Posts Made By: Mike Hosea

Here in the US Plossl (Ploessl) tends to rhyme with John Stossel's (ABC's Give Me a Break guy) last name, but it SHOULD be pronounced with an 'er' sound where in the US we substitute a short 'o'. It's not actually an 'er' sound, but that is the closest approximation in English vowel sounds. I've never met Markus Ludes in person, but I wonder how he deals with this. I mean, if you actually say Plossl's name correctly in the US, do people generally know what you are talking about? I tried when I started out and then gave up.

For Konig (Koenig), though, I actually do say ker'nig, like colonel but with an 'ig' ending instead of 'el'. Again, I think this is the closest approximation using English vowels.

Probably a lot of people, including myself, hear the name "Abby" in our heads when we see Ernst Abbe's last name, but we should hear "Abba" instead.
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Mike

I read Ron's review and made a few tangential comments elsewhere, so I skipped the thread here, though I gather from the number of posts and posts like this that the predictable did in fact occur.

I think for Ron the comparison was natural and appropriate, but I also did not think it was intended as a comparison per se, rather as a chronical of Ron's experience with the new scope using his familiar refractor as a frame of reference. The title was just meant to be provocative.
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Mike

I had one for awhile, and I liked it, but 10mm of eye relief isn't as luxurious as it sounds when you consider that the casing design with the eye lens flush doesn't do anything to prevent getting eyelash oil on it. I would have preferred less effective eye relief (for eyeglasses), say 8mm of effective eye relief with 2mm of recess. I think that would have gone a long way to keeping it clean.
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Mike

Yes, but I can't compare to the Nagler zoom because I sold mine a long time ago. However, I love the 2.5mm and 3.5mm Type 6 Naglers. If you like the 5mm, you will like these shorter two, I think.
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Mike

"why should I prefer the "inferior" smaller aperture?"

I dunno because I never do. I have a 4" off-axis aperture mask for my 10" Teleport. Oh, yeah, the view is constrasty and there are no diffraction spikes, but Airy disks are huge by comparison. It lasts about 5 minutes, then the mask comes off. When you talk about factoring the observer into or out of the equation, you really must mean the individual observer, i.e. not an observer in a generic sense.
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Mike

Just don't try anything rough with Meade "series 4000" coatings.
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Mike

Floyd,

There's one tricky thing that IMO too little is said about, and that's getting the secondary rotated square to the focuser. The basic instructions would be to adjust the secondary mechanically so that it isn't tilted more in any direction than another (i.e. the axis of the holder is aligned with the axis of the tube). THEN rotate the secondary so that the primary is centered right-to-left in the secondary as you look through a peephole at the focuser. THEN adjust the tilt of the secondary. If you have to make the secondary cock to one side or other of the focuser axis, then the rotation isn't right. Don't every bother with the primary at all until you think you have the secondary right.

From your description it sounds possible to me that the secondary is rotated slightly too far counterclockwise as you look down the tube. If so, you may be able to see that the secondary holder is cocked slightly to the left (the side with the open crescent). Try rotating the secondary just a tad clockwise as you look down the tube and then recollimate from there. I have to warn you, though, that trying to visualize it as I write I may have directions flipped, so if you do that and it makes it worse, then just go back and rotate it the other way. When it's right the secondary will look circular through the focuser and the primary's image will be centered left-to-right in the focuser. Centering it top to bottom has to do with the distance the secondary is from the spider.
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Mike

In addition to wanting to believe they're not missing out, I think people typically want to oversimplify things rather than embrace the complexity of it all. Should you buy a 14.5" Newt or a 6" APO? There's a long list of features and issues to consider, and many of them relate as much to you as the scopes. For example, anybody who thinks I'd be just as happy with a GEM-mounted refractor as my primary scope doesn't know me very well. And why do people think that being able to see the most detail is a trump card? I do weigh resolution very highly, but this is a hobby for me, and if I can't see something that somebody else can, then it isn't the end of the world. It definitely doesn't overshadow considerations of, say, cooldown time, ease of setup, and tear-down/packing effort. IMO, the right choice for your main scope is one that you'll use often enough to know how it performs in all kinds of seeing.
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Mike

Yes. Cut/saw through it with a thin wire. If you must use silicone to secure a mirror, use 3 "dollops" and use separators so that the dollops have height and flexibility side-to-side when they are cured. If the mirror cell has clips to hold the mirror in, don't glue it down at all. If it is clipless, then you'll have to figure out the best way to go based on its design and the requirements of the mount. For example, in my clipless mirror cell in Dob-mounted Newt, I just have a short velcro strap screwed into the top post (just made this mod last week from a different approach). It mates with velcro on the mirror side to prevent the mirror from flipping out of the cell if the scope goes horizontal, and I don't turn my Dob-mounted scopes upside down.
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Mike

You need to know the focal length, f, of the Barlow, in which case the magnification increase factor is

1 - D/f

where D is the separation between the Barlow lenses and the effective field stop location of the eyepiece. Note that f is a negative number. Tele Vue, at least, has made the focal lengths of their Barlows public here and there.
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Mike