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TeleVue Planetary Filter


allen g

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I agree, Allen. Seems to work nicely in my 4" refractor also, so don't think it is necessarily limited to apertures above 5".

The Neil English review seems to suggest that he found the filter more effective in apertures of 5" or more. There were some effects in his 80mm scope but they were rather subtle. I suspect Neil was thinking of value for money as it's a pretty expensive 1.25" filter and some might think it lacks "bang for the buck" in smaller aperture scopes.

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Just as an aside - forget what I said about the Baader UHC-S. Just been observing Io's transit and the GRS and the UHC was rubbish! V. slight increase in colour of the Spot but otherwise - yick. Perceptible colour fringing and no better colour in the belts, or better detail. The other night I must have had an optical fever....or the bright Moon has altered my perception (was below the horizon when I first posted). Sigh.

Time to start saving then :)

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Ghostdance,

I feel that filters are a little dependant on conditions a bit like eyepieces. Last night the Plossl 15mm from TV was better than the 14mm Delos the other night it was clearly the other way around, I can't believe the 1mm made any real difference. So this is something else to consider when you have a filter on the end.

It was an annoying night where the clouds seem linked to the goto system.

Alan.

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It's been a great Jupiter night but my filter is still in transit :embarrassed:

I agree John it was really excellent. Started with a double shadow transit and then a great view of the GRS.

I used my Baader Neodymium filter on my 4" Astro Tech APO, with binoviewers, 2.25x Baader barlow and the 18mm Fujiyama Orthos.

The view was sharp and contrast was excellent. I only wish I had a TeleVue Planetary filter to test last night against the Neodymium. It would need to be pretty good to have improved things.

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Ghostdance,

I feel that filters are a little dependant on conditions a bit like eyepieces. Last night the Plossl 15mm from TV was better than the 14mm Delos the other night it was clearly the other way around, I can't believe the 1mm made any real difference. So this is something else to consider when you have a filter on the end.

It was an annoying night where the clouds seem linked to the goto system.

Alan.

Thanks Alan :)

I've been thinking about the difference last night from my first experiment with the UHC - and am thinking that in terms of colour on the belts etc, the Moon may have washed colour out a fair bit.

Going to persevere with the Neo tho, as others do seem to find it more useful than I have, so far.

I certainly preferred Io's shadow unfiltered - was surprised how distinct it was! My first moon transit so I'm really looking forward to my next!

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Ghostdance,

I was not aware it was Io doing a dash across the planet but this too was a thing that amost disappeared with the Delos, let's face it few would call the 14mm Delos rubbish but it was so different from the 15mm TV Plossl. It has me thinking that maybe you need a couple of similar but different filters as well to needle out the last drop of detail, it's like getting that last bit of whisky out the bottle, no matter what you do there is always a drip sitting in the bottom of the bottle next morning.

I may well get one of these Baader filters myself.

Alan

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A little off topic but it is cloudy here too, I don't care though, my Sumerian 18 is stuck in Varna (city by the sea) at the couriers with a 4 day public holiday for Independence Day, this falls on March 3rd but they have to have the 2nd off as well. everything stops, it's worse than Christmas which they don't seem to fussed over.

Look forward to the report John, which if it is a good one no doubt Telly House will be out of stock of them.

Alan

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Well I had a brief try with the filter last night. I had enough clear sky to have an hour with my ED120 and then stuck the 12" dob out, allowed it to cool while I used the refracor and then had hour withj the larger aperture scope. I used a 7mm Astro Hutech orthoscopic eyepiece with the 12" dob (227x) and the 6mm Baader Classic Orthoscopic with the ED120 (150x). The seeing conditions were moderate but no more than that. I was only comparing the non-filtered view with the view with the TV Bandmate Planetary filter view as I don't have any other similar filters to add to the comparison.

The GRS was not on show during the sessions last night so I was concentrating on the belt definition, festoons, white spots and the texture of the polar areas of the planet.

The pink colour caste that the filter added was stronger than I was expecting and this affected the whole field of view and the Jovian moons as well as the planetary disk. The pink caste was less pronounced when using the 12" scope than it was with the 4.7" ED refractor.

With the exception of the pink caste, I could not see any particular difference in the definition of the surface features with the ED120 refactor when I added the filter to the eyepiece barrel. The N and S equatorial belts might have looked slightly more strongly defined with the filter but the fainter belts on the disk were harder to discern so the overall effect was not really an improvement. Festoon definition did not appear to be affected either way by the filter. I could not see textures in the polar regions of Jupiter with this scope last night either with the filter or without.

With the 12" dobsonian the pink caste was not quite as strong, as I've mentioned, but it was still very noticable. With the filter in place the N & S eq belts, including their edges, did look more strongly defined and other belts stood out to about the same extent as they had without the filter. There were a couple of faint festoons flowing across the pale equatorial zone but the filter seemed to have a neutral effect on those. Polar texture / granulation was hinted at with the larger scope but the impression of this was the same whether the Planetary filter was used or not.

I did not see traces of the fase colour that has been reported by Stu on this occasion. The Jovian disk was evenly coloured with and without the filter with traces of limb darkening as usual.

I'd obviously like to try the filter again under better seeing conditions but I can see already that it's not a "magic bullet" and I'm going to have to decide whether the pink colour caste across the field is a price that I'm prepared to pay for what maybe rather modest contrast improvement of some Jovian atmospheric features.

Wednesday night seems to be forcast clear so I'll give it another try then hopefully.

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Nice balanced report John, not dissimilar to my findings.

I wonder whether the colour issues I see are related to my prism, it may be accentuating the effect. I will try it in the 10" next time I'm out to rule that out

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Thanks John for your initial thoughts and review. I appreciate your considered carefulness in, although not ascribing 'magic bullet' status, also not sending the filter straight to the 'not worth it' bin on the basis of one session. I have always found your reviews insightful, balanced and helpful and like others, I'll be following your further investigations with great interest :)

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Is the planetary not readily available in Europe? I thoroughly enjoyed the views with this filter.  As for the Mars B I have not tried it enough to give an opinion other than to say it does bring out the color much better but Mars is a tough target anyway in terms of seeing details.  Have to wait until next year. 

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Is the planetary not readily available in Europe? I thoroughly enjoyed the views with this filter.  As for the Mars B I have not tried it enough to give an opinion other than to say it does bring out the color much better but Mars is a tough target anyway in terms of seeing details.  Have to wait until next year. 

It's easy enough to get in the UK Allen - it's stocked by 3 or 4 dealers here.

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Allen,

It seems that Teleskop Service who are a very large dealer based in German don't stock it, I had one on order for almost a year and they didn't seem to make much effort as far as I can see from here.

I think it's fair to say the biggest UK TeleVue dealer, Telescope House, seem to have a few at any one time but they seem to be out of stock a good deal as well. Maybe they just can't get enough of them.

I am sure any large dealer would keep one eye on this site to see what we are talking about and I believe you were instrumental in starting the ball rolling on most of the TV filters, however even the Mars Filter is out of stock at the moment, but we have time with that one.

Alan 

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If there is an issue in getting them I can call TV to find out what's happening in productioin. I have spoken to David Nagler a number of times to get advise and information and John Betancourt who recently joined them,who I knew from Telescopes.net, is very helpful as well. Let me know and I can follow up. I do know they are very particular in their quality control.

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If there is an issue in getting them I can call TV to find out what's happening in productioin. I have spoken to David Nagler a number of times to get advise and information and John Betancourt who recently joined them,who I knew from Telescopes.net, is very helpful as well. Let me know and I can follow up. I do know they are very particular in their quality control.

Heh...if they have any slight seconds...y'know, not optically but a little bit of paint rub, battered box.....? :D

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I believe that Tele Vue have an annual sale of their "slight seconds" at the North East Astronomy Forum event held in April at Suffren near New York.  

Suffren succotash!............but then I'd have to factor in the return ticket!

(Ouch. No more bad wordplay, I promise........ :) )

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Suffren succotash!............but then I'd have to factor in the return ticket!

(Ouch. No more bad wordplay, I promise........ :) )

I'll hold you to that :grin:

I've had another session with the TV Planetary Filter this evening. I wan't expecting much clear sky so I put my ED120 out to cool but the clouds have been fewer and further between than I'd feared.

The seeing conditions are quite a bit better tonight with 180x / 225x producing pleasingly sharp images of Jupiter with a decent amount of surface feature contrast without the filter in place. Tonight there was a more noticeable enhancement of the belt contrast with the filter in place. The pale pink tint is still there but it does not seem to be affecting the background sky as much, or maybe my eyes are getting used to it ?.

The filter also seems to enhance the limb darkening effect which is perhaps why the planet looks a little more 3-dimensional when it's in place ?

Out of interest I used the Planetary filter to view the Moon, some binary stars and even M42. While it's not designed to enhance such objects it's clear that this is a quality optical item because the filter did not produce and adverse effects on high resolution targets such as Plato craterlets or splitting tightish star pairs. I still could not split Sirius with the ED120 but the filter kept the view of Sirius itself well under control with no additional scatter or flare that I could see. M42 showed a good amount of nebulosity, albeit with a pink tinge, around the Trapezium group despite the bright moon in the sky so the filter must have a decently high light transmission rate.

Perhaps I can learn to love pink after all :smiley:

post-118-0-72372300-1425249763.jpg

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I'll hold you to that :grin:

I've had another session with the TV Planetary Filter this evening. I wan't expecting much clear sky so I put my ED120 out to cool but the clouds have been fewer and further between than I'd feared.

The seeing conditions are quite a bit better tonight with 180x / 225x producing pleasingly sharp images of Jupiter with a decent amount of surface feature contrast without the filter in place. Tonight there was a more noticeable enhancement of the belt contrast with the filter in place. The pale pink tint is still there but it does not seem to be affecting the background sky as much, or maybe my eyes are getting used to it ?.

The filter also seems to enhance the limb darkening effect which is perhaps why the planet looks a little more 3-dimensional when it's in place ?

Out of interest I used the Planetary filter to view the Moon, some binary stars and even M42. While it's not designed to enhance such objects it's clear that this is a quality optical item because the filter did not produce and adverse effects on high resolution targets such as Plato craterlets or splitting tightish star pairs. I still could not split Sirius with the ED120 but the filter kept the view of Sirius itself well under control with no additional scatter or flare that I could see. M42 showed a good amount of nebulosity, albeit with a pink tinge, around the Trapezium group despite the bright moon in the sky so the filter must have a decently high light transmission rate.

Perhaps I can learn to love pink after all :smiley:

Cant resist it: Da Dum, Da Dum, Da Dum-te-Dummmm de Doodleooo... :D

Cheers John...My hopes are rising that a a Planetary will figure in my wallet's future :)

Good news on the transmission at any rate - sounds like my 6" may not be plunged into shadow then. 

I've just come in from an hour with Jupiter and the Moon myself (clouded out plus breezy & it's cold!) - good transparency but seeing seemed mushy (or not enough cooldown), so I spent most of the time with dear old Aunty Luna (Axiom LX 10mm was lovely here) - now I have to go look up the craters I'm adding to my 'aha!' list.. With Jupiter I'm getting to see & recognise more 'detail' (read some detail!) on both polar zones which is nice - really is a case of more times you observe more you see, even with poorish seeing :)

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