Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Pensack
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I would also comment that my lifetime-best view of Jupiter was with a PowerMate (4 elements) + Paracorr (5 elements) + 8mm Ethos (9 elements). It looked like a Christopher Go or Damian Peach image, only sharper. Full technicolor, too. No more light scatter than I saw in the eyepiece by itself. Different colors on each moon, and albedo features on Ganymede. The keys: great optics and stunningly perfect seeing. Lens count? Not very important, it seems, at least with optics of that quality.
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I had a similar experience with a Tele Vue 35mm Panoptic with 4x Powermate giving me one of the finest views of Jupiter and Saturn I had ever seen. Telescope was 10.1" f6.4 Newtonian with (Suchting) refigured primary. What I liked about the view was the huge eye lens the Panoptic provides and at the higher power the Powermate offers.
What was the telescope you used your combination on, Don? I'm curious what magnification you had.
Note the Powermates are essentially invisible unless you're chasing 15th magnitude Quasars in which case a design with less but highly polished lens elements would be advantageous, (contrast is the key). I like the way the Powermates retain eye relief exactly as the original eyepiece design was intended to have.