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Re: Richard's Answer: posted to share...
--- In amasot@y..., r.prevost@h... wrote:
Richard Sent me the following really helpful message, then asked meto post it so that "Attilla can rag" him. Looks like it's openseason, Richard, I wouldnt rag you for that. I thought that was an exellent post on eyepiece selection. Now, being too easily confused with Hare Krishna at sidewalk sessions, about that I might rag you. :) Every sp..m is precious. -ad |
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Richard's Answer: posted to share...
Richard Sent me the following really helpful message, then asked me to
post it so that "Attilla can rag" him. Looks like it's open season, Attilla! ;-) And thanks very much for the advice Richard! Richard Wrote:... Hi Roland!! Your question is complex. I will try and sort out the various elements. Price...I paid $378.00 Can at my door (cost of eyepiece+ shipping +taxes). A good eyepiece (pentax, televue, tak etc.) should be about 80% of new ie. .8 x 378 = $302. So no, $350 is not a good price. Offer $320 delivered. However, the eyepiece is overpriced if bought in Canada - $475 new, so I assume the sellor paid the high Canadian price. If you are looking for an excellent planetary eyepiece only (and this is important...we are talking about planetary only) the contenders are ALL orthos and Taks (a modified ortho). The argument is usually between Pentax orthos (.965 format only and discontinued), Zeiss orthos (I think discontinued) and Tak LEs (Mike has two of these and they are sharp, but eye relief and field are small). These are all premium eyepieces in the same price range as the Pentax XLs (a Tak will run you $30 US less). But remember, the wide field you have in the Speers will not be there. Speers-Waler vs. Pentax. I must admit that since eye-relief is so important to me, that the tight relief of the Speers cause me not to enjoy the full field. As to contrast, I think that the speers is good but not in the class of the Pentax which uses ED glass and I think that this is the reason for the incredible contrast and colour rendering for these multiple lens eyepieces. Apparently, the Pentax have a far superior edge correction compared to the Speers. While this is important for fast scopes, I don't have a fast telescope. I think we should go to Mike's and compare our 2 eyepieces in his scopes...you WILL see the difference. Howvever this is a moot point since the used eyepiece will be gone (they sell quickly used). I think when you are paying this kind of money, you will want an eyepiece that: 1. has good edge correction should you ever get a fast scope ;o) 2. holds its value (such as the pentax) 3. has the maximum field for the magnification. In conclusion, I presently have the following eyepieces: 35 Panoptic 25 Plossel (came with scope...not used) 24 Speers-Waler 21 Pentax LX 20 Ultima (would sell but my daughter Catherine loves it) 18 Speers-Waler FOR SALE 17 Vixen LV wide angle (nice 65 deg. eyepiece but not a Nagler!) 14 Speers-Waler (for sale, I ordered a 14 mm. Pentax!!) 10.5 Pentax 7.5 Orion LV (sale pending to Jean Dorais...the image is not as good as the image of the 14 speers with barlow) This is a lot of eyepieces. I could view very well with the 35, 21, 14, and 10.5 along with my 2 x Ultima barlow. What I mean to say is a few HIGH QUALITY eyepieces are worth a stack of lessor eyepieces. BTW...one place where the Speers are superior to the Pentaxes (other than price) is in stray light. The large primary glass of the Pentaxes picks up the light from surrounding bright lights when viewing at Chapters. Your eye glued to the Speers prevents this. My two cents worth!! Ricardo |
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Drop 10mm Speers for Pentax XL 10.5mm?
Photon man wrote about buying a used 10.5mm Pentax XL for
cdn$350. 1- Price is reasonable or not?Hmm. Efstonscience in toronto lists the 10.5mm Pentax at cdn$449.00. Eagle Optics sells it for us$238 (about cdn$424 plus shipping). I'd say $350 is a so-so price. 2- How does the 10.5 do on planets - were you saying Ortho-like?If you want the very best planetary view, you would probably be better off with a narrow-field eyepice with less glass. Good choices are University Optics Orthos, Televue Plossls and Celestron Ultimas (modified plossls). The best bang for the buck in that list is probably the University orthos. If you like used eyepieces (assuming you can find one) the 10.5mm Meade Research Grade ortho from the late 70s is one of the best. If you want a modern eyepice and if money is no object, consider Takahasi and Zeiss. The advantage of those two is that Mike will soon have enough of them for us to have a really good eyepice comparison party at his place. :) (Right?) 3- I still have the 10mm Speers-Waller - has comfortable eye reliefbetter? Hard to tell without an A-B comparison. Juding by what I have read, I would guess "probably". But the real question is "is it worth the extra money to you". Given the absence of empirical data to work with hmm.... The 10mm Speers is a good eyepice. From what I read, the 10.5mm Pentax XL is very good. Some people prefer the pentax 10.5mm to a 9mm Nagler (high praise indeed). The best advice would be to look through both (which I have not done). However here are a few web links from people who have at least looked through the 10.5mm pentax: Short review of Pentax 7mm XL hidden here: (search for "pentax"): A comparison of pentax 7mm xl with others. A really big personal review of many eyepices with several references to 10.5mm Pentax XL.(search for "pentax"): 13 people rated the 10.5 mm Pentax XL as a 9.85 out of 10 with a 0.35 standard deviation (search for "SMC XL 10.5mm"): In your circumstances, I'd probably keep the Speers and get a super-high quality planetary eyepice to compliment it. May billion (or zero) year-old photons saturate your retinas, -ad |
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Ricardo, ( or others ), yer advice requested...
Richard, are you pitching for some kind of group photo or what!?
Once you've recovered from your group hug, and if you're not too fragile yet, might I ask you for a bit of eyepiece advice? ;-) There's a Pentax 10.5mm for sale used, listed at the following Web site ( that Canada-Wide Astro one ). The seller asks for $350.00 - mint condition. I don't remember the exact details you already gave me, so three questions pop up: In your opinion... 1- Price is reasonable or not? 2- How does the 10.5 do on planets - were you saying Ortho-like? 3- I still have the 10mm Speers-Waller - has comfortable eye relief for me. Ignoring the eye relief, is Pentax 10.5 substantially better? ( you've had both ). Have a good weekend and say hello to Judith... Photonically, Rol |
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Re: [amasot] Re: And then there were 3!!!
Mike Wirths
Yes Yes you give these people an inch they take the whole bloody lot! ;)
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Now you think I could find a halfway decent shrubbery pic? NO! useless internet, virtual trees I found, vast libraries of phylogenetic monographs and was there a picture of shubbery? NO! BUT, I did find a file that was both Astronomy related and QUITE silly! Check out the new sillyfiles folder!!! -NI! -----Original Message-----
From: Attilla Danko <attilla.danko@...> To: amasot@... <amasot@...> Date: Thursday, March 08, 2001 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [amasot] Re: And then there were 3!!! montyHey Attilla can I upload a whole whack of shrubbery pics??? python is the only acceptable off-topic content. Upload away.to onbusiness.......I would like a ....SHRUBBERY!!! silliness!!its NEB, the seeing was'nt good enough to take more than about 300X.
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Re: [amasot] Re: And then there were 3!!!
Mike Wirths
Hey Richard,
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With all that booze you'd be a Knight who said Hic.........right then on to business.......I would like a ....SHRUBBERY!!! Wow a -5 meteor cool I wish I would have stayed up longer, I did however get some pretty good views of Jupiter, which had a really cool dark barge on its NEB, the seeing was'nt good enough to take more than about 300X. Hey Attilla can I upload a whole whack of shrubbery pics??? I think this is a great tonic for all the bs lately ie lots of silliness!! ---Ni ecky ecky vetang -----Original Message-----
From: Richard Harding <richard.harding@...> To: amasot@... <amasot@...> Date: Thursday, March 08, 2001 7:12 PM Subject: [amasot] Re: And then there were 3!!! As for the meteor, Janice and Roland had plied me with prodigious |
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Re: Free at last...
--- In amasot@y..., "Richard Harding" <richard.harding@s...> wrote:
Hi to All!!!!!!So good to see you here, Ricardo of Harding. Well met! And so, with Janice online as well ( welcomed her locally ) , now we are 5! Heck, with numbers like that, we might just be able to muster up an asteroid detection line or something. The sky is not the limit! Rol |
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All kinds of sky events...
In response to the Knight who up until recently said "Ni!":
When you saw that amazing halo in the daytime, too bad you didn't have one of those chrome hubcaps that people use to take all-sky photos. Given that this rare ring configuration went all the way around the sky, it would have made an amazing photo. Still, I imagine you're not in any danger of forgetting it either. Since I started observing, four years ago, it's interesting to note all the sky events I had never noticed before. Ice fog haloes, fireballs, sundogs, Venus' belt, Zodiacal light, etc... And, on a simpler level, I'll bet that Janice & I have seen 5X more stunning sunsets per year than we had previously. I guess these are just some of the peripheral bonuses that come with regular observing. Almost Any Skies! Rol |
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Re: And then there were 3!!!
--- In amasot@y..., r.prevost@h... wrote:
> We looked at the sky when Richard was leaving, just after 11pm, and noticed a very prominent and quite large ice haze cicle around thedegrees wide.Indeed. Halos are neat. They come in many varieties. The coolest one I've seen was during the day. It was a cold winter day. It was nominally clear but there was thin fog all over the sky. Actually, it was an ice fog. There was a beautiful ring around the sun perhaps 50 degrees in diamater. However, the cool part was another ring that didnt center on the sun at tall. It was paralell to the horizon and went right around the sky at the same altitude as the sun. The two rings intersecting each other made for very cool sight. Apparantly the horizontal ring requires ice crystals suspended in the air to be growing in a particular habit (crystallographers lingo) that is quite rare. It was very cool. And a lot closer than 8.5G ly Roland Attilla of Smeg. Oops, wrong british-absurdist-humor-reference. ... (sounds of search engine flipping web pages...) .... Attilla PS- "Ekky-ekky-ekky-ekky-z'Bang, zoom-Boing, z'nourrrwringnmmm". |
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Re: And then there were 3!!!
--- In amasot@y..., mwirths@s... wrote:
-Ni!Welcome, Oh Knight, to this extremely small, but enthusiastic enclave of observing buffs! Be most welcome, Mike of Wirths, for thine good reputation preceedes thee... MINI OBSERVING REPORT: Ricardo of Harding was over here for dinner tonight, and we shared a pleasant evening. Even though we spent most of the evening chatting, and only looked at the sky for 60 seconds, I still have this short observing report to post: We looked at the sky when Richard was leaving, just after 11pm, and noticed a very prominent and quite large ice haze cicle around the moon. Best one I've seen thus far. We are talking about 50 to 60 degrees in diameter. The band of this circle was perhaps 10 degrees wide. To top it all off, while we were looking up, a magnitude -5(?) meteor zoomed across the circle, under the moon, to end in a bright white ball at the opposite side of the circle, near the edge. Very bright, many times brighter than Jupiter. Nice co-incidence that we were looking up at that time & from that angle, to see such a diamond ring effect. You never know what you'll see when you look up! Let Photons Rule! ;-) Roland PS- Ni! Ni! Ni! |
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Feb 26th - Belated Observing Report
Monday Feb.26th/2001
Sess# 276 7:30 - 10:30 Farm Road lm=6.0 s=7 clear -11C Observing session, by myself, to test out Janice's f/5 80mm Short Tube Scope, at a darker site. I used the newly acquired 3x Barlow I got from Matt Weeks, to achieve higher magnification on the planets than previous tries, with this small scope. Venus - Just love venus when it's a very thin crescent like this. It's so much larger at such times. Could not detect any variations in shading on the lit part. Moon - Crescent shaped as well. Darker area showing much detail with earth shine. Small scope pushed to 96X yeilds a decent view after all. Saturn - 2 moons visible, in this small scope. Cassinni division visible, colour detected on sphere, shadow on rings. 120x was best for this one. Jupiter - caught it just when a moon was touching the surface edge on the way to dissapearing behing it, I think. Attractive view, though with much less fine detail in bands than what I'm used to. M81&82 - Ahh, this is where the wide field pays off. I can easily get a 2 or 3 degree field of view. These differing galaxies, one oval and one pencil-shaped, in this wider setting, are most attractive indeed. M65&66 - Same pleasure as the 2 galaxies above. Nice to be able to see them in a wider field of view, in context with stars all around. Could not detect the 3rd nearby, fainter NGC. Gamma Leo - Binary star. Wow, do refractors, even inexpensive ones, ever do a good job on binaries. Two bright little yellowish ball-bearings with much dark between them. NGC2903 - An excellent and bright galaxy in Leo that somehow did not make it onto the Messier list. Easy to find and quite distinct in the f/5 80mm Short Tube. Overall, I'm impressed by how much even a 3" scope can show you. It's finderscope is puny, so the strategy for finding things is completely different than with the SCT8". However, used with a 32mm ep, the short tube itself becomes a super 16x 3 degree F.O.V. findercope of it's own. Pleasant to be under dark skies again. Rol. |
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Re: Why Crescent Moon Icon for March 7th?
--- In amasot@y..., r.prevost@h... wrote:
To this group's coder...It seems the time machine used for predicting cloud cover has gotten mixed up with the time machine used for predicting moon phases. I shall have to pour cold water over both of them. Thanks for pointing that out. Feel free to find more bugs. -ad |
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Re: Local Girl Scout Session Cancelled
--- In amasot@y..., r.prevost@h... wrote:
A local astronomy telescope viewing for girl scouts that Janice andI were going to attend will be cancelled due to weather conditions.Too bad about the weather. However, next time you and Jan are out volanteering as individual gentle astronomers, feel free to invite your gentle astronomer freinds along for company (if you feel like it). Or you can just borrow my green laser. I think it would be very cool if there was a place for astronomy volanteers, of all clubs or no clubs, to have a place to ask for each other's help. Could there be a mailing list or a website or something? ;) Clearer skies. -ad |
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Re: Nice pics
--- In amasot@y..., attilla.danko@s... wrote:
Nice pix you uploaded to the files section. Keep it up. We have 20OK, Attilla, I uploaded a few of my sketches to this Group in the directory at the following address: I'm hoping this might encourage 'some members' of AMASOT to attempt their own sketches eventually. It's just too much fun to pass up! You get Photons 4 Phree! Rol |
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Local Girl Scout Session Cancelled
A local astronomy telescope viewing for girl scouts that Janice and I
were going to attend will be cancelled due to weather conditions. Snow and wind will make it impossible for us to give a sky tour to about 10 kids and their leaders, in our community. We were going to attend as Janice & Roland, gentle amateur astronomers. Maybe another time! Photons Rule! Roland |
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