Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Well, the 5mm and the 6mm are here and in the box. Of course the clouds rolled in at the same time. Must have seen the 5mm going into the Postmans truck! :S
So , I am not sure if I will get the chance to try them out tonight or not.
But I must stop buying Televue EPs now, as the box is full.
Now, let's see, where did that other case get off to anyway.
Floyd

I have been lucky so far about not buying any expensive dogs.
I have had some turkeys from Russell and Siebert that ghosted badly, terrible kidney bean or fell apart with fast Dobs. Some Lanthanum EPs that I thought were dark and lacked contrast.
Had a Meade 20mm Plossl that was so bad I had to laugh because it looked like something in a carnival mirror.
40mm Celestron Plossl EP that came with the NS8GPS scope is a pretty poor EP.
Even a 7mm Nagler T-1 that I thought was not that great with poor contrast and lack of through put as well as tight eye relief.
But all the EPs that I paid a bit for have been good.
Best EPs so far have been Naglers, Meade UWA, UO Orthos I would say, in that order.
The Radians I just bought I will have to say I have great expectations. I will let you know soon.
Floyd

Ok, let me start off with this. The conditions were not good and the Moon was almost full. Besides the Moon there was plenty of light pollution.
12.5" f/4.8 Dob with good optics and properly collimated.
EPs used for comparison,
5mm, 6mm Radian
5mm, 6mm UO Ortho
5mm Orion Ultrascopic
6.7mm Meade UWA
Objects used for testing.
M13, M2, M-57,
Polaris with companion, Kaus Australis, Antares
Ok, now for my first impressions.
On M-57, there was little doubt that the 5mm,6mm Radians just edged out the other EPs for contrast and detail.Followed by the UO Ortho, then the UWA and Ultrascopic which were very close to one another. One thing that made up my mind
was the stars around M57. I could see 1 star clearly in the Radian that required
averted vision with the Ortho. This was listed as 14.5 mag.
M13, again the Radian had a slight edge followed by a tie with Ortho and UWA then the Ultrascopic.
More stars were resolved and larger field seen by the leaders. Background was very milky due to all the light. It was amazing how close the Ortho and the UWA were on this test. The Radian did not win by much, it was really close!
M2, this was harder as the Radian and the Ortho seemed almost too close to call, the Ultrascopic and UWA were not quite as bright and not as many stars were resolved.
On doubles the Ortho and the Radian were very close and the UWA was also close with he Ultrascopic trailing slightly. I might give the edge on this one to the Ortho, but only by a small margin.
The next to the full Moon star field test (how many stars visible) was again very close between the Radian and Ortho. It did seem that the Radian showed a couple of star by direct vision that only blinked in the Ortho, but conditions were less than steady, so inconclusive.
Now I will not call this a conclusive test as the conditions were really not that good, in fact they were quite bad.
In two weeks I will be going on vacation and will be a a dark sky location for a week. I will have a 4mm Radian as well then and I will give this a better shot at testing. With better skies, more time and EPs to test out I think I can give a better review of the Radian issue.
I did not see any false color in the edge as stated in some reviews. I also did not see anything but sharp stars edge to edge. The kidney bean was not noticeable to me unless I move my eye a bit and was not a problem. The adjustable eye guards were very nice at eliminating the black out as well and with them adjusted for me, it was not even seen.
Over all I was impressed with the clarity, bightness and ease of use. The Eye relief was more than ample and allowed the wearing of glasses.
It was enough for me to buy a third one, 4mm, to add to the high mag EPs in my TV box.
Hope you enjoy this and get something out of it. I don't doubt that some might not agree with my findings.
Floyd

I have all three Radians now, 4,5,6mm. I will post the test results after my vacation.
Floyd

I have been noticing a funny trend to ads lately.
People will be advertising a "Like New" item, that is a wonderful performer, perfect eyepiece, marvelous telescope, ect, ect, never used, used once or twice! For sale a a great loss!
Now I do not doubt for a minute that it is new as claimed, but I just don't understand how some one could buy a great item and either never use it or use it one or twice and then sell it for a big loss. 8O Or say it is a wonderful performer if they only used it once or even never!
It is nice for the buyer, because they can pick up a good deal, but I just can't help but scratch my head about the sale. :S
Floyd

http://virtualguidebooks.com/SouthCalif/EastOfTheSierra/WhitneyTuttle/TuttleLightOnPeaks.html
Here is a link to a video panorama of the place we are going for vacation starting Saturday.
Dark skies and clear view with high desert (5300') air should make for a good time.
No water, pit toilets and campfie pits with picknic tables and drive up campsites.
We are taking the motorhome so we will not be roughing it. 8)
The weather forcast is good, 90° days and 50° nights with light winds and clear skies. Can't ask for much more. Now if mother nature will just keep to the schedule.
Floyd

Well I just returned from my week in the desert. The Owens Valley is great this time of year!
First off, I would like to address the site and area I was at as far as astronomy is concerned. On the good side, the area has dark skies and wide open spaces. On the bad side, it also has lots of particulates in the air from wind. There is a lot of atmospheric disturbance between the horizon and about 30°. The only good area was zenith and about 45° in each direction from zenith. There the skies were very good at times, not great, but very good. Say about a 7-8 out of 10. The seeing was also influenced by some sort of haze that was streaming off of the high 15,000-foot peaks from the west to the east. This happened every night and most likely it was there during the day as well, but it was not so visible until the sun fell behind the peaks. This caused degradation across most of the sky to some degree.
The place was beautiful and the viewing was better than many places I have been, but it did not meet with my expectations. I had thought it would have been excellent there!
Now, we will move on to the testing of the Radians vs. the Orthoscopic, Ultrascopic and UWA eyepieces that were used in the comparison.
Eyepieces used were.
Radian 4mm, 5mm, 6mm
Orthoscopic 4mm, 5mm, 6mm
Ultrascopic 3.7mm, 5mm
Meade UWA 4.7mm, 6.7mm
I decided to use M27 and M57 for most of the study because they were in the best position for good viewing with the least atmospheric disturbance and best transparency.
Besides these two objects I also used areas of stars were the seeing was good and I had a number of faint stars that could be counted for comparison of through put and contrast in a given FOV.
M27 has several stars that can be seen through the nebula. These are faint and required good through put and contrast to be able to see and resolve them. There are four stars in one half and one in the middle of the nebula that form an almost straight line. I used these as references as well as the others in the other half of the Dumbbell, which were harder to see. In all cases the Radians performed better than I expected! In fact the contrast was excellent compared to the other eyepieces, including the Orthoscopics. They produced a very black background which gave great contrast to the image and allowed the stars to be resolved with pin point images. This was true with all three Radians. The 6mm gave 316X, the 5mm gave 380X and the 4mm was 475X with the Dob used, a 15” Swayze mirrored scope. Even at the 475X the stars were resolved to pin points and all the stars were resolved in the image. I am not sure what the magnitude of there stars are as my program did not give their magnitudes. They are not given in the Star Atlas 2000.
With M57 I also used the stars surrounding the Planetary as references. They were magnitude 11.95 through 16.55 as listed in my program. I used six stars for this purpose that were at the limit of the conditions to quite easily resolved.
All the eyepieces were able to resolve the stars, but the Radian and the Orthoscopic eyepieces resolved them the sharpest. This was not a great difference but a measurable one.
At zenith I looked for a small group of stars that varied in brightness from easily seen to barely visible. I found one with a triangle of brighter stars with a group of 6 stars in between that met the criteria. I used all the eyepieces and kept track of the number and quality of resolution that I saw. Again the Radian and Orthoscoptic eyepieces were very closely matched. The background did seem darker in the Radians, but the resolution and numbers of stars were almost too close to see any differences. I decided that they were almost the same with just a larger FOV with the Radians.
So, I guess the Radians are keepers and the Orthos are going to be sold. The eye relief of the Radians is just too comfortable compared to the Orthos. The FOV is also a bonus.
The 4.7mm and 6.7mm UWAs did compare closely to the Radian, but the Radian did edge them out in all categories. The UWA is still a very good EP and the FOV makes it quite nice, but the eye relief does not make it as comfortable to use.
Now I have just purchased a 7mm and 10.5mm Pentax XLs and am waiting for them to arrive. I will try and compare them at my next opportunity. Let’s see how they compare as well. :^)
Floyd

Well, I am back from my week in the deserts of the Owens Valley. The weather was great.
The campsite was wonderful with the finest of views of the mountains.
Temperatures were comfortable night and day.
The viewing conditions were acceptable if not pristine. I had 5 nights of viewing with mag 7 skies and seeing in about the 7-8 out of 10 catagory.
Just about saw everything there was to look at in the charts! 8)
Got a fair sunburn.
Had a relaxing time and enjoyed the heck out of the area.
Here is a picture of me and the scope at the site.
Floyd

Rods are for black and white and cones are for color.
"The retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The rods are more numerous, some 120 million, and are more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color. The 6 to 7 million cones provide the eye's color sensitivity and they are much more concentrated in the central yellow spot known as the macula. In the center of that region is the " fovea centralis ", a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones."
Floyd

This should be handled between you two in private not out in the forums. This is not the proper method to resolve problems in my opinion.
Floyd