first session in a loooong time 12/4/07 & TELEVIEW PANOPTIC 19mm REVIEW

[Andrew*]

After a 12 hour shift yesterday, I wasn't in the best mood for a night out, but considering I had a Panoptic to try out, and the heavens looked glorious, it had to be done! So I took out the scope and started looking around at nothing in particular with my new 19mm Televue Panoptic. Stars were pinpoint in the middle of the FOV, but very slightly blurred at the very edge. I would say out of 68*, 60* are useable. I suppose this is not to be snarled at using f/5, but I still expected better - just for the name.

My navigational powers were very rusty, but eventually I got one of the Auriga clusters in the EP - very disappointing. I could make out very few stars, and they weren't very sharp. OK, LP was quite bad in that area. I screwed on the UHC-S filter I recently bought and that made the whole thing much worse. It dimmed the object vastly. I tried the Meade SWA 32mm. This showed a brighter image than the 19mm showed, and it was slightly sharper. Probably this was down to simply using lower mag.

I decided to go for M81/2, but couldn't find them (I should have consulted a map). So I went for M51. I found it with the 32mm. It showed two fuzzy patches of different sizes. I popped in the 19mm, and almost lost it! I could barely make out any patch at all. I tried the UHC-S filter and then the Neodymium filter, and neither gave me a better view than without. Needless to say this was rather disappointing.

When I barlowed the 19mm 3x on saturn, there was a bright patch around it. I blamed this on the barlow, but I didn't find the cause.

I ended the night with a view of saturn with my trusty 6mm ortho. I could just make out Cassini and 3 moons, but this was when I realised that seeing was absolutely shocking. It looked like the ringed one was hanging by a string! Jordan must have been suffering from arthritis with all that wobbling....

Transparency was also very poor. The open cluster has been far more impressive in past observations.

The whole session was from 10.30 to 11.50pm

So the 19mm will get another chance, but for now, it's ratings aren't good:

clarity - 8/10

brightness - 4/10

FOV (I wouldn't like it bigger)- 9/10

value for money - 4/10

on the justification side:

seeing - 4/10

transparency - 5/10

I hope that this verdict is not final, because I was very confident that this EP would justify the cost.

I will place my final verdict once I get some half-decent skies. I'm looking forward to SGLP3, and pray (pleeeeaase!!!) for good weather.

Andrew

P.S. Moderators, please delete this post as I have placed it in Equipment discussion as well . I realised afterwards it was better placed there :oops: