Looking back at the “Best of 2023”
We’re in the middle of 2024 already (quo tempore fugit!) making this a good time for a retrospective look at our most popular blogs of 2023. Que the harp music …
Top User Profile Blog Posts
Our most popular blogs featured Tele Vue owners and how they use our products.
One of the more popular user profile blogs was Tele Vue-NP127is Imaging the Skies over Southern Poland! which tells the story of how Jan Bielański selected and now uses the Tele Vue-NP127is Nagler-Petzval APO refractor.
“After two weeks of reading, analyzing, and thinking, I made the best decision I could: to sell all of my telescopes and buy the TeleVue-NP127is. During the first several months, I used the scope visually while waiting for the Tele Vue LCL-1069 Wide-Field Corrector and some additional connectors which would allow it to achieve a perfect imaging configuration. Visually, it leaves other scopes with similar aperture far behind.”
We looked forward to see more of his images on AstroBin.
Another top user profile was Catching Up: Linwood Ferguson’s NP101is — an update to a 2021 blog post about Linwood’s imaging efforts from southwest Florida with the Tele Vue-NP101is telescope. We were happy to see that Linwood continued to present compelling astro-images for all to enjoy. We wished him the best of luck on his future imaging endeavors.
Also tops was a user profile and travelogue: Tele Vue Eyepieces in Irish Skies about Pat Rochford’s trip from Alabama to the Emerald Isle in 2023. “On January 17th my wife, Stephanie, and I departed the Alabama Gulf Coast for the west of Ireland, near the tiny town of Kilshanny in County Clare. A two-hundred-year-old cottage, less than three miles from the Atlantic Ocean, would be our home for the next nine weeks.” He also packed along a mini 6″ f/5 Dobsonian with the following Tele Vue optics: 24mm Panoptic, 11mm Nagler Type-6, 7mm Nagler, Tele Vue 3x and 2.5x Barlows, plus 1.00 DIOPTRX astigmatism corrector. As explained in the blog, building the custom scope and case to bring on the plane was major part of the trip.
Left: tiny 6″ f/5 Dobsonian sitting on its rocker box with a Nagler eyepiece in the holder. All breaks down to fit into a custom 22” x 14” x 9” case. Right: unassembled scope, rocker box, with Sky Commander DSC. On the right are Tele Vue eyepieces, Barlows, and Dioptrx.
Pat and his wife are so enthralled with Ireland that they returned this February “on a whim” to attend the Russell Music Festival in Doolin!
A tour of the heavens from the bright skies of Chicago to the rural/suburban skies of Virginia through night vision eyes was found in our Night Vision Astronomy from Bortle 9 & 4 Skies! − another very popular blog posting. Darren Drake told us that with night vision he is able to view such targets as the Horsehead nebula from his “horrendous Chicagoland Bortle 9 backyard. His impression is that the TNVC PVS-14 on the eyepiece virtually boosts the scope diameter to act as if it has a 2.5x larger mirror. That’s like suddenly being able to view stars 6¼x dimmer than before!
This blog also relates how Corey Dallmeyer is working with night vision under Bortle 4 skies in Virginia. His social media contains resources for PVS-14 users in astronomy. We link to some of these on the blog post including Everything I Use for Night Vision Astronomy and H Alpha Filters For Night Vision Astronomy: 6 Filters Compared.
Top Hardware Blog Posts
Blog postings relating to hardware also did well with our readers.
Our highly viewed PIxel Peeping blog — an introduction to image sampling and associated concepts — was based on our experience viewing countless image corners. It proved very popular with the readership. The last part of Pixel Peeping dealt with optical and hardware problems. We believe it is required reading for anyone seeking to work out the “bugs” in their imaging systems. Another popular hardware blog was 2023 Tele Vue Product Anniversaries — celebrating the significant anniversary year for current Tele Vue products in 2023. Also highly viewed was our new product announcement: NPR-2073 0.8x Reducer for Tele Vue NP101is and NP127is. This constitutes the latest addition to our line of Imaging System products designed to work with our Tele Vue-NP101is and Tele Vue-NP127is scopes. NPR-2073 is a reducer that minimizes vignetting with camera sensors up to 43mm diagonal (Full Frame) and is a replacement for the previous 0.8x reducer, the discontinued NPR-1073 (which worked best up to APS-C sensors). When combined with a Tele Vue Petzval-type telescope, NPR-2073 reduces the focal length of the telescope by 20% and makes it that much faster. This increases the telescope’s field of view by 25%.
The ultimate hardware blog was our 2023 NEAIC & NEAF in Review post. The Northeast Astro-Imaging Conference (NEAIC) and Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) were our first in-person shows in America since the pre-pandemic year of 2019. If you’re in the New York City metro area this show is for you! Even if you need to travel to get there it is worth it. We bring every single item on our product list and are happy to discuss how best to use them.
Each Tele Vue Telescope Explained in ONE Image was the top blog post published in 2023. We wrote: “No single telescope is best for every application, that’s why our all-APO refractor lineup has a range of scopes of various sizes. All are visual and imaging capable to suit your whims. In this blog we’ll take a tour of Tele Vue’s refractor offerings through sample images made by each model.”
Beautiful Image Blog Posts
These top-posts contained great images made with Tele Vue gear.
Paracorr Type-2: Image of the Day! blog showcased AstroBin Image of the Day (IOTD) winners that employed Tele Vue Paracorr coma corrector on their fast Newtonian imaging telescopes. AstroBin’s Image of the Day and Top Picks is designed to “promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence.” One imager that has received the IOTD laurels multiple times is Phil Brewer using his Paracorr equipped 8″ f/4 carbon-tube. He says the following:
“I was previously using a competitor’s product. While imaging I has serious problems with strange flat field artifacts in my images. I tried everything I could think of to fix it and literally spent years struggling with it. I finally broke down and bought the Paracorr and the problem immediately went away. It was apparently bad internal reflections or something from the competitor’s coma corrector. So you have at least one happy customer.”
Imaged through Chroma Red, Green, Blue and 3nm Hα and OIII narrowband filters as follows: Blue: 22×180″, Green: 22×180″, H-alpha: 70×600″, OIII: 63×600″, Red: 22×180″.
Software used was GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight, and Russell Croman Astrophotography StarXTerminator. Taken from Ida, Michigan.
Want to really understand the structure and composition of an astronomical object? Then try sketching it! In the Sketching the Universe! blog post we said that “the beauty of sketching at the eyepiece is that it leads to a more intimate knowledge of the object and the star field around and within it.” Our readers were enthralled enough to propel this blog post to a top-spot among the most read blogs of 2023. It features astronomical sketches made with Tele Vue eyepieces, Paracorr, and even the PVS-14 night vision monocular.
Did you observe, sketch, or image with Tele Vue gear? We’ll like your social media post on that if you tag it #televue and the gear used. Example:
#televue #tv85 #ethos #jupiter
Do you want your Tele Vue images re-posted on Tele Vue Optics’ Social Media accounts? Use this hashtag for consideration:
#RPTVO
