TeleVue are wonderful. My favourite ep’s along with the old Baader (ortho, iirc).
The Vixen SG are well worth a try if you like low mag widefield vistas. The trick with them is not to look at the edges but keep your gaze centred. I’m lending mine to my sis-in-law for her trip to the Scottish Islands - I hope she’ll find them a bit of a wow (she’s not a stargazer…yet!)
It is so hard to know what to do once you have parked the budget eyepieces, a reasonable set of Tele Vue is going to prohibitive, although like so many things I note that there are others which are more than double the cost!
I am hedging my bets, if the glasses free idea doesn’t work for me, then at least the Tele Vue Delos has long eye relief for going back to glasses. Another good option seems to be Pentax XM. I will check out Vixen SG, thanks for the tip.
It’s the old green and black - matches a well- known music-fi company we know well!
I’ll be interested to read your thoughts on the 6mm Delos - a quality glass! I think I usually don’t go much below 9mm on my 6" - it’s been quite awhile and I really must get out under the stars again!
In my very first forays, I bought a 2.5mm Skywatcher, thinking it would be great - almost useless with my scope and skies!
Edit/ @Roog - I’m not too sure about SG and spectacles…best check that out. I’m short-sighted, but the SG can be set up for initial focus so they should work - dependent on your vision (once set, you don’t focus again) - they’re fine with my vision.
Ha! I hadn’t thought of that, but now I won’t be able to unsee it!
The Delos does look nice and I suspect when the clouds go away it will be better than my £44 eyepieces, but like everything I recon diminishing returns will kick in fast.
From what I understand 6mm is at the edge of useful magnification for my scope, but as I didn’t have an eyepiece that gave 200x magnification I thought that I should give one a go.
For glasses wearers, the dealer told me that it is mostly about having and eyepiece with long eye relief (LER), around 20mm, as you can’t get up close enough to the eyepiece lens to see the full view when wearing glasses. Pentax, Tele Vue and StellaLyra all have LER, but vary in field of view. The Pentax seems to hit a happy balance and are lower cost than the Tele Vue.
First I need to see how I get on with the Dioptrx, one issue I can see is having to put my glasses back on to view my star finder and to see the actual sky for initial aiming! There is now’t perfect once your eyesight ceases to be 20/20. :0(
I remember reading good things about a couple of the Pentax EPs.
Not sure I ever bought one - I’ll have to drag out my case and check. And go through my TVs - I can’t remember now what I’ve got (other than there’s quite a few, may or may not include a Delos…I have a vague memory I did get one).
This thread is fun - Reawakening an old passion of mine!
When I bought my Pentax XW7s I did read a lot of reviews and experiences, and IIRC they sounded much the same quality wise as Televue, but cheaper. I certainly haven’t been disappointed.
Eyepieces can be a bottomless money pit (sounds familiar?). I am a believer in diminishing returns (also a familiar concept) so look for good quality but not at a silly price. The Baader Hyperion IV and Barlow combination was not cheap but it’s not silly money and the simplicity and minimalist approach works for me. With good seeing I can rack up to x334 on Jupiter or Saturn.
Looking at how to get the best out of a scope for both planetary, nebula and galaxy viewing and imaging it seems the extras needed for the different demands can end up costing as much again! I’m currently researching requirements…
Can anyone suggest a decent inexpensive wide field 2” eyepiece of around 70mm?
Wedges seem very expensive (relatively speaking) - yet it seems there is little to them other than solidity. Has anyone made, or had made, one themselves? I’m thinking of drawing up a design to talk to small local engineering workshops if I can find anywhere interested. (Some years ago I did that for a specialist car tool, and got it made at a very reasonable price - but that was somewhere different.)
Seeing will make the most difference when looking at dim fuzzies. For a Wide Angle Low Power Eyepiece I use a 42mm, 65° Revelation/GSO eyepiece purchased used.
There is a very spectacular aurora polaris (northern lights) display going on at the moment.
UK press has some amazing photo’s from last night taken of northern UK skies & even a yellow horizon light line as far south as Devon (lat. 51N)
It’s forecast to be the same again tonight, so if you have clear skies & you’re at or north of 51N, have a look.
If you want to photograph, see www for top tips.
The camera must be fixed to something solid for a long exposure, so a tripod is best or some form of other firm foundation…
I’ve had good results (from N.Norway) with 17 to 50mm focal length, ISO1000, f2.8 (or as wide as yours will go) & experiment with shutter speeds between 1 & 15 secs, and last but not least pre-set & fix the focus on something greater than 50m distant before its dark.
Oh well that turned out to be a non-event in my part of the world,
At midnight all I could see was a light haze low in the northern sky, the lower altitude stars of Ursa Major slightly less clear.
Mind you, the rest of the sky was really spectacular, bright & clear, Orion & Pleiades we’re really at their best. Andromeda was visible & very high so it was worth getting the bingo’s out.
Disappointing for the aurora, but the rest was a bit special.
Early eve was mainly clear where I am, just the odd passing cloud. First opportunity to try my new ‘scope, though only briefly: Just looked at Saturn and Jupiter -fairly low in the sky and the seeing not good enough to go higher than ~100 mag, but distinctly better than my old ETX125. My wife and a son also looked - and my wife now definitely understands why the change, though not impressed with its required storage space. (She was horrified at the size of the box when I collected it earlier in the week!)
No aurora at that time, then I was out to something shortly after 7, and had completely clouded over by my return, with showers.
Looking forward to using my DIY Dobsonian trolley, motorised!
May the clouds part.
Wow…
Must be nice to live with a ground floor!
Happy viewing!
Many thanks, indeed I have just one step out the back door or two if I go out of the front door to navigate. Currently considering a DIY, “one step lift” vs mobility ramp.
Whilst all this talk about Astronomy kit is very welcome for hardcore hobbyists how about showing the rest of us some fruits of your labours with some lovely photos; perhaps start a thread call What Astronomical Feature Are You Looking At Tonight and Why?
Not everyone takes photos - many just view! I hope to start some astrophotography, my past attempts with previous telescope having been less than awe-inspiring - but it requires a different approach that I have first to learn.
That would be like asking a vinyl listener how they tag their music. 
[Generalisation warning] Visual astronomers don’t do digital imaging by and large. Dobs are light buckets which produce amazing views but our mounts don’t track so imaging is pretty much out. Astrophotography is a very different branch of the hobby with very different (and wealthy) hobbyists.
If (BIG if) we get a clear early evening sky in the northern hemisphere, we have a nice planet line to see low in the SW to W sky.
Jupiter, Saturn & Venus
Can you remind me what a cloudless sky is?
