opisska
rabid twitcher
After years of using catadioptric SkyWatcher scopes for birding, I am finally cracking to the idea of buying an actual spotting scope - mainly due to me slowly becoming rich enough that the costs of the better scopes aren't so outrageous to me anymore. The SkyWatchers were fine, but the catadioptric design has inherent limitations for daytime use due to parasitic light that simply cannot be overcome by any other means than buying a lens-based scope instead.
However considering the fact that I have a nice selection of astronomical eyepieces, buying a "scope+eyepiece" set, with a custom eyepiece mount (not compatible with 1.25"), as is the case for most spotting scopes, seems a little bit wasteful. Are there any reasonable spotting scopes that accept 1.25" eyepieces? I have high-end 82 deg fov eyepieces at 14 and 9 mm and a slightly narrower 6 mm eyepiece - this seems to be the appropriate range of focal lengths considering the typical parameters of spotting scopes. If there are such scopes, are they 45-deg angled or at least do they have enough backfocus for a 45-deg element? I would like to avoid both direct and 90-deg observation, as I have already experienced and heavily disliked both
I tried to look this up online, but without much success, so this is probably a rather arcane request and I'll be probably forced to buy a normal scope with eyepieces anyway, but it's worth the try ...
However considering the fact that I have a nice selection of astronomical eyepieces, buying a "scope+eyepiece" set, with a custom eyepiece mount (not compatible with 1.25"), as is the case for most spotting scopes, seems a little bit wasteful. Are there any reasonable spotting scopes that accept 1.25" eyepieces? I have high-end 82 deg fov eyepieces at 14 and 9 mm and a slightly narrower 6 mm eyepiece - this seems to be the appropriate range of focal lengths considering the typical parameters of spotting scopes. If there are such scopes, are they 45-deg angled or at least do they have enough backfocus for a 45-deg element? I would like to avoid both direct and 90-deg observation, as I have already experienced and heavily disliked both
I tried to look this up online, but without much success, so this is probably a rather arcane request and I'll be probably forced to buy a normal scope with eyepieces anyway, but it's worth the try ...
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