Posts Made By: Tom Hole

Holy Mother of Ginos, Batman! I want to be your friend ;-)

Clear skies,

TOm

I took a look at the 9mm Expanse ep's. Internal reflections kill these ep's. They were dreadful on Mars. Moon was gone before it got dark, so I couldn't try them on it. They worked ok for deep sky. I would use them over the stock 10mm Sirrius plossls I have for deep sky. I would also use them over the 9mm orthos just for the bigger FOV, but only for deep sky. I thought that the kidney beaning I saw in cyclops would render them totally useless, but they worked good when my pupils got fully dilated. The kidney beaning was mildly annoying on Mars and I think it would be terrible on the Moon. I think I may get the rest of the set for deep sky work until I figure out what I like in the widefield department.

The 25mm Orion Epics are very good ep's. Good thing Orion discontinued this line. The 25mm's are very nice. For their 55 deg AFOV, they are almost the equal of the 24 Pan. The Pan edged them out on edge sharpness and overall contrast. The stock 25mm Sirrius plossls I have are as good as the 25mm Epics. You get the extra 5 deg AFOV and a bit more comfortable ep in the Epic. I wish I could have tried these in other focal lengths. Maybe I'll order up a pair of the Celestron version. Anyone verified that these are really the same?

Clear skies,

Tom

Had a nice night for doing some testing and had some impressions that I wanted to share. Nothing revolutionary, just some ramblings. Seeing 4 of 10. Transparency good, could just make out the Milky Way. 10" f/4.7 Orion XT10.

The best view of the night was the 24 Pans in the binoviewers in the 80mm refractor. 23x and a 3 deg TFOV. If there were some way to get that with a 10 inch or larger scope, I would hafta pull out the credit card straight away.

On to the important stuff. TV binovue vs Denk standards. I used my GTO zooms to take care of the difference in magification bewtween the TV with 2x corrector and Denk with 1.37x 2" OCS. The GTO zooms had markings for 7.4mm and 11mm. This just happens to match the two systems up nicely. I got 228x in the TV's and 222x in the Denk standards.

Nothing of interest on the double double.

M57 looked the same in both. A star just above M57 was a good test for light throughput. I could see that star just a little easier with the Denk standards than the TV. It was a very slight difference, but I verified it 3 times.

M13 was a draw. A darker sky may have revealed a winner, but not tonight. Looked wonderful, btw.

M31 and it's friends. A draw.

Mars. Slight edge to the TV's. I spent a lot of time here as the seeing was average with occasional excursions to above average. Overall, I could see a little more detail in the TV than the Denk standards.

I discovered an issue with the Denk ep holders while messing with the zooms on Mars. The Denk ep holders are great at getting the ep centered when you tighten them up, but I could wiggle the ep in the holders even after I had them cinched down as tight as I could. Wiggling the ep at this power quickly unmerged the image. All I had to do was loosen the holder and tighten it back up to let the self-centering action do its thing. Until I figured this out, I had a few minutes of cross-eyed viewing. I tried all of my ep's and all of them would wiggle in the ep holder after being tightened down. Are the ep holders on the Denk II (non diopter) the same as the Denk I?

The TV ep holders held the ep solidly. I could not wiggle any of my ep's. The TV holders are also deeper so my longer barreled ep's would seat all the way to their shoulder.

Not a big deal, but something to be aware of.

One thing the Denk standards could do that the TV could not: 1 deg TFOV in my 1200mm focal length dob. Best the TV could muster was a .65 deg TFOV. That makes a big difference for deep sky work. Big enough to cause me all kinds of problems with regards to where I go from here. I tried the 2" OCS on the TV's, but without a better adaptor, the 2" OCS protrudes into the light path when at focus. That won't do at all.

cont'd

Vic,

Maybe AstroSky has something that might be useful. Never used their stuff, but it looks like it might be a winner.

http://astrosky.homestead.com/Astrosky.html

Give it time to load. The contact info is about 2/3 down on the left. I was going to buy a pier from them but I had John Davis make me one for my custom GEM.

Clear skies,
Tom

Our club had a little star party for some elementary school kids tonight. They had a short classroom speal and then came out for viewing. I had the 10" dob, there was a Discovery 8 inch dob, a homebuilt 8" dob and an 11" SCT. I brought both sets of binoviewers.

The kids had a blast. There were only 7 of them with 4 dads as well. This was my first public star party, so all the oohing, ahhing and flat out wowing was new to me. Quite fun.

The moon was out so I decided to pick that as the target for my scope. 24 Pans, Denk standards and the 1.37x 2" OCS. The first person to look through my scope sat down and looked through the binos and couldn't stop saying "Oh my God, this is amazing!" Made my heart go pitter patter. Everyone got a turn and added their wows as well. I asked all of the adults and older children if they had any problems with seeing 2 moons or focusing and none of them did. The other club members spent a lot of time with the binos as well and all were able to merge successfully.

I got to see the double cluster for the first time. Never took the time to learn where it was. The 1 deg TFOV Denk configuration managed to get both of them in the FOV. Marvelous!

The night was very telling for me and my binoviewing dilemma. Which binoviewer spent the most time in the focuser? 99% of the time, actually. It was the Denks. That 1 deg TFOV is just perfect. I tried the TV's on the moon before everyone showed up and they just barely framed the moon. The 1 deg TFOV on the Denks made a much nicer presentation. Same for M31 & M32. Seeing was terrible so I couldn't do any detailed Mars viewing. Oh well, I guess I'll keep them both for a while longer. Maybe it's time to buy a Denk II and see how that looks.

The comment I heard a lot throughout the night from the visitors was "I wanna go look through that 2 eyed telescope again." The club members were impressed as well and want to buy whichever binoviewer I sell to keep for the club to use. I think I may be making a difference. I want everyone to at least try binoviewing. Literally everyone who owns or is thinking about buying a telescope. I want them all to try it out. Maybe it's not for them, but maybe it is and then they will know what we are always blabbering about. Good stuff.

Clear skies,

TOm

Just got off the phone with Bill again. I actually called to talk about hacking 6" off of a 1278 so I could go straight through with my binoviewers.

He is expecting the new diagonals and fine focus knobs this week. He is going to start shipping the 1278's as soon as these parts arrive and are verified.

He is still not happy with the figure on the 1026 lens. He said he's talking to the company about it and he'll put an update on here later this week about that. If one of the 1026 owners who is not as optically challenged as I am want to give Bill a call, he will give you the skinny.

As for my hacked 1278, he said no problem. I'm just going to buy one of each tube. The lens cell and focuser both screw on the tube, so I can swap it out if I decide to not binoview (hah, fat chance of that happening).

He said the focuser on the 1026 and 1278 have 6" of travel. The 1278 with a 2" diagonal would come to focus with every ep he tried (including barlows). It had 1/2" to spare on his tightest ep (ortho). The 1026 had more back focus than the 1278, but he didn't say exactly how much.

Bill is extremely happy with the 1278's. He said he is testing each one and hasn't found one worse than 1/8th and several were very close to null. So, if the diagonals and fine focus knobs come in, there will be some new Burgess owners soon.

Clear skies,

TOm

Hello everyone,

I have a 127mm f/8 achormatic refractor on order from Bill Burgess. Been a while in coming but it looks like it's ready to ship. I talked to Bill today about hacking 6" off the tube and going correctorless with it. I was pleased to here that he would do that for me. As a bonus, he's going to sell me both tubes on the cheap. The lens cell and focuser screw on, so I can use it cyclops or bino. I mostly wanted this option for resale value if I ever go bigger. He's going to move the aft baffle around (or just remove it) so it doesn't iterfere with the light cone.

I'm pretty darned excited about the whole thing. The scope will only be 32" now and I can get a 1.65 deg TFOV with the 24 Pans and no corrector (990mm focal length). I'll probably order up the Televue 1x corrector that they sell with their 102i and see if that's worth the extra $$$. This will be a lot of fun.

Anyone gone bizarro with a refractor yet?

Clear skies,

Tom

Well, a right nice fellow offered to send me pairs of 9mm and 12.5mm UO orthos to compare to my 9mm Antares HD orthos that I got from Hands on Optics. Tonight was my first opportunity to do the comparison. I had settled down for a lengthy swap session, but it didn't take long to figure this one out. The UO orthos were significantly better than the Antares ones. The big thing that I noticed was that every time I put the Antares pair in, my eyes would get all googly and it was somewhat uncomfortable to view through them. I remeber this from the earlier comparison to the 24 Pans, but I wrote it off as a high power ep problem. This was not the case with the 9mm UO orthos. They were very comfortable to merge.

I compared the UO 9mm orthos to the 5x 24 Pans and it was too close to call on Mars. Seeing was a 4, so better seeing might give the advantage to the orthos. But even in the below average seeing, the UO orthos CLEARLY bested the Antares. No doubt whatsoever. I didn't compare the orthos in cyclops mode. I hate cycolps viewing.

I'm gonna call Gary at Hands on Optics tomorrow and see what we can do. Clearly, the Antares orthos are causing me merging problems. I did see a slight difference in where each would focus that I didn't see in the UO orthos. Maybe they are a slightly different focal length.

So, that solves that mystery. The UO orthos are very nice and a good alternative for me to my 24 Pans stacked in the binoviewers on a 2x barlow. I think I might order a set of the HD orthos from Helix for comparison. I sure ain't gonna keep these Antares orthos.

Clear skies,

Tom

Hello fellow 2 eyed normal folks,

I just snagged a pair of 9mm Nagler type 6's off of Astromart for a reasonable price. Now I have the 24 Pans and 9 Naglers. I'm thinking of adding a pair of 13 Naglers or 16 Naglers. The 16 is a superb ep (I had a pair for a while) but it is awfully close to the 24 Pan in field stop (27 vs 22) where the 13 Nagler fits in between nicely at 17.6mm. Not sure what I would look at with the 16's that isn't covered with the 24's. Hmmmm, whadyall think?

Clear skies,

Tom

I like the outdoors, staying up all night and talking about quarks. I like Barry Manilo but not pina coladas. I would like to meet a nice gal, 18-90 yrs old, who has a 20-24" telescope and 2 sets of Nagler ep's. Looks are not important as we will probably never see each other in anything more than moonlight. 999-555-1234.

Is that what you had in mind, Herb?