Posts Made By: Chris Gorman

No, that is not me. I have only been in this hobby for about 2 years now. Glad to hear that you are happy with your Discovery 15". There seems to be a lot of satisfied Discovery owners out there.

What, no disappointed purchasers of AP scopes? I thought for sure we would have one comment like "I waited 5 years for my 5" AP and paid a lot of money. The scope was extremely well built, but I get better views through my 10" dob."

Floyd,

Well, for me personally it was ep's. I bought a Discovery 10" dob(my first scope) that came with two plossls. The FOV was probably 50 degrees(if that) for both of them.

The first time I tried out the scope I came to the conclusion that I should spend some money on some better ep's. I just felt like I was looking down this long tube with those stock ep's. So I bought a 17mm Nagler Type 4. I still remember the first time I looked through the Nagler. It was like night and day between that ep and the stock plossls. I just couldn't believe the difference in views. I felt like I was looking through a totally different scope. It just gave me a completely different viewing experience. A much more pleasing, truly spacewalk, experience. So for me, it just took one ep for me to go from "eh", to "WOW".

Now I know you said best bang for the buck, but considering the 10" Discovery felt like a completely different scope with the 17mm Nagler, I think it more than qualifies. In my opinion, it was money well spent.

So no more 50 degree FOV ep's for me. It's only Nagler's, Pan's, and Pentax ep's from now on.

Well, I would have to recommend the Pentax 5mm, either the new XW or the older 5.2mm XL. The new 5mm XW is pretty expensive though($340). I owned a Nagler 9mm Type 6 and a Pentax 10.5mm XL. The Nagler had too much kidney beaning. The Pentax had virtually none at all. Not to mention the Pentax was much more comfortable to view with. They were both sharp to the edge, and produced wonderful views.

If I were you I would seriously look at the new Pentax XW's. They all have a 70 degree FOV, and terrific eye relief. If they perform like the older XL's do then I would not hesitate to buy one.

Darren, I plan on buying a lot of the XW's. I haven't tried them but I love the 10.5mm XL. I never really liked the 9mm Nagler Type 6, mostly because I had a problem with blackouts/kidney beaning. However, I think the medium and low power Naglers are just fantastic, especially the 17mm Nagler Type 4.

Can you tell me a bit more about the 7mm XW?

Rick, that is amazing! Thanks for sharing. Is this what M31 really looks like through a telescope and camera? What I mean by this is a few weeks ago I read an article on the images that Hubble produces. The article stated that the photographs we see are "enhanced" with digital software. What about your photo? Has it been touched-up a lot or is this pretty genuine? I don't know anything about astro-photography, so forgive me for my ignorance.

Well, I took the plunge and ordered a TV-76 from Anacortes.

Seriously, has anybody ever looked through a 9" or 10" APO? I'm curious as to how good the views are through a $50,000+ setup(by the time you include the mount, etc.)?

BTW, when I said "somebody needs to tell Al Nagler he mispronounces his name" I was obviously joking.