Is the Azimuth circle backwards, or is this just a result of being backwards in the photography? The Azimuth numbers should increase from 0° to 360° as you rotate the scope "clock-wise".

So if Orthos are 4 element lens and relatively cheap to make, why has almost everyone switched to making Plossls?

Another use of a zoom eyepiece is when kids and/or neighbors are looking. You have one eyepiece which isn't coming out of the scope and you don't have to fumble in the dark with a bunch of different eyepieces. Of course a good (emphasis on good) fixed eyepiece will outperform a zoom at the same focal length.

👌👌👌

Astrophotography on an az pronto? The moon maybe

3/8-16 is standard for camera tripod head attachment, but most telescope tripods use m10, at least in the cg4 and cg5 class mounts

That mak was suspect. The synta 102s had the 6 screw collimation screws on the back, same as the 90, 127 and 150 and i assume the 180. Also the front cell was flat sided same diameter as the tube, and yours was different. A cheapened out version i assume

Compre el ocular Omegon Panorama 2 21mm 100grados y fue un desastre, tiene grandes aberraciones cromaticas cerca del borde del campo de vision, que me hacia imposible observar, me daba fatiga ocular tener tanto desenfoque, pero gracias a tus recomendaciones compre explore cientific de 11mm y 18mm y un Nagler t6 5mm, gracias por las recomendaciones y videos. Cielos Despejados!

As already said, the OnStep module is awesome! I really like, how you share all your steps getting into astrophotography with us. Let's lee, how deep you will fall into this rabbit hole 😆

Thank you, very informative, it answer some questions I had about Onstep- NINA interface

Hello Bogdan, can you please tell me if the Svbony sv225 can support a 8.5 to 9 kg TS Optics 152/900 mm achromat? I use it only for visual observations, not for astrophotography. Thank you.

Just use Astro hopper and it really works much like Celestrons Star sense. And it has a alignment feature. I think it works primarily on Alt/Az mounts. But, may work on EQ's too. It is free.

Thank you.

Will this work with a celestron 6se?

super bogdan, the perfect video for it, this will be my one of the showpiece videos for OnStep 😅 Greetings Andreas

Interesting. I use Astro-Gadget, which I have setup for Syncan and control it with my telephone. Similar.

Nice Video, but it would be better if you would have shared more Details about the quality and the precision of the Onstep-Modules. As there are a lot of settings you could have shown the most imprtant ones such as the inbuild catalogs or the initial setup procedure. Than you.

Now I can picture my refractor working on the mount. Thanks!

I have trinotice 1200000x560000 binoculars, they are 12000 pounds in weight and the optics are 4 feet in diameter. I took a picture of a spec of dust in the Andromeda galaxy.

Binoculars are essential in astronomy. I always wanted big 20x80s since first looking through them from an astronomy club dark site during a college astronomy class field trip 30 years ago. 20 years ago when I got back into astronomy and was finally going to get my own equipment, not counting the 60mm spotting scope I inherited 32 years ago, I went straight for big Binoculars. I already had 10x50s, but after doing some research I had decided on either oberwerk or skymaster 15x70. I was also an avid fisherman, and on a trip to the local big5 sporting goods I saw they had Barska 15x70 for $59. I had been researching and knew that the barska came from the same factory but had single mgfl coatings instead of multi coatings, but were $20 cheaper than the skymasters, and 1/3 the cost of the overpriced oberwerk, all made by KUO. I checked the collimation, and was amazed by the views, so I didnt hesitate, and now i didnt have to worry about collimation and shipping issues when ordering online. I immediately filled the sides of the adapter with epoxy, and then picked up a metal L adapter from the locak scope city, who sold the same Binoculars for like $300 with the parks name on them, lol. I learned the sky with them, best investment ever. It was around 6 months later when i got my first scope, which was the costco specia celestron nexstar 80gtl. Using a goto scope is much more productive when you know what is up and where it is, and months with the 15x70, especially hunting down globular clusters. 15x70 and 20x80 offer some of the best views of m31 in dark skies, and are damn skippy on m42 as well. I even spotted a weather balloon cross the moon, and followed it for a while. I did sell off the 15x70 after getting 20x80 zhumell for a crazy $69 amazon deal, but those were stolen along with the rest of my gear in 2018, but I was able to get a cheap used pair of barska 15x70 again just in time for Neowise a few years ago. I did lose a bunch more gear shortly after in my van impoundment debacle, and I have not yet found my L adapter, so i hope it is here somewhere, and wasnt in the van. Of course this is all moot without the van, i lose my sleeping box and way to haul any sizeable gear to a dark site anyway. I camped in that thing for 4 days straight during neowise

The included tripod adapter is inadequate. It can be improved by filling the sides with epoxy. But a metal L adapter is a better optiom

Unless they made some major changes, and by the picture you show i dont think so, the 15x70 skymaster isn't waterproof nor nitrogen purged. Also note that while synta owns celestron, they dont make all celestron products, including binoculars and many of the eyepieces. The skymasters are made by Kunming who also make the barska, oberwerk, zhumell and others. I had the celestron 15x70 cavalry whixh was the waterproof version

When looking at most star clusters, a 90mm f10.1 should not show noticeable color, what you describe is what happens when looking at stars bright enough to have names , or maybe the pleadies. I haven't used this particular scope, but have owned synta 80mm f11, GSO 90mm f11, and 2 synta 4" f10 (c4r that got stolen, and a celstron 102 f10 from a costco GT scope to replace it). They have all been pretty awsome on star clusters, and even saturn looks really good with barely if any color. Jupiter and the limb of the moon always shows a little color, and i rarely spend time looking at bright stars, so for the money I dont find it too offensive. I have owned several apo and semi apo refractors over the years, sold or returned a few, and had my best ones stolen eventually. From celestron 80ED, to william optics 80 FD, astrotech 66ED, and televue 101 and pronto. But I still loved my C4R and nexstar 80gtl long achromats. I had modified my 80gtl with a 2" GSO focuser that was identical to what came on the GSO 90mm f11, it didnt cost much from one of the surplus dealers at the time. There are probably 2" focusers that will fit that scope as well, and it is a worthwhile upgrade and doesnt have to cost too much if you go rack and pinion. One of the things i love to do with long achromats is use 2" eyepieces for wide field deeo sky. The f10 and slower work real well with budget UW80 and SWA eyepieces I also had orion 90 and 127 maks, a celestron 127 mak, and currently have an etx90 tube so I am no stranger to maksutov and I like them very much. I would still have the celestron 127, but that was lost in my more recent string of bad luck when it and some other scopes and mounts were in my van when it was stole-pounded by a corrupt city and county.

It really needs a bigger mount, like an eq3/cg4/astroview

Synta is in no way the parent company of orion. They are just one of several suppliers to orion over the years. Even when orion was selling mostly synta, they were never owned by them, and also sold scopes and accessories by other manufacturers. Prior to the early-mid 2000s, orion sold mostly GSO, in the 90s they were mostly Vixen, and they also sold intes russian scopes at certain periods. Nobody has ever owned orion other than orion. And orion has never "made" a telescope. They started out making drive correctors for celstron and meade scopes.

I would not sell my 15 x 70 for 5 times what I paid for them. They are Great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi friend, I really liked the video, I had never heard of this brand, so when I looked more on KZbin and found your video, I'm thinking about buying the omegon 203/1200. What do you think? and a good Brand? it is worth it?

Can a cell phone holder like the Ruittos Tripod be used on top of the a telescope tube for sky alignment? I noticed that both of my refractors have a protruding screws on one of the clamps that holds the tube.

While expensive, the orion padded bag for 12" newtonian makes it easier to carry and transport. The strap handles are in the right place so it balances at your side with the straps over your shoulder, and there is enough padding to protect the scope if you bump into something. But you do need a big enough vehicle.

I miss the days when 12' dobs were $700 and 10s around $500

Coma is less offensive than the astigmatism that this type of eyepiece has in fast scopes. If you use it with a coma corrector, it will improve slightly with coma reduced, but the more offensive astigmatism will still remain. This is why televue replaced their wide field design with the panoptic, which corrects the astigmatism. 80% of the nagler is pretty close though. As far as edge correction is concerned it is closer to say 70% of a panoptic which has a similar apparent field

I havent used a delite, but back when i had radians and a type4 nagler, i didnt really like the push pull eyecup adjustments with the click stops. I prefered the twist up design on the pentax XW, and even the twist up cups on meade UWA and SWA, and axiom lx (same mechanism as on the luminos), and even on the less expensive tmb planetaries, which looked and performed similar to the radian. It appears the delite has a smoother non click stop adjustment with a lock ring, an improvement over the click stop radian adjustment. But obviously it doesn't lock very firmly for you to have that issue

The 1.25 82s used to be under $100 every day even not on sale. The 14 has to be the worst focal length in the es82 line, unless they redesigned the optics in the last 10 years, which i doubt they djd. I first tried the meade version, before es existed, and was extremely disappointed with the edge performance in f5 dob. When es first came out and Scott was in the store (where scott used to work when he was very young, and his daughter worked there when i did as well) I asked him if they were going to.fix that, and he said something along the lines of they were considering aðding another lens, but from what I hear, it still is tbe same as it ever was. You have a 4.7 as.well rjght? That one should have much better edge correction, and thr 6.6 and 8.8 are not bad either. The best in the line is the 24mm 2". The 11mm is the only new focal length, all the others were in the original meade 5k UWA set. What you describe as not a flat field, is the rectilinear distortion in all nagler types, but you say the panoptic is flat, well as far as sharl stars to the edge it is pretty much perfect, but to do this, a bit of fishbowl effect is allowed. I cant believe they now charge $200.for.these when they arent on sale. There are better options for less money. Other than the 14, they.are pretty good , but they used to cost a lot less. I mean now some of their 100deg cost the same or even more than an ethos. I love Scott, and think some of these decisions are coming direct from JOC, who owns explore scientific, since part of the method of the price increase stated with JOC cutting off meade.and celestron from thejr supplies of the 82 and 68 eyepieces.

I just read the omegon page, and can assure you it is not as well corrected as they said, because they later let the cat out of the bag. "Slightly better edge corrected than williams swan, and better light transmission than meaze QX" well my 15mm superview had better transmission than my 15mm meade qx. These are 5 element modern widefields, nothing else. A slight improvement over the WO swan, is not a well corrected eyepiece for.fast scopes. If your field lens is not a very concave one like your 24 pan, i assure you a coma corrector will not make it sharp to the edge.

I dont know for sure having not seen tbe exact eyepiece, but i am pretty sure the Omegon swan is the same as the orion Q70, and many others selling the same designs under different brands. There is no way it has sharp stars to the edge at f5, and there is a ton of astigmatism at the edge at f5 and a coma.corrector will NOT fix that. Nobody sells a $140 2" 32mm 70deg eyepiece that is well corrected for fast scopes. It may not have rectilinear distortion at the edge, but that is inconsequential for astronomy, as both naglers and panoptics allow.this distortion in order to have pinpoint stars to the edge. You cant tell.me.that the swan doesn't have considerable amounts of non sharp stars in the outer 30% of the field. I am sure you are chalking it up to coma, but the astigmatism in the eye piece is far worse. When Al nagler inveneted the paracorr, and saw how much astigmatism was left in his widefield eyepieces, he designed the panoptic to correct the astigmatism. You would see the same with the swan if you got a coma corrector. The reason the luminos sucks so bad, is it is a copy of.a.copy. not very well.executed. the axiom LX was the JOC82 optic which was an attempt at the 31 nagler that fell short a tad, and the luminos is another manufacturers attempt to make their own version for celestron that didnt go as well as its predecessor. If you want a good performer for a good price, get one of the 28mm 82deg that is based on the original william optics uwan. Meade sells it now as the PWA, and i think even APM sells one . Many brands offer this optic, and it blows the 30mm es82 out of the water. The second best one is the 24mm es82, but to pay a reasonable price you need to hunt down a used meade 24mm UWA or celestron 23mm axiom LX,. Or some of the older non waterproof versions of the ES.

The luminos is well under $300 in the USA. But the luminous has known issues. The older axiom LX that looked the same, is much better so buying used is the way to go. They were made by JOC, and were the same eyepieces optically.as the meade series5000 UWA, and ES82. The 7mm and 6.7 were the same, the 8.8 and the 10 were the same. The 14 and 15 were the same, the 18 and 19 were the same, the 23 and 24 was the same, and the 30 and 31 were the same. Telescope companies tend to use numbers slightly different than the actual focal length to keep them in line with their previous lines, like the 8.8, 6.7 and 14mm meade series 4000, and 15, 19 and 23mm axiom.

I had the televue big barlow and panoptic interface lens back in the day, which made it like a 2x ppwermate. I also had the 2x and 3x, the 2.5x powermate and the 2x powermate. I sold the big barlow a long time ago. I would still have the rest but all my gear was stolen in 2018. They are really nice. I did find the 2" gso ED barlow to perform close to the big barlow so that is what i have now. I also have a celestron ultima 3 element japanese barlow, an older parks japanese barlow, and a couple gso made shorties for the 1.5x trick, one is an older celestron, and the other is a more recent high point branded one. And also a japanese meade 140 3 element long telenegative amplifier (fancy way to say barlow) I do have to say thay the 1.25" gso 3x ED barlows are very close to the televue 3x. I had them in my old outreach kit. My favorite non tv barlow is the ultima, but it does vignette with 23-24mm wide fields, and the tv was long enough not to. My 140 is long enough to not have that problem so I am good. I should probably pick up another 3x ED barlow, but i am in no rush nor am i watching the classifieds. Between 2006 and 2011 I could get any gso accessories really.cheap since where i worked had our own branding on them, and the wholesale cost was dirt cheap.

Synta is a mainland china company, though they probably have some operations in taiwan, as GSO taiwan has some operations in mainland china. But pretty much all synta products are made in china, and most GSO are made in taiwan. The synta division that owns celestron is technically based in Delware I believe, but that is just for legal reasons

You mentioned 5-6" reflectors as starter scopes, and pictured a 6"dob, and a price range of 200-250. That only applied to the 5", as 6" dobs are now, and at the time of filming, in the $400 range.

Keep the example images on the screen longer!

Comparing SCT's with their cousins Maksutov-Cassegrains would be interesting too. I have heard the following points: 1) Maks have thicker and more complex corrector, and because of that, due to economic considerations, they're limited to about 6 inches of aperture (bigger corrector lenses for Maks are simply to expensive to manufacture); 2) Since Maksutovs have thicker correctors, they need more time to reach ambient temperature than Schmidt-Cassegrains; 3) On the bright side, Maksutovs have smaller secondary mirrors, which means less obstruction for the light, and bigger effective aperture, compared to SCTs of the same size. I have also noticed that Maksutovs have greater focal lengths and slower F-stops, but i'm not sure this is a hard rule. Are these points correct? Have I missed anything?

Thoughts on the Tele Vue Delos 17.3 72°?

What you refer to as a non flat, fisbowl type view, only noticeable when panning the scope, is common to almost all designs that offer wide fields with sharp stars at the edge. If you remove the fish bowl effect, you get astigmatism at the edge, for astronomy this is not good, so al nagler allowed the fishbowl effect, in order to get sharp stars to the edge. Terrestrial viewers absolutely hate naglers and panoptics for this reason. What you refer to as a flat field in your videos, is not what an astronomer would consider a flat field since the stars are astigmatic in the outer field. But that wont make you seasick like the fishbowl effect can be when panning around a terrestrial vista during the day. The exception to this would be the LVW and it's more famous, but not quite as good clone, the hyperion, which started out as the orion stratus, which was the replacement for the more expensive orion branded LVW. The pentax XW, in 1.25" sizes, was also designed with their high end spotting scopes that have interchangeable eyepieces in mind, and since they are also very similar to the LVW design, tend to be both flat and sharp to the edge. I once had Ken Jones, a professional photographer with a popular photo equipment review website, come in to the store i was working at, because he had come across an old C8 he wanted to use as a high power Terrestrial scope, but when he tried televue nagler and panoptic eyepieces, he was highly bothered by the fishbowl effect. He still wanted a decently wide field of view, and true premium optics, so no hyperions or stratus. He ended up leaving with several vixen LVWs. I got a decent vixen spiff that week. It would be beneficial to the beginners watching, to not refer to eyepieces that can't deliver sharp stars to the edge, even if they don't fishbowl, because fishbowl is not as offensive on a star field, and most would rather have some fishbowl, even pincussion and barrel distortion, in order to have non astigmatic stars to the edge of the field, than to have a field with no field distortion but seagull stars in the outer portion. You have mentioned several eyepieces as having stars sharp to the edge in your dob, that are known to be anything but. But tolerances and expectations vary. I myself started with 2 very slow scopes 20 years ago, an 80mmf11 refractor on a cheap goto mount with a tiny leg aluminum tripod and a plastic tube clamp designed for the ST80 f5 version of that scope, it was very shakey, but I was able to make it work, and had plans for modifying it to work with my next planned purchase which was an even slower 127mm mak on the skyview pro eq5 class mount with dual axis drives, since I planned on getting a separate 8" newtonian OTA later on, and using the 80mm piggyback as a manual guidescope for film astrophotography, and using the 127 on the goto mount with the modification of a baader bracket which was vixen dovetail compatible, and a better tripod equivalent to a nextar 5, that came in the form of a surplus sale on tasco starguide 4 tripods. I went in too much detail out of order . My first accessories purchased when the 80mm was all i had were a 32mm plossl, ultrablock filter, and a then $50 meade kit at sharper image that included an 18mm WA 67deg field (not an 18mm SWA), a 5mm plossl and shorty barlow) the 18mm worked fine in that scope, and also when i got the f12 5" mak. But when I finally got my 8"f4, one of the last from hardin, ouch, the 18mm no longer was even remotely close to being usable. Plossls were ok, and a 13.8mm true meade super wide was much better than that joke 18mm WA, but still had lots of astigmatism in the outer 1/3 of the field. But with the barlow it sharpened right up. I was hooked, and my next significant eyepiece purchases were used 16mm nagler type2 taiwan an, old smoothside version of the original 8.8mm meade ultrawide, and an old smoothside 4.8 nagler and a 7mm nagler taiwan that had a ring of fire at the edge not common in 7mm naglers, it might have been a neaf blem. I later got a Japanese 7mm that didnt have the ring of fire along with a Japanese 12mm type 2. With a fast telescope, I needed these naglers and one well regarded nagler clone, in order to have good stars to the edge, if not quite perfect because I did not have a paracorr for the first 2 or 3 years. A 10" f5 dob also came within the first year or 2.

This type of eyepiece is best used on slow focal ratio scopes, cassegrain and long refractors, not fast dobs. Same goes for the swan.

They were definitely going for the look of the baader

Unless they radically changed the design sincd when it came out, I am shocked to hear anyone describe it as sharp to the edge. Unlike the other hyperions, it does not have a negative group in the barrel, and is really nothing more than a moden updated erfle or widefield design. They would have to go with a highly concave field lens like the panoptic and es68 in order to have good edge correction in fast scopes. It wasnt that way when it came out and.for several years after. I would think if they made such a major change they would advertise it, maybe give it a mark 2 designation. I doubt this has happened, and maybe we have different definitions of sharp to the edge

With a name like on step, I would think it would use stepper motors. If it makes a constant whining sound when slewing, like a cg5, meade LX, or most small goto mounts, it is a servo, if it has a pitch that varies as it ramps up, like an atlas, then they are steppers. Servos require encoders to know where they are, whereas steppers can calculate the number of steps

5mm is pushing it on f9 slower scopes. I never had a problem with pentax eye placement because the twist up eye guard can easily be set to the perfect distance, and then you don't have to worry about it. Not all of the focal lengths are perfect though, the 20 and 40 do have some field curvature, and althogh the 20xw was more comfortable to look through, a 20mm type5 nagler I compared it to beat it in every area except eye relief, i was surprised to see the nagler put up more contast and brightness, where the smaller focal length pentax usually excells. I was similarly surprised that the 40XW needed slight focus adjustments for the center and edge of the field in a c11. Compared to a meade series 5000 SWA (es68 equivalent), the pentax had more snap in the center, but the entire field of the big meade SWA was sharp to the edge with no focusing adjustments required. When compared to the older japanese meade series 4000 SWA, the center sharpness was better than the 5000 by a tad, and almost as good as the pentax, closer to the pentax than the 5000. But there was astigmatism at the extreme edge that could not be focused out in the older design which was a copy of the televue widefield, where the 5k version is a copy of the panoptic. This made the series 4000 SWA, like the televue widefield, not great performers in fast scopes. For use on SCTs, while the massive 5k SWA has better edge performance, i preferred to use the 4k for the center snap, and the outer astigmatism was still acceptable at f10, along with being not nearly as massive and heavy as the pentax, which is still lighter and less massive than the meade5k. The ES68 version is slightly less massive due to the deletion of the twist up outer housing, but it is still pretty heavy, heavier than the 41 pan IIRC. I ended up selling the 40XW because it was worth the most of the 3, and needing to refocus for the edges or the center was what made the decision to part with it easier. I also had the 10.5XL, both 8.5 and 12 XF (compact 60deg versions intended for spotting scopes). XW use was common in the circles I ran in, so i got to look through many of the other focal lengths, most commonly the 5 7 and 10. The common war was type6 nagler vs xw, and they both came in 3.5, 5, and7, and were close with 10/11 and 13/14. I always found the optical performance in those sizes to be pretty comparable, and all use japanese glass with excellent coatings, so it was usually the choice between 70deg and long eye relief, or 82deg and moderate eye relief, definitely better than the 4.8, 7, and 9mm type 1, but no where near as long as the 20mm eye relief designs. IIRC type 6 had about 13mm of eye relief and it was fairly consistent among the whole line. The only t6s I owned were 3.5 and 7, and i regretfully couldnt resist the urge to sell the 3.5 because it was too strong to use in most of my scopes, and i could still get by with my 3.2mm and 4mm TMB planetary eyepieces. I of course kept the 7mm along with the 10.5xl and the XFs and 5.5uwa till the end when they got stolen. Now I have an old 7mm type 1 again (I had 7mm type 1 before i got the type 6 in the past, always have to have some form of nagler 7), 4.7mm 5kUWA, and 4k UWAs in 6.7, 8.8 and the massive 14mm. The current big boys are the 28mm megaview and 20mm WO XWA, with 17 and 22 LVWs and a 24mm ES68 filling in the gaps with 1.25" capability. The only gaping whole in my set is a maxfield 40 like my previous 2 40SWAs and the 40XW filled, for use in my F10 SCTs and refractor. Would like another 4kSWA, or UO MK70, 42mm LVW or 40mm TV widefield, all japanese. But a WO 40 SWAN would probably do in a pinch. (Not mentioned were my 30mm widescan II and 56mm smoothside super plossl, which were 30mm 84deg widescan III and 50mm 56deg axiom in my pre robbery set)

Pentax has always been a benchmark for eyepieces, until you try a nikon eyepiece

They look a lot like the nagler zooms. Definitely a reverse engineering job, and would bet the inner 50 degs to perform almost as wellnas televue, but the outer 5deg is probably not as good. Was that the case? A common theory is that al nagler was trying to design a long eye relief nagler after the type 1 and 2 had short eye relief except for the 13mm and 20mm. The design was not up to his standards outside of the inner 60degrees, so he scaled it down and created the radian, instead of a nagler type 3. He succeeded with the long eye relief nagler type 4, which i had in 22mm for a while. In my f5 dob, without the paracorr, the stars at the edge were bloated, where other nagler designs were much better in that regard. It sharpened up with the paracorr, and televue ads mentioned that the nagler type 4 was sharp to the edge when used with the paracorr. I tried out a celestron 23mm axiom LX which was better at the edge and didnt require the paracorr. This also applies to 24mm meade UWA and ES82 versions of the same eyepiece. I sold the 22mm type4. The svbony clone looks like a good budget option