And running Vista ...

 

I bet you can't wait to try that 5mm X-Cel Ray.

 

I'm very impressed with the SW/Barsta 5mm. I was viewing the Moon early this morning at 180x with it for a good 20 mins before I upped the magnification to 300x with a different eyepiece combination. It's been warm of late so I took advantage of a bright Moon.



At the end of the session the conditions deteriorated slightly with wispy and hazy cloud, but I still got some good views by dropping back to 180x with the 5mm UWA. It was a very clear image, almost orthoscopic-like, with no noticeable light scatter. Although I expected a 180x magnification to be pretty sharp, I'm still quite surprised how good an eyepiece less than £40 is. I am getting them for about 10 quid (13 USD?) cheaper than they're selling in most of Europe though it seems. The 9mm X-Cel can suffer from a tiny bit of light scatter sometimes IMO. So I've pulled the trigger on a 9mm SW UWA to compare the two. 9mm is a good size f/l for all of my scopes, including the Big Cat. My health isn't bad, but I've been overdoing it a bit and exhausting myself. I'm pretty close to a dress rehearsal with the Big Cat but I hurt my left wrist trying to ignite a gas water heater last week and as I've only got one good arm I'm having to rest it a bit. The Bazooka OTA is only about 3.5 kg but the BC OTA is 8.4 kg so I don't want to strain anything lol!

 

I'm pretty sure those are Barsta. They're marketed by a lot of distributors and retailers. I've seen them as Orion, Sky-Watcher and TS Optics. The 9mm was supposedly the best out of the series. Some variety in coatings has been noticed on differing brands by many. Although it could just be varied production runs. I seriously considered a 9mm pair of these once for the bino but I was initially apprehensive about the draw tube undercuts. I believe they have a 14 or 15mm eye relief with an eye lens diameter of a good 20mm. They look very good, the 66° FOV would be useful for keeping objects in frame at high magnifications. I still say they'd make great bino EP's. I'm guessing they're some sort of modified Erfle design.

 

Well, the clouds are stopping any fun at the moment.



It may be better later in the week though. Which bodes well for an early glimpse of M42.

 

The wrist's making progress, the trouble is, I have to use my left hand for virtually everything, so it doesn't get a good enough rest. It is a lot better though thanks.



My TS Optics 2.6x GPC/Barlow came today. At least it fits the bino! I'm not sure who made it, although it looks suspiciously like a Synta made Barlow element. It's either that or GSO I suppose, unless United Optics (Kunming) make their own. I'm pretty sure they make the TS Optics own bino.

http://www.united-optics.com/Produc...oviewer_and_Barlow/Binoviewer and Barlow.html



It will give me a third high powered Barlow option with the longer f/l EP's like the 18mm BCO's and 25mm AH's. I've been considering getting a light alt-az mount and tripod for the 102mm Mak as a grab'n'go alternative. If I can ever find a mount that can hold the Skymax in the correct position. The 2.6x GPC will work with the Big Cat as well of course. On the Skymax I could get around 135x with this GPC and the 25mm ortho's, a decent 188 with the 18mm BCO's and a perfectly respectable 225x with the TV 15mm pair. The last magnification is pushing it a bit for a 4" Maksutov scope but would work well for the Moon.



Plus, it all fits into the Elephant case lol!

 

The 9mm SW UWA has arrived. I've inspected it a fair bit and it seems OK. Also I gave it a preliminary daylight test in a 70mm reflector.



I still can't get over how good these are for the money and how these three together cost considerably less than one 7mm DeLite. And not only that, they each came with a microfibre cleaning cloth, and all of them are, as far as I can ascertain, in perfect condition and unborked.


The 9mm UWA eye lens is a bit smaller than the 9mm X-Cel and overall the housing is slightly smaller.



The X-Cel seem easier to view through with less likelihood of the slight kidney beaning the UWA's are prone to. This can be ameliorated somewhat by threading up the external housing to raise the eyeguard on the Sky-Watcher EP's. In this way a pretty comfortable eye position can be achieved. The X-Cel has a better eye relief and its larger eye lens makes a difference to the overall feel of the EP. I've noticed a tiny amount of light scatter on the X-Cel EP's (9mm & 7mm) though, which doesn't appear on the UWA's. AFAIK the Sky-Watcher/Barsta eyepieces are a five lens element design that Sky-Watcher label as a WA (wide angle) Plossl. They seem very slightly brighter and with more contrast than the X-Cel to use. For inexpensive but very usable planetary eyepieces they seem ideal. I've read that they're often used to split double stars and binaries. In fact, I've done this myself with the 7mm focal length SW UWA. I'm not sure what the initials 'UWA' stand for as these eyepieces have a 58° FOV, 2° smaller than the X-Cel and 4° smaller than the TeleVue DeLite. Which hardly qualifies them as an ‘ultra’ wide eyepiece. I suppose they have a good FOV compared to most Plossls though.

 

Geeze, Ray - I didn't know you were out of the loop in here too! I'll bring you up to speed - Mak & I were admonished for mentioning names and what not, and the posts were <edit> to put them in line. All's well. Mak and I were apprised and requested to not snarl anymore in public about so & so. I knew this was destined, as did Mak, I believe. But thanks for letting us know. I would have thought you'd be informed of this before now. Your being last-to-know was utterly unsuspected by us, I'm sure.

I gotta run here. The last 'update' to my Firefox-browser was/is a disaster! I'm trying to find some work-arounds for this Mozilla-based joke before everything melts into a pool of petrochemical-sludge! Wish me luck.....

evaD

 

I'm not sure if they're available in the US as Sky-Watcher. They are marketed as Olivon though:

https://telescopes.net/store/eyepie...10mm-or-less/olivon-58-1-25-eyepiece-6mm.html

Although, to be honest, I think the BST's they have at Agena are the same thing with a different housing. The housing is very similar to the 6 element TMB clones but apparently these are the same 5 element EP's as the SW UWA's. I even think Agena sold the Barsta version I have under their own name at one stage.

http://agenaastro.com/bst-1-25-uwa-planetary-eyepiece-6mm.html

I've looked on the Sky-Watcher USA site and I can't see them there. They seem to be around the equivalent of £50 in the US, which is about the same in Europe from what I've seen. In the UK they are sold at anything between £35 - £39 it seems. This seems quite cheap and may very well be an introductory price though as they're comparatively new here I think. I'd seen them on the Barsta site before I ever saw them marketed by Synta as Sky-Watcher UWA Plossls. From what I've read they may have even been giveaways with some Sky-Watcher refractors in the US at some point. I've read a number of reviews and everyone basically concurs that these EP's exhibit virtually no discernible light scatter (I can't detect any), are sharp, bright and have a definite orthoscopic-like quality. It almost makes up for the returned DeLites for me lol! They do seem like a budget DeLite, especially with the moveable eyeguard. Why they have these qualities is anyone's guess. Barsta do produce some good quality stuff though, often at very reasonable prices. I'm guessing they're constructed with pretty good quality glass, have a basic 4 element Plossl configuration, with an additional type of Smyth lens or Barlow (visible in the draw tube). I was viewing the Moon recently with my 5mm (180x) and I was enjoying it so much I was reluctant to get the Barlow and 6mm ortho' out (for 300x) for a while. I even returned to the 5mm when conditions changed and I lost the decent transparency. Few things astonish me, but these EP's have, principally as I never expected to get views like that from something under 40 quid.

 

Sorry this is slightly off topic. I was quite happily using Firefox 47 as my default browser (I've switched IE off on Win 7) but odd things started to happen (freezes, not responding etc) with v48. The 48.0.1 update didn't seem to improve things and neither has 48.0.2. I'm pretty certain Fx 48.0.1 caused my desktop to bluescreen about a fortnight ago while I was watching a British TV streaming site. My custom built box virtually never bluscreens, the last one was because of faulty hardware over three years ago and much of it has been rebuilt since then.



http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

So, I've decided to use Maxthon as my default again and also use a customised SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey utilises the same Gecko rendering engine as Fx and is a good substitute. Good luck Dave.

 

If the forecast is right I should catch a rising Moon at around 03:00 - 04:00. I saw a dusk Saturn with the naked eye.



If I'm really lucky I may catch M42.


I'd get a really good exit pupil with a 30mm or 25mm EP, enough to utilise the Baader UHC-S which is designed to be used on smaller scopes.

 

You're welcome. They're certainly worth the money.