stringscope
17-06-2006, 12:22 AM
Matt has been wanting to try out the 24mm Konig eyepiece in his C9.25 so I met up with him at his place tonight armed with every eyepiece I have plus the 8" Stringscope.
We compared a number of eyepieces and filters in the two scopes over several hours and I then got to watch planetary imaging using a webcam followed by processing. I have not seen this before, very interesting.
I am afraid we were not very scientific in our approach to the equipment comparisons so we don't have the material for a formal review. However, I did note a few interesting observations:
I found the C9.25 a very nice SCT indeed. I noted this one was easy to focus to a sharp image and had very little mirror shift with focusing.
Prior to imaging Jupiter the visual targets were Jupiter, Eta Carina, Antares and M83.
We tried my 40mm Meade 4K SWA in the C9.25 and it worked very well indeed. I was expecting to see some vignetting, but it was not obvious. This eyepiece gives a 1.1 degree TFoV in the C9.25 and using a UHC filter the nebulosity surrounding Eta Carina was quite spectacular.
As expected @ F10, the 24mm Konig worked very well in the C9.25. However, I think Matt might be hanging out for 24 Pan or a 20 T5.
It was interesting to compare a Baader Neodymium filter against a blue filter on Jupiter. In both scopes @ about 250X, I felt the Nd filter showed a little more detail and provided a more pleasing image.
Once my scope had cooled down, it produced a nice clear split on Antares @260X. The C9.25 which was properly cooled down, could not quite keep up with the Newtonian, it did split Antares but only just.
I have not used a Pentax XW eyepiece before. Matt has a 10mm XW and I found it worked beautifully in both scopes and produced very sharp images. Despite the smaller AFoV I personally found it nicer to use than similar Nagler types, ie 12mm T4.
Using the C9.25 we compared Matt's 13mm T5 against a 20mm TV Plossl with a 2X Ultima barlow and a 9mm Meade 5K Plossl. I felt both Plossls produced better images of Jupiter than the 13mm T5 with the Meade producing the best image of the three.
At this point we shifted to imaging mode and I guess Matt will be posting some images later. I was amazed at how quickly one can generate a basic stacked and processed high quality planetary image, wow!
Many thanks to Matt and Rae for your hospitality.
Cheers,
We compared a number of eyepieces and filters in the two scopes over several hours and I then got to watch planetary imaging using a webcam followed by processing. I have not seen this before, very interesting.
I am afraid we were not very scientific in our approach to the equipment comparisons so we don't have the material for a formal review. However, I did note a few interesting observations:
I found the C9.25 a very nice SCT indeed. I noted this one was easy to focus to a sharp image and had very little mirror shift with focusing.
Prior to imaging Jupiter the visual targets were Jupiter, Eta Carina, Antares and M83.
We tried my 40mm Meade 4K SWA in the C9.25 and it worked very well indeed. I was expecting to see some vignetting, but it was not obvious. This eyepiece gives a 1.1 degree TFoV in the C9.25 and using a UHC filter the nebulosity surrounding Eta Carina was quite spectacular.
As expected @ F10, the 24mm Konig worked very well in the C9.25. However, I think Matt might be hanging out for 24 Pan or a 20 T5.
It was interesting to compare a Baader Neodymium filter against a blue filter on Jupiter. In both scopes @ about 250X, I felt the Nd filter showed a little more detail and provided a more pleasing image.
Once my scope had cooled down, it produced a nice clear split on Antares @260X. The C9.25 which was properly cooled down, could not quite keep up with the Newtonian, it did split Antares but only just.
I have not used a Pentax XW eyepiece before. Matt has a 10mm XW and I found it worked beautifully in both scopes and produced very sharp images. Despite the smaller AFoV I personally found it nicer to use than similar Nagler types, ie 12mm T4.
Using the C9.25 we compared Matt's 13mm T5 against a 20mm TV Plossl with a 2X Ultima barlow and a 9mm Meade 5K Plossl. I felt both Plossls produced better images of Jupiter than the 13mm T5 with the Meade producing the best image of the three.
At this point we shifted to imaging mode and I guess Matt will be posting some images later. I was amazed at how quickly one can generate a basic stacked and processed high quality planetary image, wow!
Many thanks to Matt and Rae for your hospitality.
Cheers,