by Paul LeFevre
I purchased a TV-85 APO (85mm, f/7, 600mm FL) last January...I know most of you will not have a hard time believing that I haven't really LOOKED through the scope much (though I have taken a number of images with it). Last night it got a good visual workout.
I set up for a quick-and-dirty observing session in my backyard, with the TV-85 on a Tak EM-10 mount. My real goal of the evening was to see how Mars was doing, but I poked around a bit beforehand. M3 was nearly straight up, and looked quite nice at 150X in the little scope (TV Radian 18mm and 2X barlow). I also took at look at M13, M57 (okay, it's really tiny in this little scope, but easy to find), and a few of the doubles from the January S&T list of the best double stars in the sky.
The TV-85 gives a wonderful view. Stars are pinpoint-sharp throughout the entire field of view, and there's no hint of false color that I can see even on bright targets like Vega. It's a good size for quick-setup peeking, and does a respectable job on fairly-faint-fuzzies.
Around 10:30 PM Mars had cleared the neighbors' houses enough to start watching...though it was still pretty low in the sky. The sky had some thin wispy clouds and a fair amount of moisture, but it was quite warm and muggy out, which usually means the seeing will be good -- and it was. Even with Mars fairly low on the horizon, I was having no trouble with 300X (Vixen Lanthanum 4mm EP and 2X barlow), seeing good detail on the planet's disk. Pushing the power up to 420X (same EP, Klee 2.8X barlow) caused some image breakdown, but the image was quite acceptable even at that magnification, and the higher power made it easier to pick out the polar cap. I was comparing views over the fence with my neighbor's 10" f/5.6 dob (it's fun to have both of us out back with our scopes, talking over the fence about what we're seeing!), and we both felt we saw more contrast and detail in the TV-85 than in his 10" scope -- certainly Mars being so bright in the 10" and overwhelming the dark features had something to do with it, but the little APO holds its own quite nicely for planetary viewing.
No cameras, no CCDs, no pictures...just a boy and his refractor enjoying the night sky. See, I'm not completely gone...:)