Vixen Flip Mirror Plus Skywatcher 80ED Pro Refractor

Welcome back!

Vixen Flip Mirror

I wrote a few weeks ago I had bought a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor and I’m very pleased with it (in spite of the excess of grey cloudy skies, we seem to have had recently!).

Well.. I’ve just added a great accessory to the refractor..

It’s a Vixen Flip Mirror.  

And I’m also very pleased to have come across this well-made gadget, because it’s already making my observing so much better.

The flip mirror allows you to have two devices attached to the telescope and flip between them, simply by turning the knob you can see in the image to the right.

In this way, you can be using say, two 1.25″ eyepieces of different focal lengths, at the same time.

Use a low-power to find the object, then flip to a higher-power to observe.  Or, you could have one eyepiece for alignment and one camera for imaging.

Whatever the combination, you can quickly alternate between the two ports, according to your needs.  Much better than trying to swap eyepieces or cameras, in the dark!

One eyepiece tube unscrewed to reveal t-thread

Lots of uses…

And as well as this flexibility to have two devices attached to the telescope, the flip mirror has also solved two other problems I was having..

Problem 1 Solved! As I mentioned in the previous post, the telescope needs some form of extension tube to bring an eyepiece to focus. Previously, I was using a separate extender tube.  Now, the flip mirror provides the extra length of light path and does the job.

Problem 2 Solved! Using the right-angle port, makes it comfortable to view objects high up in the sky, without needing an excessively tall tripod or other support.

Vixen Flip Mirror attached to ED80 Skywatcher

Here’s a picture of the Vixen flip mirror attached to my 80ED refractor.
It’s going to prove a very good buy, I think.  I paid £53 (about $80).
The picture shows it with two 1.25″ eyepieces attached.

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