Posts Made By: James Idone

Hi Dave,I've owned the Hyperion zoom since xmas and have also owned the 24 Pan as well. The 24 pan is a nice ep but the ER is just to tight for my taste. The zoom does not have as wide of field of vue but on my 12" F5 it works great and once you go to the 20mm position or lower the fov opens real nice. I have owned both the TV 8-24mm zoom and the Vixen one as well but they just dont come close to the Hyperion. It works great for planets,lunar and deep sky and does compare very well against even some higher priced ep's as well. Works well on my ED 80(F7.5) and Intes Micro 603(f10) as well. There is only some slight field curvature found at the 24mm position on my F5 dob but that really some slight coma found on fast dobs anyway and once you rotate to past say 22 or lower its gone. Its a steal and the coating are excellent. Good Luck, James.

Hi Victor, yes the C9.25XLT will see a little deeper for dso's even in polluted skies, I had one here on LI 5 yeras ago but the mount that it came with was the newer CG5ASGT and thats were IMO it was undermounted. The C9.25 was 22lbs stripped, just the plain ota without anything on it so once you get a good diagonal/visual back/finder and some ep's your up around 25lbs. I now have a C8 with XLT on the same mount, its rock solid plus it takes maybe an hour to cool compared to the C9.25 which was closer to 1.5>2 hours. I also owned a IM M603 on planets/lunar/double stars that scope did a much better job on handling hi power veiws when condition were steady but did lack on dos's with the light pollution we have around here but bring that scope to a dark site and the contrast was better than both celestrons. I think I might go next to the IM M703 which might be the happy ground giving enough size for dso's but slightly better optics than the sct's plus the IM MCT's focusing system is in a different leage. the only drawback is the MCT's do take longer to cool before the scope can reach its best performance. In my own finding I have had the M603 up around stupid hi powers around 500X were the C8 tops out around 400X and the C9.25 tops at around 450X, now the 603 was a 6" scope and although the image was dim by a small amount the detail was sharper to the eye. On most nigts out here I would say 200X is the max but those few night a year we get the scope with better optics will seem to deliver more detail.
regards
Jim

Hi Itz, were you live in brooklyn you have much more air pollutants in the sky then some who does not live right outside the city limits plus much skyglow as well along with a ton of light pollution. Both objects are low in the sky and as you increase your powers this deffraction of light because of the thick atmosphere pollutants seem to give you that false color look. When you observe lunar you just might observe it close to zeinith and your looking threw alot less atmosphere. I've owned some real nice MCT's and have seen this on these subject your targeting as well, I know fair well that these scopes had zero false color but when looking at objects to my west were NYC is 60 miles away from me here I see the same thing. Itz, if you get a chance to drive upstate and bring your EON 120ED up there and observe you may find this may be less, also if you go south for the winter months and get some clear none polluted skies plus venus would be higher up this CA you see just might be a hellova lot less. We here in the NY area have allot of turbulance and atmospheric smutz to look threw comapred to other part of the US that have much better skies.
regards
Jim

Hi Itz, unless you are using wide feild ep's greater than 60 degree FOV you really dont need the TV powermate. The Powermate will retain the full FOV on wide feild ep's were standard barlows might restrick some of that FOV. I have a SW120ED and had the powermate 2.5X for years but found that simpler barlows seem to have better brightness compared to the powermate, maybe because less optical elements but when trying to get the highest mags outa my scope the simpler designs seemed brighter. ON a lark I tried a barlow a buddy of mine told me he had which was a Smart Astronomy 2.5X three element barlow made by GSO, it has a compression ring top and is light and small, very well made for the asking price of $50 dollars. Well before I sold my 2.5X powermate I tried the both and compared them on objects like M42, lunar and saturn. They both were very good and on dimer objects the SA barlow seemed to have a little more brightness to the objects observed plus when skweeking the highest power out of the scope on lunar the simple barlow had more brightness at those higher powers and the image sharpness was the same. I think there is also a reveiw on the SA barlows here on AM, you might want to check it out.
regards
Jim

Hi Jeff, I did the same thing when I check the collimation of my MCT's. I use the Cheshire to get it close then tweek collimation under a good star test or fake star 1st during daytime conditions then a real star at night, again as you stated it only takes a tiny amount to do the final tweek, very good info! I have used that on a IM M603,AT6M,Ioptron MC-152 and when I used to own a Celestron CR6R.
Jim

Floyd, I think I would go with the TMB, I have seen more astro forum post with pic's from the TMB130 than any of the others on your list, it seem like a sweet spot and with the FT it comes ready to rock n roll plus its very easy to mount were the TEC140 needs more BEEF underneath it for AP. I would also take a look at the Astro Tech AT130EDF but there's no FT on that puppy, you might wanna upgrade the focuser for AP but the TMB has a good track record.
Jim