SW120ED Aristoteles

[jetstream]

Seeing is unbelievably good right now, temps dropping quickly and its going down to -20c tonight. Some think that when temps drop like this there must be turbulence but this is not the case in the spring here usually.

 Yeah get a load of this 120ED story...

The 120ED doublet keeps up to the fast temp drop much better than the TSA120 triplet. with the focuser aligned it turns out this scope has better optics than I ever could imagine. The Aristoteles  and Exodus crater zone showed so much "boulder" strewn area tonight, highly contrasted and I could see the ragged, crater edges that also seemed to have "blast' boulders or structure in them. The whole area here looks extremely jagged with a huge boulder field around the craters.

So the eyepieces and mag used...

I first tried the NZ 3-6mm and wound it out immediately. This was such a good sign the Vixen HRs and 2.5XO were enlisted as my optics test eyepieces.  The 2.5XO provided a stupid sharp view of  everything and stunning on the mentioned area, same goes for the 2.4HR. Not too shabby at 360x and 375x... the 120ED wasnt breaking a sweat.

Now what to do, well I'll show you in the images below. The barlowed 8MM Delos at 300x was a superb easy to use set up with the VIP/ barrel extensions and one 15mm ring. Now for the unreal situation: the 2.5 XO barlowed with one 15mm ring, plus the VIP EP holder body gave 562X sharp. Thats right 562x. I can hardly believe this either. That boulder field and crater area of Aristoteles held its definition at this mag. Maybe just starting to soften a tiny bit but Im not so sure either. Regardless this is a super performance out of this scope.

I measured where I thought the FS was on the XO and I used .53" below the shoulder and the Delos is .25" below.

This lunar session was fantastic!

Gerry

[Stu]

Excellent Gerry, glad you’ve got the 120ED sorted finally. Amazing to get mags that high, bet the views were awesome.

[jetstream]

6 hours ago, Stu said:

Excellent Gerry, glad you’ve got the 120ED sorted finally. Amazing to get mags that high, bet the views were awesome.

Thanks Stu, I observe around the 300x range plus or minus quite a bit which is a great place to be.Going up that high in mag is fun and revealing and sure glad this scope is working. Its -22c this morning as I write and last night the 120ED kept up to the drop which is what I wanted the 100mm Tak for.

The ability to keep up to the drop is a very important.

Two areas were stunning to view last night and I spent a couple of hours on them.  The Aristoteles and Exodus craters are a fantastic sight.

[Littleguy80]

7 minutes ago, jetstream said:

which is what I wanted the 100mm Tak for

Great to hear how well this scope is working for you now, Gerry. Does this mean no need for a 100mm Tak for you now?

[jetstream]

5 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Great to hear how well this scope is working for you now, Gerry. Does this mean no need for a 100mm Tak for you now?

Thanks Neil!

 The SW120ED is now a great tool as I intended it to be years ago. I couldnt line it up with just the cheshire and had to use the expensive Glatter laser.I had to buy a $450 USD Moonlight focuser for it to get it to work.

Would you want to potentially go through this and spend the extra money?

Or just buy a 100mm TAK and observe?

Its hard to justify the Tak now but you never know...

Edited March 28, 2023 by jetstream