A glorious night indeed last Sunday from Western Sydney.
I'm not normally used to a combination of decent seeing, decent transparency and low humidity, but Sunday night delivered. If only it had been a night earlier, I went up to Linden on Saturday night to be greeted with solid cloud cover.
My family gave me a Delos 12mm eyepiece for my birthday and I was eager to show it off to them up at Linden on Saturday, but alas, the weather didn't play ball again.
Then, the following night, despite the suburban light pollution, I clearly saw the Milky Way from my backyard (last time that happened was probably ten years ago) and had a good play with the Delos.
Notwithstanding my occasional sneers at Tele Vue for their hyperwide craze, the Delos 12 is a good eyepiece. Despite its rather big size and weight it works beautifully with my 6" Intes Mak. Unlike many of the Naglers I've looked through it's easy and comfortable to use. Most importantly, it delivers – I don't remember seeing Centaurus A this clearly and easily from my backyard ever (for reference, that's a really difficult 6" target from my backyard, normally I'm lucky to make it out at all).
I have to say, the Delos edges out my previous favourite eyepiece, the Nikon FS 17.5, for having slightly better contrast and definition, while being usefully wider and less prone to reflections off my eye.
I spent most of the remainder of the night (until about 1am when transparency worsened) using the Delos 12 on many marginal (from my location) targets, such as the Eight-Burst neb and various Virgo galaxies. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with this eyepiece
Cheers
Steffen.
