The crescent moon and Vixen 3.4mm HR

[mikeDnight]

I've just had ten minutes with the crescent moon after it suddenly appeared through a gap in the clouds. It gave me my first view through the two eyepieces I bought yesterday at the Kettering astro event. The moon looked beautiful at low power through my 17.5mm Morpheus in the 100mm Tak, with very mild undulation. The scope had been stood in a warm house all day so this didn't surprise me! In my rush to try my new 3.4mm Vixen HR eyepiece giving 218X, my hope of a good view was not high. How wrong I was! The view was solid, steady and super sharp. A real wow moment!  The terminator was spectacular but sadly the clouds soon covered the moon again.

The 3.4mm HR and the FC100DC are a perfect match for lunar observing, and there's one for sale cheap on SGL right now! Shame it wasn't advertised until after I'd bought mine!! (It's now been sold)!

[Chris]

Sorry Mike, if only I'd known you were in the market! I'm glad you're enjoying the one you bought at least   Those Vixen HR's seem to have some special kind of magic mixed in with the optical glass, that's my theory. 

 

[JeremyS]

46 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

my new 3.4mm Vixen HR eyepiece

So, that's two down, two to go, Mike ?

Unless, of course, you binoview....

[mikeDnight]

13 hours ago, JeremyS said:

So, that's two down, two to go, Mike ?

Unless, of course, you binoview....

I haven't considered using then in my binoviewer, so thanks for that Jeremy! 

As I need to use a barlow with my binoviewer to attain focus, and due to the extended light path, the 3.4 would give me a power of around 870X, and the 2mm would give 1,480X. Sounds daft! But even dafter is the fact I'm finding the idea appealing! I won't look at the exit pupil calculations!! Now I need to get the RA motor working on my Great Polaris, as I've a sneaky suspicion my trusty AZ4 might struggle with the challenge!  

[Stu]

14 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

The 3.4mm HR and the FC100DC are a perfect match for lunar observing, and there's one for sale cheap on SGL right now!

Whistles innocently, nothing to see hear

 

[GavStar]

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

Whistles innocently, nothing to see hear

 

Looking forward to seeing ‘nothing to see’ in due course ?

[Chris]

18 minutes ago, Stu said:

Whistles innocently, nothing to see hear

 

I'm just on the way to the post office....no particular reason  

[mikeDnight]

3 hours ago, Stu said:

Whistles innocently, nothing to see hear

 

Mine cost me £249 + £70 in fuel = £319. But I'm not sore, as I know that these will be short lived eyepieces, and in ten years from now they will be worth a million pounds each!!  

[John]

32 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Mine cost me £249 + £70 in fuel = £319. But I'm not sore, as I know that these will be short lived eyepieces, and in ten years from now they will be worth a million pounds each!!  

If Vixen were to put them in a nice walnut case and limit the production to 1000 sets, they just might appreciate quite a bit

[Stu]

What scares me is that I might end up wanting to binoview them!

[Piero]

6 minutes ago, Stu said:

What scares me is that I might end up wanting to binoview them!

That could work well given their size and shape. I like the HR for solar and lunar observing.

[Stu]

1 hour ago, Piero said:

That could work well given their size and shape. I like the HR for solar and lunar observing.

Yep, that was my thought Piero. At the moment I use Zeiss 25mm orthos but have Barlow them to a crazy degree to get the mag I want. The quality is fantastic but I end up with a rather long stack of extension tubes and the binoviewer! Just using the 3.4mm HRs would be much easier, providing they are comfortable in the binoviewer. I've also heard from Gerry that it is easier to merge barlowed longer focal length eyepieces than natively shorter ones. Seems to make sense, and the eye relief is certainly better on my converted microscope orthos.