2x Barlow Lens. I can't decide whether to go for the 2" or the 1.25". I do have a couple of 2" Naglers so I'd probably be a fool not to take those onto consideration. Has anyone else had experience with TVP's on these MATSUTOV scopes? Regards Chris

I saw a pretty clear sky on Monday 8th Febuary. I decided to set up the new ( new to me!! ) 300 mm Skywatcher truss tube dobsonian in the back garden and get some practice collimating and give some of my new ep's a workout. I love the fact that I can be set up in just a few minutes with this scope - for me that is a big plus. After purchasing a new SUV ( not entirely unrelated to the purchase of aforementioned new scope ) I will be heading out as soon as I can to the resevoir my astronomy group use which has darker skies than my back garden can ever hope to provide. Despite my record set up time the clouds had rolled in. Never mind - I shall get to collimating. With my old 6" and 8" reflectors it was an easy task as even after a night out in the wild they held collimation brilliantly. The larger aperture of the 12" means a lot more movement of the primary mirror while handling it. For this task I have a cheap laser collimator I purchased from E-bay. It seems to work well enough for visual astronomy and certainly provides crisp and clear views. This was also done very quickly and for my perseverance the cloud gods rewarded me with an hour and a half of relatively clear sky which was a nice surprise, especially in Edinburgh, Scotland. Indeed to see anything but clouds this season is a real win. I've pretty much only got a South-Western view ( besides the zenith ) which is great at this time of year as one of my favourite winter objects is in full view - M42. Zeroed in my Telrad and wee RACI finder and aquired it with my SW 28mm Nirvana ( Thanks Lorne ) and it was great to see pin sharp stars and some nebulosity at 53x magnification. Changed up to my ES 100 degree 20mm and the view was really stunning at 75x. Next in I used both SW Nirvana 16mm and 7mm. The 7mm gave me 214x and although a lot of people ( quite rightly ) think that is too much on a nebula I would have to disagree - the effect was almost like being in that cloud of dust and gas and I could see the trapezium stars like never before. After that I chucked on my new 4.5mm TV Delos at 333x and although this was far too much power for the atmospheric conditions in the seconds of clear seeing the dark gas was really visible against background. It was fair zipping across the fov but a worthwhile observation nevertheless. My girlfriend Jahmila has been getting more interested since popping up to the resevoir at the end of last year and looking through one of the guys telescope at some star clusters and double stars. She had asked if we could have a look at m45 so back out came the 28mm Nirvana. Now, some of these eps weigh a fair bit so after some advice from you guys I purchased magnetic taxi plate holders - 2 of them weigh just over 500 grams and this seems to be enough to balance out the scope even with the 28mm monster which weighs in at a mighty 1000 grams. We had a look through and the massive 82 degree afov ( which provides 1.53 degrees of actual sky ) and really let us see a lot of the open cluster and also gives you that "spacewalk" feeling I keep hearing about. That ep and the Explore Scientific 20mm at 100 degrees afov ( or 1.3 degrees tfov ) really give you the impression of being in space as the fov is so wide you don't notice the edges at all. That was enough cold for Jah though so I began using M45 to look for any coma which is the reason I wanted to upgrade my ep's having purchased a big, fast scope which can be very unforgiving on some eyepieces. Skywatcher Nirvanas have 72 degree afov and are really crisp and clear almost right out to the edge with maybe a little coma in the last 5 percent. To be fair I just do visual and had never noticed coma before as I tend to keep things quite well centred. The same with the ES 100 degree - Fantastic views and great contrast with a little coma present in stars at the very edge of the field. The Televue Delos has a 72 degree apparent field of view ( 0.21 degrees tfov ) with zero coma present. I noticed that it makes the background very dark compared to the others which makes for a nice contrasty view but I would need to use this ep on the moon and planets more to see how it performs on the objects it's meant to be used on. I am delighted to add these 4 gems to my collection as it will really help me bring out more detail in some of the DSO's which I will be looking for over the next month or so. I purchased everything in my collection, including my 80mm travel refractor and 305mm dob, second hand from Astro Buy and Sell, Secondhand Astronomy Equiptment on Facebook and from the classifieds here on SGL. It's always worth having a browse through these sites because you never know what you will find. Astronomy doesn't always need to break the bank if you are patient. For any of you that know me, you realize that I am in no way an expert in anything astronomy related - I am only in my 2nd season ( and what a terrible season it has been so far ) but I wanted to post regarding these ep's on a fast scope as I know it can catch some people out, especially when you are starting to upgrade your kit. I was caught out with some Hyperion ep's which work well on my wee travel frac but were just terrible on my 8" newt and not exactly cheap either. I am selling through some other, now, unused ep's to fund a light shroud and some other accessories ( tables, ground and insulating sheets, dew shields and observing chairs ) which will make observing sessions more comfortable in the future so I will be sure to keep you posted on how useful they turn out to be. Keep looking up All the best Andy

Well I just now bit on my first expensive-ish 35mm panoptic Televue Nagler eyepiece on Ebay. I've only ever owned 1.25" cheapy Plossl lenses that came with my Dobsonian, but I recently bought a nice little refractor that allows for 2" eyepieces. Seeing as how star party season and warm nights are almost here I decided to spoil myself by getting my first nice eyepiece. Whether I win this one or not I'll eventually be getting one, haha...but for the sake of it wish me luck! I'm sharing this with you all because I don't think my husband or kids really give a Rubbish and I'm pretty excited about this, haha.

Hi all, just a query over a site I've never used before. On the Orion Optics UK website they have a Televue 2.5x 1.25" Powermate priced up at £142 without postage added on. On most other sites in the UK I've seen this same Powermate priced over £200 without postage. Has anyone used this site OK? Also, they apparently contact you after you've bought it to arrange shipping? Seems a little odd?

Finally I got my hands on one of these eypieces pretty much by accident but a happy one ? Build Quality The quality of the eyepiece is top draw as I'm sure you would expect it's very solid and doesn't feel like you would drop it because of the grip round the middle. The lense is huge which you would expect because of the FOV this eyepiece provides. The bottom of the EP has both fitting for 1.25 and 2 diagonal sizes if needed. Session So the session began for me as it always does I setup my Celestron Nexstar 6se then align the scope using my ES 68. My first target had to be the moon I excitedly put the EP in the diagonal and peered through... I could say peered but that wouldn't be right I literally fell into the EP my feet left the ground and I was gliding above the moon. It was simply jaw dropping for me how detailed the moon looked I've never seen such colours and shadows on the terminator the detail of the mountains and craters far exceeded my very high expectations. The ethos gives of a slightly different colour for the moon then my ES 68 does maybe slightly cooler almost which I really liked. I also tried the ethos with my Vixen 2x Barlow on the moon and it was just as good at 13mm. Onto Jupiter which was just above the horizon by this time I eagerly punched in the coordinates then pressed my eyeball against the huge lense... straight away 4 moons were visible and the equatorial belts and for the first time for me the north/south polar regions. At this point the wife joined me and I showed her Jupiter and she quickly commented on the moons and the belts she usually struggles finding. Then she commented on how clear and big the view looked. The detail again was incredible it was like I was observing in 3D. Finally I decided to have a quick look at a few DSOs. Orion Nebula was a treat a day always even with the moon almost directly overhead I could make out the cloud of dust surrounding the closely compacted 4 stars and a trail of dust trailing almost as good as last week with my Pentax Zoom and no moon. I then decided as a final observation to try for an open cluster and of course get my sketch book out to have a memento of the night. I decided on M48 which had a beatiful array of stars over most of the massive FOV. I spent a good hour sketching and still marvelled at the crispness of the FOV all the way to the edge. Conclusion I'm very pleased with how the EP performed in all areas of my observations. But I'm not fussed about specifications the moment I was sold was when I looked at the bottom of the EP and got that feeling of falling in complete immersion whatever you want to call it that was priceless and I will never forget that first time. So no regrets buying the EP and I can't wait for many more falling/immersive moments. Here are some photos and the sketch of M48 enjoy and if you can buy this eyepiece ? Clear skies ??✨?? Richard

Hello all, As a starter I would like to let everybody know that i am not an extremely experienced observer thus my statements and opinions might not be correct and are subjective. The DeLite range are a relatively new line in the TeleVue brand and I am going to review it in combination with the TeleVue 2X barlow. The DeLite is a small brother of the Delos range and features the great 20mm eye relief of the Delos but has a smaller AFOV of only 62°. Telescopes used: Skywatcher 250PDS and Explore Scientific 80ED Triplet. DeLite The unboxing. As can be expected with any quality eyepiece, the DeLite came in a very sturdy box, much better than some of the "carboard/paper" boxes. It feels as this wouldn't get saggy or tear like the carboard boxes will. The eyepiece box contained some documentation and instructions on how to use the eyepiece. The eyepiece itself was nicely wrapped in 2 pieces of bubblewrap and a plastic cover around the eyepiece. Build Quality. The eyepiece feels of very good quality with a nice chrome barrel, the beautiful TeleVue DeLite markings. There was no damage what so ever on the eyepiece casing, not a single scratch. The eyepiece protections caps feel nice and sturdy and have TeleVue printed on both of them. Slight remark towards the plastic protection caps. They fit nice and tight, a little too tight for the bottom one which, when not pulled down straight, would cause the chrome barrel to unscrew. Not a huge issue but something to note. A nice design feature is the ability to change the height of the eyeguard housing and its ability to lock it, the action feels very smooth and once locked feels really sturdy and i wouldn't see it moving by accident. The lenses appear pristine with no markings visible, the coatings appear purple in reflections. The top eyepiece glass has a small indentation which is belongs to this eyepiece, I have no experience with any of the other DeLite range so i can not exactly tell if this is only on the 18.2mm. As I do not own any 1¼" filters I can not see how the filter threading on the eyepiece barrel is but it looks good. Optics. During the first test using the 80ED triplet I tried some dusk lunar observations with the sun still shining quite bright. First thing I noted was the very nice color reproduction. It did not feel like I was looking through a telescope at all and the moon seemed color free. In focus the detail on the moon was revealed very nicely. Even on this low magnification it was a great sight to see and a good half hour went by before I took my eye of the eyeguard. There was no color on the edge detected what so ever and it looked very fine and sharp. Taking a look at the field stop showed it was razor sharp with a hint of a blue rim around the outer most edge near the field stop itself. I found this minimal and it is barely noticeable. After sunset we used the eyepiece in the Skywatcher 250PDS. A rough alignment on Jupiter later revieled it and its moons in pristine quality. The details on Jupiter looked amazing, the red spot was easily spotted and some of the smaller storms were even visible at this magnification. It was a beauty to behold and again the eyepiece did not show any color and views were very nice even right up on the edge of the field stop. We moved on to the moon to show some more detail than the ES80 ED and we were not surprised to see some very nice detail. The lower craters were nicely defined and the Terminator looked very nice revealing the tiniest of craters. Hopping over to some stars, just before the clouds set in. The image was nice and clear, seeming to look much cleaner and brighter than the Maxvision 24mm 68°. Stars were looking like pinpricks over the entire field and the double star Mizar and Alcor looked fantastic. Shortly after we had to pack everything up due to high clouds. Conclusion. We are very impressed with the eyepiece, really good optics, really good build quality and appearance. I can highly recommend this eyepiece who wants TeleVue quality but does not have the money for the Naglers or Ethos or Delos eyepieces. I hope this was of some help to the people trying to decide if they should get these or not. They are of fantastic quality and in combination with the barlow gave me very impressive results of Jupiter, showing the color of the red spot easily and giving me detail I have no even seen in a Meade 12" ACF and Delos eyepieces at my local astronomy club! Feel free to leave any questions in the reactions! Clear skies, Buikimaging.

After a bit of advice on Barlows please. Thinking of getting one to replace the Skywatcher 2x I have which is "okay" but I wonder if I can get better? I have got a fairly decent image of Saturn and Jupiter with it, using an Xbox cam. Was lucky enough to receive an ASI120MM for Christmas (am over the moon) which I will be using for guiding with my ED80/ST80 but want to try a bit of planetary with it with my 200P (as I did the Xbox cam). Looking at 2nd hand barlows I wonder which one to get to assist at all with this set up. Lots of different ones out there. Any advice please for use with 200P? Thanks, Bob

Tele Vue: Delos 10mm AFOV: 72º FL: 10mm Eye-Relief: 20mm Barrel: 1.25" Weight: 408g Length: more or less between 125mm - 140mm As soon as I looked through the Delos eyepiece, Saturn jumped onto my face. The breath whooshed out from my body and everything froze for a split second, as though the world and the ringed planet had come to some silent agreement and they paused for that tiny span of time of absolute wonderment. It was a fabulous effect, Saturn had been captured perfectly and for the following evenings I searched for that moment time and time again. Saturn was always going to be unbelievable and drew gasps from myself and non-observing girlfriend and even at this lowish magnification many subtle atmospheric bandings were clearly noticeable as were the six faint moons; tiny spheres of dimly sparkling light, beautifully contrasted in the eyepiece’s night of black velvet. Using the Delos as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of the past was turning out to be a joy. Under the stars, under the canopy of dark skies, it is a great eyepiece with which to understand and celebrate what matters to us in this hobby. On anything I decided to view the image was always outstanding, skipping from object to object there were nights when I didn’t need to bring out another eyepiece. Deep space is incredible and the Delos is perfect for detailing the matted starlight and glittering sphere of suns within many globular clusters, especially at this time of year around Hercules, Bootes and Coma Berenices, the dark background and wide-field only enhancing the globulars' brightness. In comparison with the 9mm Baader Genuine Ortho the difference was surprising. In the 10” f/5, the BGO 9mm has been the most used, the most celebrated and revered eyepiece whose outstanding performance on globular clusters, galaxies, planets and the Moon had driven me to buy the 10mm Delos in the first place. Image quality in both eyepieces is as sharp and crisp as it is going to get, yet I found the Delos offering a more neutral, significantly brighter and aesthetically pleasing view. The difference in AFOV and glass is simply staggering. During normal viewing, there came the stage where the Delos just disappeared, no longer peering through a peep hole but out of window on the side of some space craft. Galaxies in Virgo and Coma Berenices were a real telescopic treat, well defined stellar patches of soft light that with concentration often revealed more of their inner secrets. Beginning a tour at M 61, I began galaxy hopping, field of view by field of view along a cosmic stream of galaxies with their dense cores of billions and billions of stars. M 88 took on a faint, spiral affect while the bright M 104 was elongated, punctuated by a soft, stellar core appearing to be - but not clearly separated at this magnification of 125x - at the edge of a dark lane. This week the evenings have had the company of the waxing, waning and full-moon which brightened up the night sky and I figured would make quite a challenging condition for the Delos. Framed adequately within the AFOV, the eyepiece brought out sharp and crisp details across the entire Moon’s surface, giving it a three dimensional quality. As the Moon slowly drifted by it felt as if you were orbiting close above its surface. There was neither aberration nor flare and once out of sight, there was no evidence that the Moon was lurking just outside the FOV – except for the sky being brighter. The quality here was as good as any branded Ortho I’ve looked through. And even though the heart and mind are probably the true lens of stargazing, evening after evening, aberrations on any object was zero as far as I could tell, no curvatures, no astigmatism, nothing. The Delos 10mm is a medium power, wide-field show-piece where objects can slowly drift from one side of the FOV to the other without a hint of distortion or loss of resolution. Every object was just as perfect at the field stop as it was when on axis in the centre; no flare, no scattering of light, no ghosting, no elongation of stars at the edges. Physically, the Delos 10mm is large. It offers a 72º FOV, weighs in at about 408 grams and is about 140mm long when fully extended. Eye-relief is exceptionally comfortable at 20mm and the eye-lens is huge, giving a sense of augmented immersion while observing, especially after being accustomed to 40 to 60 degree eyepieces. As would be expected the Delos’ build quality and attention to detail is exquisite. At an angle in the light, the coatings give off a kind of purplish-burgundy frac like tint and peering into the eyepiece itself reveals complete darkness. The sliding mechanism is a technical wonder which is used to find your own exact eye-relief comfort. It seems to be essentially a metallic sleeve with locking rings incorporated to prevent any slipping but even when loose the eyepiece remains firmly in place until you physically slide it. There’s even an engraved scale to mentally note where you like the eyepiece’s position and if you decide you can lock the rings and everything remains solid. These rings also double as a nice grip when handling the EP, even when wearing gloves. There is something quite pleasant about having engraved green lettering in your eyepiece case, but as with all new technical wonders, it might be necessary to practice a while with the Delos until it becomes the perfect instrument for observation. Although there is certainly no kidney-beaning, at first, at odd moments, I found there was blackout which simply highlighted my own inexperience when dealing with an eyepiece of this type but with practice and careful adjustment of the eye-relief mechanism everything was righted in no time and whether you wear glasses or not, you will more than likely find your own eye-relief position that perfectly tunes itself to your own personal sweet spot for viewing. The Delos 10mm, then, is a majestic wide-field. It has excellent sharpness, outstanding eye-relief and is a beautifully built, high-contrast, ghost-free, flat-field, eyepiece. It is simply a joy to handle and optically superior to anything else I have ever used. However, there is one significant problem with an eyepiece like the Delos. Once used you cannot ever go back to the night before you owned one, because you were a different person then, and like Alice, you’ve gone through a looking glass and have entered a new world of visual wonder, opened up a celestial window onto the universe from which you can never return.

Back in this thread I was looking for a planetary EP, dismissing barlows on the grounds of an unrequired increase in eye relief and the faffing around involved. The forum faithful persuaded me otherwise and the imminent relase of the ES Focal Extenders at a price well below one of their EPs, had me flexing the plastic. The main reason I folded, was because these are not barlows. They are, like the Meade Tele-Extenders with which they share a common heritage, what is often refered to as a Televue Powermate clone. I'm not actually sure that the concept is actually a Televue innovation, but as TV have been selling more of them, for longer than anyone else, lets run with the assumption that it is theirs. The important bit, is that unlike a barlow, which extends eye relief, a Powermate/Focal Extender doesn't. Instead of there being two (sometimes three) elements in one group that create diverging light rays to achieve their magnification, the focal extender employs a second group of lens elements to turn the magnified diverging rays, back to parallel. This prevents the increase in eye relief. The disadvantages are three fold. For starters, four elements are never going to be as cheap as two. Focal Extender prices start roughly where mid to higher price barlows leave off. Second, with a barlow, you can normally unscrew the lens element holder from the barlow body, which is handy. If you screw these elements directly onto the front of the eyepiece, you get a 1.3-1.6x increase in magnification instead. Indeed a less mentioned effect is that if you screw in an extension between the barlow body and the element holder, you can get a greater magnification than the native 2x (or whatever) of the barlow. You can screw it into the nose piece of your camera adaptor to provide a magnification increase for DSLR imaging etc. Barlows are quite versatile. A Focal Extender's magnification is fixed by the relationship between the two lens element groups. Even if they unscrew, the fact that the light rays emerge in parallel (telecentric) from the second group, means that even if they were a foot further away, they would still only provide a 2x magnification. Finally, a Focal Extender moves the focus point inward by it's own focal length*, which may be an issue for scopes with limited inward focuser travel. This issue, I have only seen mentioned a couple of times, so it presumably a non-issue under most circumstances, as reported by most users. I'd love to add my own experience to the pot, but my ES Focal Extender arrived whilst I stood under crystal clear, Alpine mountain top skies with nought for company but skis, the cloud being anchored at home where the Focal Extender had arrived. T'was always thus. My point is that Focal Extenders are not necessarily superior to Barlows. If you're into a bit of planetary webcam imaging, or a glasses wearer suffering from tight eye relief EPs, then a barlow may well be a better choice than the addition of a shorter focal length EP. If, like me, you are purely visual and are looking to add some planetary flexibility to some UWA EPs with ample eye relief, then the Focal Extender is a better choice. I see a lot of 'buy 'x', you can't go wrong' type statements, but I personally think there's a bit more latitude in individual requirements, than statements like that allow. The ES 1.25" 2x Focal Extender cost $79 plus $15 shipping from the USA. Import duty added £31.31, making a grand total of about £87 delivered. I say about, because the vagries of exchange rates, plus Paypal taking it's foreign currency exchange cut fuzzies the total slightly, but it's definitely south of £90. That is about half the price of a 1.25" 2.5x Televue Powermate, but only about a tenner less than a UK sourced TV 1.25" 2x Barlow. The value of this deal is therefore very dependent on your requirements, as mentioned above. As also mentioned above, I've only been back in the country a couple of cloudy nights, so I'll add my viewing impressions later. In the mean time, here's some piccies coupled with first impressions of the product: The ES packaging has changed, Whereas the ES 82s arrived in a plain black box with an ample expanded foam, clamshell inner, the Focal Extender has cranked it up a notch. The hefty foam remains, but the box is much thicker card, that by nature of it's wrap around magnetic fixing, is also now a double thickness. Gone is the plain black, all surfaces now resplendent in artwork by Will Tirion, the base of the box carrying a history of his work. A nice touch to add to seriously improved packaging. I would also note that, the box is only a shade smaller than that which carried the hand grenade weight and portions of my ES82 30mm EP which is a LOT bigger. If the Focal Extender arrives damaged, it won't be the fault of the packaging. On the subject of weight, the Focal Extender, in common with the ES82s, feels pretty dense in the palm. The combined weight of it, plus the 11mm ES82 tips the scales at a not inconsiderable 520g. Half that of the 30mm ES82, but double that of the 11mm alone and so worthy of note to Dob users in particular. Come to think of it, the weight, combined with the leverage of the complete assembly may challenge lighter EQ mounts. Here's a piccie of the pairing relative to a Skywatcher 20mm Super Plossl, which barely registers on the same scales! Artificial light and the resulting image tweaking in GIMP, has rendered the sheen of the element coatings invisible. Close inspection through a Canon 50mm f1.8 as magnifier, shows the coatings to be entirely even and resolutely green in hue. If inspection in daylight shows otherwise, I'll add it to my first light report. Likewise, with only LED spots and hammer-head flash, it's hard to show the element groupings, but other details are clear. The lack of blackening to the filter thread is disappointing, in line with all of the ES EPs I have. Liberal application of a black marker will be required to amelioate reflections, although the acid test will be actual use. Hopefully Jupiter will still be around when the cloud clears... To complete this phase of the review, I see from my original thread that I pre-ordered the Focal Extender on the 21st of December in a pre-Christmas fit of fiscal bravado. It shipped, almost a month to the day, on the 22nd of January. Notification of the 'comandgeddit' from the PO sorting office, was recived on the 4th of February, which is within the 10 working days norm. What I find interesting is that the Focal Extenders finally appeard on the ES website, well after I had ordered mine. The example on their website is number 28. Talk about mine being hot off the press..... TBC. Russell *I stand to be corrected on this one and indeed any other points!

This is my newest baby, a Televue 102 refractor. Apologies for all the clouds that are sure to follow. Can't wait to get a good look at Joop through this baby. As I have commited to observing for the time being and leaving the imaging until I have a more permanent base, this will likely be my weapon of choice.... Cheers Stuart