Telescope Reviews: Leitz 30mm 88* obsolete...?

I sold my 30mm Leitz because every now and then I look at performance v cost and figure something less expensive will do, especially if the item is one seldom used. That is what I did with the 31mm Nag, 30mm Leitz and 30mm XW comparison. I found the Leitz to be incredibly sharp and have a very accessible field of view. It balanced in my Portaball where the Nagler did not. The XW though having a less spectacular field of view, is incredibly sharp and far more reasonable than either of the other two so I went with it. Now I have a really long focal length scope (5,000) and may be getting one even longer (6,100mm)which means a 30mm will get far more use. So I am thinking about the Leitz once again.

14 October 2005

Out for another round with Mars and Saturn, this time I had the 12.5" Portaball set up. Conditions were good enough that 300x gave crisp, detailed images of both planets in moments of best seeing. So much so that I dropped in the 3mm Radian to see what over 500x would yield. On Saturn it was actually quite good though the instability of the atmosphere became apparent and one had to wait for fleeting moments of better seeing. Surprisingly good though. On Mars the same power seemed to wash out the detail. I did not try the filter with the 3mm, maybe it would have helped.

At 300x I swung the scope around to Orion and placed M42 in the field- the “e” and “f” components shone like beacons and the nebula extended far beyond the field of view. The 19mm Panoptic was a nicer overall image as it took in so much more of the nebula and surrounding sky. All wonderful eyepieces, wish I did not like them so much.

Also gave the 30mm Leitz its first try in the Portaball- excellent images and no issues with balance at all. It does pull in more sky than the 30mm Pentax XW and seems to be sharper farther out in the FOV. Still undecided about keeping it, lots of money for a slight improvement- but it sure is a neat eyepiece!

29 & 30 October 2005

I have been out with the 8" D&G the last few nights. What a wonderful experience using this scope! It is such a classic looking thing and the images are excellent given good seeing. Not such good seeing yet. Turning the scope on the double-double with the 30mm Leitz yielded clean separation at 80x. The Leitz is amazingly sharp and the entire FOV easily seen. I swung the scope a short distance to Vega and say a lot of blue surrounding the star, kind of a blue cotton ball with a star embedded within. My FS-152 has as slight bit of color on Vega so I was not too surprised. I don’t actually spend all that much time observing Vega anyway. The biggest problem has been unstable skies. Second is the dew! Lots and lots of it causing my objective to fog up.

13 November 2005

Out with the D&G 8" F/12 and 12.5" Portaball. I have been curious for a while now about how these two stack up against one another, especially as the PB has the curved secondary support. Unfortunately, the seeing has been unstable for the last while. Plus the dew has been terrible- I can not remember having such issues with dewing. It was so bad this morning that the D&G was streaming water and soaking my leg as I sat observing. And I kept having to use a hair dryer to clear the objective. I actually had the secondary on the PB dew over and had to wait a long time for the dew heater Pete includes with the scope to have any effect.

MOON

After setting each scope up, I let them cool a while and then took a look at the gibbous Moon. I spent most of the time on Gassendi and the area around Mare Humorum. The PB was running at 160x with a Pentax 10mm XW and the D&G about 170x with my favorite Meade 14mm UWA. The level of detail was very close- the D&G was giving a tighter image at first and I was able to see finer detail inside Gassendi. I could see everything in the PB as well but focus was far more