Posts Made By: Mike Hosea

Not for terrestrial since the focal length of the Intes is too long for anything but high magnification. For lunar and planetary there is no doubt in my mind that a well-collimated and cooled MK-66 Deluxe will trounce the TV-85 on detail (it's just physics). I guess I could sum it up like this, you'll be trading a great terrestrial scope for one that isn't, but you'll be trading a very limited planetary scope for a very capable one, albeit one that requires more time to cool down. I haven't even thought about the respective market values, but I'm sure you have. Your call.
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Mike

Mark,

Are you speaking specifically of Takahashi's LE series or about eyepieces with long eye relief in general? Tak's LE series is so-named for having longer than normal eye relief, but not generally enough for eyeglass wearers in shorter focal lengths. Tele Vue Radians, Pentax XLs (and now XWs), Vixen LV and LVWs, and a host of cheaper chinese imports now sport eye relief long enough for eyeglass wearers, even in short focal lengths. One disadvantage is the scatter you get from the extra glass elements. Another is that some effort is often required to get comfortable with the eyepiece to view without accidental blackouts from moving the eye out of position. Another disadvantage is a greater liklihood of external reflections aka eye glint. This is where the bright light of a planet bounces off your eye, back to the large eye lens, and then back to your eye again as reflection that moves quickly with your every move. Advantages are, of course, the comfort of eye relief, relative freedom from fogging, and generally better edge correction in faster scopes. I mainly use eyepieces with long eye relief. I have a 7mm Tak ortho and a 6mm TMB SuperMono to frequently test whether I'm missing anything. I haven't had the TMB long enough to say, but nothing so far has convinced me that the benefits of less glass outweigh the benefits of viewing comfort and enjoyment that I get with my eyepieces having longer eye relief and wider apparent fields of view.
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Mike

I've about come to the point myself where I would be willing to step back a little, to have less money invested, just to help me stop thinking about it all. I'm tired of finding out that one person's big improvement is to me a minor thing or that somebody else's idea of an egregious defect isn't even a bother to me. Sometimes that even goes the other way, with somebody else thinking some factor isn't much of a bother and it turning out to be something that I just won't put up with, e.g. eye relief below 5 or 6mm.
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Mike

My advice would be to stop and think what is going to be easiest to do and yet have a high probability of a good outcome. I'm thinking that you're better off eating the difference between the sale price of your SCT diagonal and the buying price of your 2" refractor-style diagonal (new or used) than trying to jury rig something.
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Mike

Maybe things have changed in the last couple of years, but when I made my trip through the "inexpensive", long focal length, wide true field oculers on the market, I was always disappointed with the edge performance in my 10" f/5 Newt. I've heard of people liking the 32mm UO Konig and the 25mm UO MK-70, but these Konigs will probably behave like Konigs do at f/5, which means that the sharp part of the view won't be all that wide. But this may not be the case, depending on all sorts of things, including off-axis illumination. Speaking of the BW Optic, I sold my old WideScan II, a similar type of eyepiece, when I realized that the useable sharp part of the view was matched by a 35mm Ultima (a 1.25" eyepiece).

I'm not really big on spending a lot of money on long focal length eyepieces, but FYI, what I've ended up with is the 40mm Pentax XL because it's light, performs fairly well without a Paracorr and offers nearly the widest true field possible in my scopes and the 24mm Panoptic. I'm 10 times more satisfied with the 24mm Panoptic that anything else I've tried in the 16-32mm range of focal lengths.
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Mike

I wouldn't go with the sling if I didn't have to. I think the 4 point lower support as in:

http://www.nightskyscopes.com/site/images/NS_Mirror_Cell.jpg

is a better design. I don't know if Jim Nadeau would sell you a mirror cell all by itself, though--depends on how hungry he is, I guess. :-)
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Mike

The eyepiece as a complete system has a focal length of 30mm, but the focus is (should be) always at the field stop of the eyepiece, which is made to COINCIDE with the focal plane of the telescope in the act of focusing.

Having said this, it is often the case that the telescope itself doesn't fully illuminate every point in the view of a wide-true-field eyepiece, and yes, indeed, some light can be lost as it begins to diverge after passing the focal plane at the field stop. Most people don't notice this effect unless it is very pronounced, but you can detect it even if you are not very sensitive to it by defocusing a star slightly and noting how much of the diffraction pattern is "bitten away" on either side of focus.
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Mike

Well, if it works balance-wise, a 2.5x Powermate would convert your 32mm Plossl into a 12.8mm and your 20mm Plossl into an 8mm, both falling in the gap between the 20mm and 6mm and keeping the super and ultra-wide sickness at bay for a little longer. A UO ortho will also work okay, but with a slightly smaller apparent field of view. Right now everything you have is 50 degrees, and there is a certain efficiency in keeping that.

Unfortunately, with such a fine telescope, I'm afraid your future assimilation into the cult of super- and ultra-wide eyepieces is a foregone conclusion. Resistence is futile, but there's no need to rush headlong into it, either. ;-)
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Mike

"I might add that I normally include shipping in the cost of anything I sell and pay the insurance out of my own pocket."

And this shows that you probably understand where your responsibilities end. I hasten to add that it is okay, of course, to pass on the cost of insurance to a buyer if a seller wants to, but the shipper is responsible until the item is received, so if any seller thinks insurance is a must, then it is their business to work it in somehow. A buyer might want it there because they think it will smooth things out if something happens, but the receiver is not covered by the insurance, anyway, only the shipper. So, sellers have no standing to criticize buyers for not buying shipping insurance.

Having said that, I took a look at the ratings of the two guys in question here, and I think we would all agree that James need not worry about his reputation being sullied on account of this deal. The subsequent forum posts were a bad move, but hey, I've been angry once or twice in my life, so I can empathize. However, my technique is to write messages that I never send, or edit them drastically until I'm calm enough to assess the way the message will reflect on me. The key is to write whatever you want at first without passing it through your usual "filters." It helps dissipate the anger, and some of the filters are broken when you're mad, anyway. Just don't send.
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Mike

I'm about to, Gary. I have a 40mm Pentax XL, but I just bought a 40mm UO Konig off Astromart to leave in my grab-n-go 7" f/6.7 Newt. It's waiting at home for me now. I also owned the UO 40mm MK-70 a long time ago.
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Mike