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Pretty happy with my new Delos
Good evening all,
I was able to get some of these eyepieces out under the stars for the first time tonight. I have not previously used the 3mm to 6mm Nagler Zoom or the 6mm TV Delos. The 6mm CZJ ortho should arrive tomorrow. As I didnt have all the eyepieces I didnt want to do anything too serious, but wanted to at least give the eyepieces I hadn't used before a fly.
I used the 10" and 14" scopes. The 18" er stayed in bed.
Seeing wasn't good enough for a 6mm eyepiece to really hold up well in either telescope and as time went on it started to deteriorate, so all scopes are now sleeping.
The four 6mm eyepieces I tried tonight were the 6mm Radian, 6mm Delos, 3mm -6mm Nagler Zoom and the 6mm UO HD ortho. Seeing wasnt good enough for any super critical evaluation at this magnification but I did spend some time studying the terraced wall craters in Mare Imbrium, as these have good reflection angles at this moon phase. I mainly worked on craters Aristillus, Timocharus and Archimedes. I also spent time on Copernicus.
Some preliminary observations.
All four eyepieces are very good. There are no lemons amongst them.
It was very difficult under tonights variable seeing conditions to separate them optically on any of the targets. To split them is going to take good conditions and a good telescope. Even then the differences are going to be fairly subtle in any case.
The Delos and the Radian are easily the most comfortable to use, followed by the Nagler zoom which was also pretty good and the UO HD ortho brought up the rear here, with its tight eye relief and tiny eye lens.
The Delos and the UO HD ortho had a nice cool colour tone, the Nagler zoom and the Radian were a bit warmer.
I found the DELOS a touch more difficult to use than my Pentax XW's, although it's still very good in this regard. It's just a bit easier to create blackouts in the DELOS trying to take in the full FOV, than it is in the XW's. This could also stem from the fact that I have been using my XW's for 10 years and the DELOS for 10 minutes. That having been said I really didnt have any trouble with the DELOS you just have to focus on getting your eye placement right, a bit more than you do with the XW's or the Radians for that matter.
What I can tell you at this point in time is that I like the DELOS a lot and it is a keeper.
Stay tuned. Hopefully I will get some more stable seeing over the weekend.
Cheers,
John B
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