Pwermate Extreme Combination

[Kef9]

Hi Guys

I took advantage of the telescope house 10% sale and decided to invest in a powermate to effectivly double my eyepiece collection. I have a 13mm ethos and a 5-8mm speers waler and am looking to get a 21mm ethos as my low power to complete the collection in August (when there is another 10% sale).

Anyway the powermate was brilliant and it was like it wasn't even there. I tested both eyepieces last night and although seeing wasn't good I pushed the speers to 360x at the 5mm (effectively 2.5mm) setting and saturn looked pretty good considering.

Anyway whats funny is how this looks so I took some snaps to show ya LOL. Check it out.

When observing like this I had to drop the legs on the mount halfway down to observe because I'm not 7 foot tall!

[Michael Rapley]

How easy was it to keep the image within the eyepiece ?

[Merlin66]

You can also use the Powermate in front of the diagonal; the telecentric design doesn't change the magnification with back focus distance. Make the optical train a bit more stable.

Ken

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

This give me the <aussie accent>"You call that an eyepiece? that 's not an eyepiece, this is an eyepiece!"</aussie accent> feeling I got when I got my TMB Paragon 40mm.

And, yes, that does look like someone is compensating for something

Reminds me of some of the exhaust pipes some people (men, invariably) put under their cars.

You could put someone's eye out if you are not careful

[Kef9]

Well a few comments at last, I posted this quite a while ago.

Anyway to answer your questions saturn did move very quickly through the field of view but becasue the speers has between 80-90 degree fov it was actually not that bad. While observing I just had my hand on the adjuster.

LOL about compensating for something!!!

Regarding using the powermate in front of the diagonal - I know I could do this but unfortunatley the focuser is not a compression ring fit so I would rather damage the diagonal than the powermate.

To be honest while this looks a bit crazy it was actually very solid and I did have total confidence that nothing would go wrong.

[John]

Does the scope / diagonal / eyepiece combo remain in reasonable collimation ?. I'm thinking of the strain on the standard Celestron focusser here - I would have thought that there must be a chance of some "droop" with that weight on the end of the drawtube, or maybe not ?.

Were you able to maintain nice concentric diffraction rings with this setup ?.

[Kef9]

There was no issue with collimation and there was no movement or play either. When looking at the images through the eyepiece they were as sharp as usual. When bringing stars and saturn into focus everything was optically centred with no offset.

I tested the sturdyness actually before I went outside by trying to wiggle and move things around by applying pressure at various points and being quite brutal with it to give me confidence.

When doing this I had to tighten the second screw that holds the diagonal in the focuser. The diagonal had play because it had not been inserted fully but once I had sorted this out it was rock solid.

[John]

Thats great

It's amazing how the Powermate's just "get out of the way" isn't it ?.

Sounds like that Revelation 2" diagonal is working well too - I'm thinking of one of those for my 6" refractor.

When you get the 21mm Ethos you will have a fabulously comprehensive setup

[Kef9]

Yep, it does feel like it's not there. In fact I'm impressed so much that now I'm trying to justify a 4x 2" version to give me a 3.25mm ethos and a 5.25mm ethos when I get the 21mm version. My thoughts are that with the 21mm ethos I will have 3 eyepieces that will basically cover any magnification & fov I want. I think it's better to go with a few high quality eyepieces than numerous middle of the road ones.

Regarding the diagonal, I got it in the 10% sale so it came in at about £72 which is a steal. I notice that it says quartz on it and the william optics quartz diagonal costs a fortune (over £200). I dont know if its the same one or not but it performs well and has nice compression fittings.