[ngcles]

Hi Markus & All,

Thanks for the comment on the review mate -- much appreciated. I'm not fishing for feedback, but sometimes (in fact a lot of times) when you write something you do wonder whether anyone reads it at all. Sometimes you hear something (positive or negative), very often nothing at all -- stony silence. It's a curious thing.

In addition to what others have suggested on what may or may not be a difference between your 'scope and others. You will notice from the article itself, the night I conducted the initial test was unusually good seeing. In fact it was probably the best seeing I've experienced from Sydney for many, many months, if not a year or more. So, high magnifications were much easier to achieve with a stable, pleasant-to-view image.

It doesn't happen that often that the atmosphere will co-operate to the extent that a 12" telescope will perform to near its resolution limits. I didn't check any very close doubles to quantify the seeing, but I'd reckon it was running at about 0.5-0.8 arc-secs. Eta Orionis which is pretty close (about 1.2"??) looked like you could drive a truck through the gap. Certainly Seeing like that does't happen every night -- it is rare to very rare in Sydney and probably in Australia.

And yes, I was using quality eyepieces. Televue plossls (12 YO vintage) and Naglers.


Best,

Les D