Posts Made By: Philip Canard

What are your priorities? If brightness is king, bigger is better. If sharpness is king, I get the best performance around 6" of aperture on a night of average seeing. If using heavy light filtering, bigger is usually better.

From dark Montana skies, I see about anything I need to see with a 6" 1/8 wave high quality Russian scope. It's easy to transport and set up. It blows away bigger scopes on lunar viewing. For deep sky, bigger would be better, but my mags are generally limited by seeing at the 6" aperture size. Globular clusters are the exception. Big apertures bring them to life.

It's probably because any good Russian 6" Mak-Cass will beat a C11 on sharpness for high power visual observation. For brightness the C11 wins. For lunar/planetary, the 6" Russian Mak wins. Use the SCT for photography, where contrast loss has less effect.

I think that an f/4 SN-10 is about as big a Newt on a GEM that I could tolerate. With my tripod legs all the way retracted, I sometimes have a hard time seeing through the EP of my SN-8. If you are using a camera for viewing, then it makes no difference and the fast focal ratio of a Newt is superior.

The Baader MPCC will probably be more versatile than a ParaCorr, and a lot less costly. You will need a ParaCorr or MPCC with big wideangle EP's, or for decent photos, so figure that into the cost while you are at it.

Hi Dave,

Sometimes you can do the impossible, or near impossible. I saw the central star in the Ring Nebula with an 8" reflector scope (with new mirror). It blinked at me a few times, quite definitely, but that was all. Never been able to repeat the event.

I have split the Double-Double in Lyra at 62X with a 4" Mak-Newt, but the best I have done with my 8" Schmidt-Newt is 80X, and 75X with a 6" Mak-Cass. The exit pupils are evidently too big in larger scopes to get good splits at low powers.

I saw a dark stealth aircraft at high altitude on a full moon night as the moonlight reflected off of it and silhouetted it against the sky. I have seen bats flying at altitudes I never would have guessed they would fly at. Are there that many bugs a mile above the earth to make it worth their time and effort???

I have seen stranger stuff than that as well, but I'll keep it to myself for now. :-)

Phil

It will support heavier accessories such as a TEC EP turret or binoviewer.

With shorter focal length EP's, you will never bring the edges of the mirror into play optically, and that is where most of the distortions occur.

It will cover the format of a 35mm camera and a 1.25" diagonal will not.

Phil

I assume you are talking about a generic Chinese binoviewer if you have adnesive mouinted prisms. I think you will need screw down mounts that can be collimated instead of adhesive mounts in any quality binoviewer.

Harry Siebert told me that he has fixed quite a few cheap Chinese generic binoviewers and strengthened the prism mounts. You might want to contact him at Siebert Optics.

I solved my Chinese binoviewer problems by getting one of his Black Night BN22 binoviewers. Nearly 3 years since buying and it's still collimated adquately. It's also lighter than the Chinese binoviewer, besides being stronger and a better optical performer.

Baader made upgrades to the prism mounts in their Maxbright version of the generic Chinese binoviewer. The Siebert binoviewer looks like a BW Optic binoviewer to me, and a lot like the Lumicon binoviewer as well.

Phil

Siebert Star Splitters for focal lengths under 10mm.

Celestron Ultimas and Axioms (the Japanese ones like Baader sold under their brand as well) for most other applications.

Baader Hyperions if needing EP's for fast focal ratio scopes.

Any decent quality Plossl EP's if needing the best all-around EP for very low cost.

Rex McDaniel at AstroStuff may still have some American made laser collimators for sale. He bought up the entire Astro Systems inventory when they stopped making them. I paid $75 three years ago, and it's a very nice collimator.

1-877-739-2787

They are not listed on the AstroStuff website, just like a lot of his stuff stashed in his warehouse isn't listed. He takes in trades on used stuff also, and that's usually listed at online auctions rather than listed on the website. When I lived in Arkansas, I always called him before buying, and he often had better options at a lower price. He is good at getting Russian stuff that you may not have heard of, if you like that. He was a LOMO dealer back when LOMO was selling amateur scopes.

Phil

That is an interesting comparison for the number of EP's tested, but he left out the Siebert Star Splitter, which is one of the best planetary eyepieces out there, and quite possibly the best planetary eyepiece for the money. Anybody interested in an EP in the 6mm range might do well to read what follows from my personal experience.

I have a 6.4mm Star Splitter. It works GREAT in any of my scopes from an f/4 Newtonian to an f/15 Mak-Cass. It is very light, it has consistent eye relief across the range (like the Radian series, but not quite as much eye relief, which is actually a good thing for high mag views), it has a consistent eye lens across the range (and it's as big as a 12.5mm Ultima eye lens), it holds a heater strap very well and transfers the heat better (unlike my TMB 9mm), it is tack sharp to the edge of field, from 2.9mm to 7.9mm the Star Splitters come in 0.5mm focal length increments. Nobody else does that to my knowledge, and that may be important in fast focal ratio scopes, and there is also 8.9mm and a 9.9mm 3-element variant without the front diverging doublet cell. Those are awesome on long focal ratio scopes.

I know that Harry Siebert has a very small production compared to most of those other EP's being reviewed, but I think the few of us who have bought one or more of his Star Splitters have been seriously impressed with the high mag images they throw up. They retired my shortest Celestron Ultimas + Ultima 3-element barlow combination for high mag viewing in most of my scopes (the 4.4mm and 6.4mm Star Splitters are only usable in my f/15 150mm Mak-Cass under the best seeing conditions due to the insane mags they produce in that scope....nothing to do with the image quality they can achieve).

FWIW, if you have a 12.5mm Ultima, then that size eye lens and eye relief are about the same as the Siebert Star Splitters. If a person likes squinting through some of those 6mm EP's with peephole eye lens, then more power to them. I'll keep my Star Splitters. To have tested so many EP's without including the Star Splitters, especially considering their increasing reputation among owners, seems a bit odd to me.

Harry does not usualy anodize his EP's black and they are not polished to a mirror smooth finish, so that may scare off some potential buyers. I will say this about their build quality: none of my six Star Splitters have ever developed a loose, rattling element or had parts loosen up, unlike some of my more expensive and better known EP's. About 50% of my other EP's have had some kind of loosening issue at some time.

I would also say that my overall reaction to the Star Splitters relative to similar focal length EP's has not been subtle as well.

Anybody into binoviewing should consider the Star Splitters as they are so lightweight and because two of them will weigh about what a Radian does....and you will get change back from what a single Radian would cost you in most cases. A Burgess TMB looks more like a Radian, but as a TMB owner I can tell you that the Star Splitter performs more like a Radian. If you had a 12.5mm Ultima that worked well at f/4 and weighed a lot less, then you would have about the same as a Star Splitter, but at a longer focal length. The main drawback to the Star Splitter series is their lack of longer focal lengths, but their main strength is they are very comfortable EP's in short focal lengths where other EP's run into trouble whether it be weight, cost, short eye relief or peephole eye lenses....or a combination of those drawbacks.

I have a few other Siebert EP's, but the Star Splitters are my favorites compared to other brands. Maybe the fact that you order your Star Splitters and have to wait a few weeks for them to arrive also turns some people off, but the guy who built it will also fix it for you, much like Tele-Vue does. You also have a trial period to send it back and get a full refund if you don't like it. Since they are so light, I suspect a fall has less chance of doing any serious damage anyway.

Phil

A GEM can be used with many different scope types. The fork mount can only be used with the type of scope it was designed to carry. Unless you are heavily into terrestrial viewing, the GEM will be by far the most versatile mount. The Atlas mount costs $1200 and rated to carry a 40 pound optical tube, but some people carry more than that if the OTA is short.

You can upgrade a GEM scope outfit by buying only a new OTA. You have to sell the entire fork mounted system and start over with an entire system if you want another type OTA. If you have a good computerized GEM, it is the only mount you need to learn to operate. A GEM can more easily balance added accessories to the scope. A GEM only has problems with terrestrial viewing.