Subject: [Tweeters] digiscope,
Date: Mar 13 07:18:28 2010
From: Mike Wagenbach - wagen at u.washington.edu


Karen,

I haven't used it, but this is reported to be an excellent scope:
http://www.buytelescopes.com/Products/2026-Pentax-pf-80ed-spotting-scope-wfield-case-straight-body.aspx

For your purposes, it is almost unique in that instead of one zoom and
maybe a couple of proprietary bayonet-mount eyepieces that you can put
on other scopes, it can take any of hundreds or maybe thousands of
available 1.25 inch astronomical eyepieces. They say "the eyepiece is
half the telescope" (actually, most eypieces have more lenses in them
than the rest of the scope, so that's more than true), so you can
choose the one you REALLY like.

Pentax XL eyepieces are reported to be good, and are also waterproof
(well, water-resistant, almost nothing is really waterproof if you go
deep enough), but if you are really dedicated to digiscoping, you
might want to research the Scopetronix MaxView eyepiece, which is a
low power plossl eyepiece that can be threaded securely onto your
camera using T rings, if it has filter threads around the lens, for
better alignment and less vingnetting (and less chance of dropping the
camera in the mud).
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=scopetronix&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=4106017675&ref=pd_sl_16v0lqtfhq_b

A caveat is that I'm not sure Scopetronix is still in business.

(there's a 100mm Pentax, too, if this is not pricey enough for you)
Mike


My god! It's full of galaxies!!
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2004-07-a-print.jpg