Posts Made By: Greg Shaffer

Yep.....and at $4000 they can keep it. lol

Rod Kaufman said:

I see Meade stumbled across a forgotten 152mm ED APO, the last of its kind from the factory, and is offering it for sale on their "factory outlet special":
http://www.shopatron.com/product/part_number=0609-00-00/1323.0.57212.0.0.0.0
It looks like it's about the only meade ED model that Ed Ting recommended at the time these were being produced on his scopereviews website:
http://www.scopereviews.com/page1g.html
I wonder what else Meade has found laying around their factory...

You have to repost it as a new ad.......many people leave the old ad in place with all the pics, details etc and simple place a second ad refering to the 1st one by description and ad number. I dont recall any specific rules (doesnt mean there arent any, suggest you read the TOS) but I know what I think.....if your ad is still amoung the current default pages that are displayed then you should let well enough alone. If however it is too old to still show up except in a search then you should repost but not before.....reposting because it is on the second page of ads etc in my opinion would be frowned upon since you push others back.

robert kastle said:

I've placed an ad on june 21 and another ad with a different telescope on oct 4,08.How do i re-submit ads so they appear back up top again? Do i treat it like its a new ad and click on "place a new ad"?I tried editing existing ad but could not find a resubmit button that places ad back on top.Thanks,bob

I have a C102 f/5 with a GSO on it.....appears to be one piece. Cant say I am all that impressed with the quality of the GSO either......this scope already had one on it when I bought it..... I suppose it is better than the non-rotatable stock synta focusers but IMO its not $170 better

If you have not bought one yet I would suggest you save a few more dollars and buy a GOOD focuser.

On a good note, I just bought this C102 not for myself but rather a guy that works for me who had expressed an intrest in joining us in this hobby as a thank you for being a great employee......The kicker is I evaluated it the night it arrived and found it to be an exceptionally well corrected little scope.....at f/5 and $210 new it should be quite colorful on bright objects....I would say the optics in this little scope are 1/6 wave or better....If you get the focus just right on the moon there is only the smallest hint of color you have to try hard to see using a 8mm Hyperion. Saturn was crisp and sharp with no detectable color using a 7mm Pentax XW stacked on a 2x powermate.

Much better than I would expect out of an 4" f/5 achro OTA that can be bought new for $210......while I am sure it was luck of the draw coming off the assembly line it is so good I almost want to keep it and find something else to give him lol......Sorry, didnt mean to ramble.....I just get excited when I run up on something so exceptional unexpectedly

I bought it from Ken Dauzat of Rings and Things used and he told me I was going to be impressed by the lack of color and its performance on planets etc and he also said it was 1/6 wave or better. I took it with a grain of salt but he wasnt kidding.....

If you do go with the GSO then see this link....you may need the info:


http://www.agenaastro.com/Articles.asp?ID=179

Greg

Brad Bassett said:

Is the visual back/eyepiece holder on the GSO/Antares focusers threaded on to the draw tube or are they one piece?

Thanks,
Brad

I would say 95% of the scopes being made out there today have at least some parts that were either made in china, japan or mexico.

Rod Mollise said:

There are more Chinese scopes and sellers of them than ever and more comin' every day. So why is this formerly intersting forum dead? Is it just that Chinese scopes and their importers are now mainstream?

It was nearly straight above jupiter last night when I was looking at it, dont know how many degrees but holding up my index finger with my arm extended it would have covered the gap between them.

Vahe Sahakian said:

Neptune is going to be fairly close to Jupiter in the next couple of months.
Does anyone know, or point me to a link, as to exactly where it will be in relation to the gas giant, N,S,E or W?

I am using a 10” F/20 scope and finding things with this scope is not very easy, it definitely helps to know in which direction to look.

Thanks in advance
Vahe

I agree with what Rod says regarding them being too mild to really be of benefit and the UHC would be a better choice BUT only with that 11" SCT. You mentioned smaller refractors and in my experience just about any filter reduces the light in 4" and smaller scopes to the point visually that only the brightest objects are worth looking at.

James C Chandler Jr said:

Here is perhaps an old tired question.

Perusing the Orion catalog, there are the SkyGlow broadband light pollution filters and then at about double the price are SkyGlow Imaging filters.

The Imaging filter and the Broadband filter both share near-identical dual main passbands-- One fairly wide passband around Blue-Green, another wide passband around Red.

For the extra money, the Skyglow Imaging filter gives three extra narrow passbands in Violet, Yellow-Green, and Orange.

Just eyeballing the filter shapes, it looks like the Broadband filter's 'total light attenuation' would be about 50 percent, since about half the spectrum is attenuated and the other half of the spectrum is not atenuated.

Eyeballing the Skyglow Imaging filter shape, it looks like maybe the 'total light attenuation' might be about 30 percent because of the extra three narrow passbands. Therefore the Skyglow Imaging filter MIGHT be about 1.375X brighter than the Skyglow Broadband filter. Additionally, the color balance would have to be better in the more-expensive Skyglow Imaging filter (because of the additional color passbands).

For PURELY VISUAL observing-- If the higher price doesn't matter-- Would the Skyglow Imaging filter offer noticeably improved brightness and color compared to the Skyglow Broadband filter?

This would be typically used in a CPC 1100 in moderate light pollution, or possibly small inexpensive refractors.

I'm so lazy that the CPC 1100 might never leave the backyard, so the light pollution is always gonna be there. If a skyglow filter actually makes a diff, I'd probably just leave it mounted in the diagonal all the time. If it wouldn't make enough of an improvement to leave in there most of the time, maybe it wouldn't be enough of an improvement to bother buying the thing to begin with?

Thanks!

Well here is a topic that has never been discussed LOL

That particular model is not a Apo at least not in the true definition of apochromatic......."Apo" has become a marketing "buzzword" of late being used to describe visual performance and from what I read the 80ED is performance wise visually very close. It is a very well corrected doublet that gets about as close as any doublet (at its focal length)can but it still is not a true apochomat. My opinion of course

John Meiners said:

I've seen this *term ( True APO ) used quite frequently here on the Forum, and it's *meaning is self explanatory to the connoisseur, however the term has been abused when discribing lower end refractors. As a consensus of opinion take the ad currently posted here on the Mart in "Refractors" # 636748 a Celestron ED 80 (APO?) where would this variety of scope fall? Achromatic? APO? or True APO ? as you can see there is this nebulas area.. thank you for your indulgence.. JM

While I dont know from experience with that particular drive/scope I can tell you it is so close to a 100% probability it is not worth discussing

Joe Perulero said:

Hi

Can anyone confirm if PEC training done on a classic lx200 can be lost if the internal lithium button battery is removed or changed?

Having never owned or even laid eyes on a Traveler or a NP101 I wouldnt want to attempt any comparisions

But I am very happy with my Vixen. I find it takes higher powers better than I would have expected, has less color than expected and is in general a great little scope that is certainly as light or lighter than anything else in its class. I believe I could say this much regarding comparing the three, for the $$ difference between it and both the other scopes you mentioned I have no doubt I am safe in stating that I will keep my 102SS as I doubt either of the others would be so significantly better as to justify me spending the extra $$ for them.

Afraid I cant get all technical regarding it but I do find myself using it as much or more than any scope in my stable and that says a lot. I would say it is my favorite when it comes to general viewing. While I have others that do better at specific things like the FL102 on planets/moon or the APM 8" on deepsky or the NA140 for widefield I find I prefer the 102SS if I dont have anything specific in mind as it seems to do a good job on whatever I throw at it.

I do wish Vixen had offered a fluorite version of the f/6.5 like they did with the f/9.0. If it were implemented as well as the FL102S, it would be a definate must have.

Greg Nowell said:

(Public note that is)

Greg S I see from your profile that you have a Vixen ED102SS f/6.5. I'd be interested to know your assessment of its color correction vis-a-vis the Traveler and your thoughts about it generally (I have one). The objective size and FL are closer. If you have data on an NP101 4" I'd like to see that too.

thanks
Greg N

The quick answer.....Radio Shack!

But if want one of the ultimate sources for just about anything electronic component wise goto www.digi-key.com

Terry Sweet said:

I want to illuminate the setting circles on my mount, since it is a manual mount. I'm doing this the old school way of using it manually. Does anyone know of a source for some small RED LED lights I can mount on my scope mount. Any information would be greatly appreciated......
Thanks