Diagonals - more food for thought.

[andrew63]

After reading some recent post on diagonals and comparing the different types, I decided to change around a few that i had.

I normally use a  dialectic 2" or 1.25" and mirror . For deep sky i could not see much difference before, in the ones i used - in terms of brightness. But on observing Mars over the last month, there was a noticeable difference.

The best view was from an old televue 1.25" mirror - which was a surprise !  Less glare/scatter and it made more of a difference to the quality of view than between different eyepieces used. Now this is not a top flight Baader/Zeiss prism type but a t type used on the older televue scopes - see image.

Mars is a critical test as it's bright and small, it could well be worth while if you own some different diagonals to try them out - you may be in for a surprise !

andrew

[John]

Interesting Andrew 

I used to have one of those Tele Vue diagonals and it did seem very good quality. They were actually made by Vixen in Japan for Tele Vue and can also be had with Vixen's branding and also Orion (USA). Vixen made a few product lines for Tele Vue including currently their zoom eyepieces I believe.

Another diagonal that I felt performed better than you might expect on the moon and planets was an older Celestron 1.25" prism diagonal again of Japanese manufacture. 

It's worth experimenting now and again - you never know what you will discover 

[DirkSteele]

Very interesting. I have a few diagonals from different companies and should compare and contrast.

I used to have one of those Tele Vue diagonals and it did seem very good quality. They were actually made by Vixen in Japan for Tele Vue and can also be had with Vixen's branding and also Orion (USA). Vixen made a few product lines for Tele Vue including currently their zoom eyepieces I believe.

I knew they made the old 8-24mn click stop zoom that was discontinued a few years ago but are they responsible for the 3-6mm and 2-4mm? Leaned something new today 

[Caldwell14]

I have owned many diagonals in the past. When I have bought any refractor, and I have owned quite a few I have always changed the diagonal. I have owned TAL, TeleVue, Revelation, Vixen and Williams Optics to name a few. Not one of them has made the slightest difference to the view than the nasty plastic diagonal that came with the original scope... Be warned.

Edited to remove an extra R