Nagler 26mm against Meade 24mm UWA

[alan potts]

Wide field wonderland

[

Televue 26mm Nagler and the Meade 24mm Ultra Wide Angle.

As I still have both of these fine eyepieces I thought why not put them into bat together and see what is what with both of them. I still have the 24mm Meade UWA because of the arrival of the same eyepiece in a different tutu calling itself Maxvision almost made it give away price after the cost of shipping to the UK, so I kept it.

26mm Nagler.

In my view a very nice looking eyepiece, simple design along the lines of the rest of Nagler range meaning most of the cost is in the optics. It is a fairly heavy eyepiece but not quite up there with the 31mm version from the same range, not a problem in most of my scopes but I could see it causing Dobsonian owners some balance issues.

The 26mm has a rather large convex lens inside the 2 inch mounting sleeve that comes very close to touching any surface you put it on, though there is clearance from the leading edge you must be careful to place it on a flat surface. I almost placed it on top of a stone from my concrete work when out side doing the research for this report, so it is something to be very wary of.

The eyepiece weighs in at 1.6 pounds in old money and has an eye-relief of 16mm, so it may not be the best choice for anyone wearing glasses, I tried to use it wearing my own glasses and I could not see the full field of view but I guess different frame design could play a part in this. The top of the eyepiece has the flip up rubber eye-guard, which I am not that fond of if I am being honest and because of this never use it.

Meade 24mm UWA.

A bit of a fat lump, but lets not make it a contest of looks. It is a very well made eyepiece with a similar sized eye lens to the Nagler and beats the 26mm into second place in the weigh-in, tipping the scales at 820grams which is about 1,3/4 pounds, so balance issues for many scope owners.

 It has a rather nice twist up eye-guard which most certainly gives everything a quality feel about it, though like many Meade eyepiece I have had they seem to have gone overboard with the grease again. I have never got any of the grease they use on these twist mechanisms onto a lens but I can believe some people will have done so.

This is about half the cost of the Televue, when it was bought by me it was just under 250 pounds but they have been sold for more in the past, the box alone must cost a tidy sum, its lined in black velvet flock and adds a fair bit of weight to the over all package, a little unnecessary I feel.

I again tried my rather poor test of using glasses to use the eyepiece and like the former I could not see the whole field of view, in fact I believe I was seeing less though the eye-relief is stated at 17.6mm, which is a little more than the Nagler. There is a recess at the top of Meade that will have an effect.

Scopes

I used all of my scopes for this test over a 7 week period which was made longer by an accident to my ankle, meaning I couldn’t move telescopes about for a week or so but seemed longer. However due the similar focal lengths of some of them I have not reported on all.

I did not stick to the same targets list for each scope as the range of magnification is much greater than I like, for example the Moon in the LX 200 at X124ish is one thing but at just over X30 in another scope is not quite the same.

LX 200 12 inch. F 10 F/L 3048mm

I hope this scope is going to get a bit more use when I move it out to the observatory which is almost finished, it is just getting a bit to much of a bind to set it up when the 190mm M/N almost moves itself by way of comparison. However if I had bought the heavier EQ6 mount then I may well feel different about it. The power of these eyepieces is just a little different at this focal length, the Meade gives X127 and the Televue a little less at X117, I don’t consider this to be an issue however if you do please say so.

The Moon.

Now I tried this when the Moon was very low in the sky, I don’t believe I have ever seen it so low down, it was only a few days old and I was looking for some of the more difficult to see craters on the Western edge. I was looking for craters around the Mare Crisium and one in particular the crater Cleomedes, which is 19kms across according to my information. Now seeing was not very good with the Moon only just above the walnut tree at the end of my land and it had been a very hot day, this never helps.

I looked for some time swapping the eyepieces about and almost putting the Nagler on a stone chipping. Well I tried to see this pre-selected crater and could not, I’m sure this was only conditions. However the man from Delmotte at 33Kms he says “Yes”. I am never going to win any prizes seeing a crater this size with a 12 inch scope but it just goes to show how conditions affect our hobby. The following night I repeated the exercise with the M/N 190mm and had just about the same result though with the much smaller magnification I was always going to struggle to see anything as small as crater Cleomedes, I will just have to wait until the Moon is in a better place in the sky, made a nice change though.

One thing I was also doing here was seeing how good these eyepieces were at the edges at the same time looking for distortions. The Nagler pretty much took me aback here showing what I though was bad edge distortions making the Moon look fairly awful in my opinion, sharp as a razor but awful. I didn’t like what I was looking at one bit, I have to say I have never used this eyepiece or its bigger brother to view the Moon and I don’t think I will be doing so again in the future.

The Meade on the other hand was free from any distortion and sharp but not as good as the Nagler at the very extreme. The differences in sharpness were very hard to see but we are using an F10 scope and one would expect most eyepieces to put in a decent show. The seeing conditions were far from ideal this low down, higher up things were much better.

Antares

I turned my attentions to Antares as I wanted to see how the eyepieces handled the very red colour of this star and to see if I could get a second glimpse of the double. Antares was well placed for me and it was only just past its highest point in the sky. I have to say the Meade made the star appear the reddest of the two, maybe even a little too red. I was able to see the double again but not with either of the two eyepieces which are the topic of the report. I would have said the Nagler again gave the sharpest stars across the whole field though the Meade also did a very nice job. I always wish for a 24 inch F3.8 to try these tests out on, when you think about it I could have got a rather large Dobsonian for the cost of the Meade LX and maybe if I had my time again that is the way I would go.

M22.

This is a beautiful globular cluster in any scope but in a reasonably large one it’s fantastic and I spent a good 30 minutes just looking at this Messier object. Now aware of the edge distortion of the Nagler I was placing everything at the edge of the FOV looking to see if I could anything that would get my back up. I have to say I could not detect this issue, even when looking for it on this sort of target. After about 3 five minute sessions with each eyepiece on M22 and I believe that the Nagler was showing just a little bit more in the way of resolved stars of the cluster and I don’t believe this was down to conditions and I feel the Televue was the sharper eyepiece. Whether or not the extra X10 of power is causing this I just don’t know, my feelings are not so.

I have to say I could not detect any other faults with either eyepiece using the Meade scope but this is a scope that is meant to be coma free and we all know they got into hot water over calling this scope like a Ritchiey Chretien, which it is not.

APM 115mm

The Televue is offering a wide field power here of X31 as near as makes no difference and the Meade a touch more at X33.5, both offering over 2,5 degrees of sky to look at, so both really are wide field eyepieces in this scope. We are a little limited as to what we can look at these powers, reading through on-site comments many people do not bother with such a small power because of light pollution, I have no such problem and enjoy star fields and generally getting lost in the heavens.

Antares and the stars around it.

As we are looking towards the centre of the galaxy in this direction it is difficult not to see stars, what I was after here was seeing if I could pick up M4 near by in the same FOV.  This scope is a little faster than the LX and at F7 should be a bit more demanding on edge definition. I was able to see M4 with both eyepieces and again Antares looked more red with the Meade UWA than with the Nagler but it must be said that the edges of the offering from Televue were better than the Meade. This is an area of the heavens that you can just sit and stare at from here, even with this low power. However from the UK I know this is very low and if street lamp syndrome comes into the diagnosis, then there is little hope for the patient.

It is worth having a scan of this whole area with a low power but from a dark site well away from city lights

Venus.

Venus is very low down at the moment and this in itself makes the planet an interesting object to view as it picks up atmospheric aberrations of its own, appearing red and blue top and bottom. This is little or nothing to do with the eyepiece but I wanted to see if  one eyepiece portrayed the planet any better than the other. Assuming that the optics are half descent the power here just about shows a disc of the planet and I would have said it was at about ¾ phase. It was again the Nagler that showed the planets disc with a little less atmospheric aberration than the other. That Pixie inside the eyepiece that John told me about it really working well, in fact the one from the smashed 6mm Delos is looking for work but refuses point blank to swap to the Meade.

Deneb and star fields.

Looking almost directly overhead at Deneb and the thousands of stars that surround this searchlight of the heavens both of these eyepieces do a great job it is only by the narrowest of margins that the Nagler comes out on top. The Meade just showing a little softness towards the edge, at least when we are looking up like this we can rule out atmostpheric aberration like we have when we were looking at Venus.

GSO 150mm.

This is sort of an in between focal length of my scope line-up but is more in keeping with the focal lengths many of you have, so is more representative from the power point of view. With its RC mirrors and a focal length of 1370mm it gives X52 and X57 for the Nagler and Meade respectively, both giving around 1.5 degrees AFOV, excellent for the Pleiades

Alberio in Cygnus.

Without a doubt one of the most talked about doubles in the night sky and in my opinion one of the best for seeing the colours of the stars. It is not a difficult one to split, in fact some say they can see it in the finder, though I have never done that myself. What I was aiming to do here was place the star at the very edge of the field and then at the centre, then look with care to see if I could see edge distortion making the gap larger between the two components.

Just to be fair the Meade showed the double as text book as you can get and there was no difference anywhere in the field of view, though it was a little soft at the very extreme. If I had to put a figure on it I would have said it was the last 5% of the field where I see this, most people would be very happy with what I wasseeing, of  that I am sure.

Now the turn of the Nagler, whilst I didn’t find it annoying to look at I could see a definite difference in the gap between the two stars by moving it around the FOV, this is one to try if you have one. It is not something that is going to jump out and bite you, especially if you have a driven scope, where most of the time we view in the centre but give it a try and see if you agree.

On the colour front again the Meade 24mm UWA made Alberio and its partner more vivid and I would have said more pleasing, well at least for me.

M45, ( a few weeks ago)

Call me mad but this power is made for the Pleiades cluster but it would mean getting up early, 4 o’clock should do the trick.

Now I had to get the scope into a place where I don’t normally observe from and going down the land further on my concrete work, which the locals have called Heathrow’s third runway was hampered by a pile of roof tiles and beams.

So from the side of a peach tree, which made for a nice early morning snack I looked at M45, which was absolutely superb in both eyepiece, both framing it very well indeed. My feelings were the Nagler was just that bit cleaner and crisper than the 24mm but no one would have been upset by either eyepiece. I cannot detect any edge distortions between the two combatants as you just can’t recall that degree of detail when changing over. If it was possible to put them into a bino-viewer side by side and open and close eyes then, maybe, but doing things this way, impossible. As before the 26mm was just sharper at the edges as well, even when you place a star on the field stop, it’s sharp.

           

M1, the Crab Nebular.

Now I have to say I always find this a bit of a let down but thought it was a good one to include while I was at it. With the air still and very transparent the Crab was easy to find and locate, even in the view finder it was visible which is a mere 50mm scope. I can’t say I could see any detail with either eyepieces as the scope is just not large enough, or the magnification high enough, but I think it was a little more clear in the Nagler. I am talking very small degrees here and even then we are looking at 20 minutes observation, 10 minutes on each, I would have liked more but the night was beginning to give way to day but I was able to get my first good look at Orion this year.

Now I did look at considerable length with my other two scopes and made many notes, but the Mak 180mm and the M/N 190mm are too close in focal length to others I have written about. The Maksutov 180mm is far to close to the LX 200 and there are no planets up and about: Saturn is now too low; Venus is also low and I did use it and Jupiter, well one early morning is enough. The M/N 190mm is a little too close to the APM but a different type of animal. It is worth the mention though that the edge sharpness was a little worse at F5.26 than in some of the other scopes but in general findings were much the same, I often wonder what it would be like if I were able to view these two fine eyepieces side by side in a Dobsonian at around F4.4, I can see myself buying one before to much more water has passed under the bridge.

So we have eyepieces here that are wide field and medium to high power all in the same pair of trousers. As an out and out wide field eyepiece the Nagler takes some beating and is the best eyepiece for this job, giving beautiful clean and crisp views of what ever it’s pointed at and we all know they are tested to work well in fast telescopes. On the other hand though when we move up to higher powers we have this distortion at the edges which I found irritating, especially on the Moon. I personal would not use this eyepiece if I was going to view the Moon, however not everyone has as many to choose from as I do and I did find it annoying, it would be nice to hear if anyone else does.

The other thing that must come into the equation is the cost of these, before the price cuts you could buy two Meades for the one Nagler and have enough for a night out left over. The Meade is without doubt a very good eyepiece for the cost  which in itself is far from cheap, but we are at the higher end of the ocular spectrum. I think if I was going to recommend one eyepiece at this focal length and cost was a factor I would without doubt recommend the Meade 24mm UWA, I could live with the small difference in performance it offers in slower scopes. As to how this eyepiece works at fast F4.5 and around this speed is something I have yet to see.

I am sure not everyone will agree with me, which is one of the things that’s makes this such a great hobby.

Clear skies,

Alan.   

          

[andrew63]

Very nice report again Alan.  Must admit, the view through the Cygnus star fields with the 115 and  26 nagler sounds amazing.

By the way, the current difference is now approx. 3.5  maxvision 24 to the nagler !

andrew

[Dude_with_the_tube]

awesome report Alan,have been waiting for this for ages to see how Meades compare to Naglers as I have managed to get my hands on the whole series of them and I am very pleased with the result you got to prove the point that Meades are great Ep`s and if you are not prepared to splash out a lot of cash for the eP`s then meade/es are the way to go.

I have the F 4.7 dob and trust me,Meades work absolutely fantastic in the faster scope and i have not had any issue with them,love the views they provide and have no intentions to change the Ep`s unless maybe 100degree views??? Didnt had any issue with the grease on my Ep`s,but I have to agree,it is disturbing and can cause issues if you get your fingers in the grease.Only 2 Ep`s caused me this and i simply used a paper towel to remove the excess grease.never had any issues after that.thanks again for the effort of making this report.

Clear skies!

[John]

Great report Alan. Well thought out and a really good read, as ever 

[bingevader]

Super report, especially as I'm after the 24mm Meade in a tutu!

Your place sound idyllic, walnut trees and fresh peaches for breakfast.

Still waiting for the star party!

Cheers

[Damo636]

Another excellent report Alan, I enjoyed reading that!!

[rowan46]

thanks for the work I enjoyed that

[alan potts]

All done without the need for a vacuum cleaner too.

I am still pleased i have the 26mm Nagler, who wouldn't be, but whereas I was going to get rid of the 24mm Meade, now I am not.

I guess that in truth with it being worth no more than 80-90 quid with the Maxvisions killing Meades S/H prices I would be a fool not to keep it.  

Something odd happened tonight again, looking at Venus at X200 and a Jumbo Jet flew through the FOV, checked out Antares and the same thing happened. Give you a bit of a start.

Alan.

[Scooot]

Great read Alan, thanks for taking the time to compare them and write it up. I was particularly interested because I recently bought the Nagler. I use it with the dioptrx so I can dispense with my specs, and as the dioptrx are specifically made for televues it was a factor in my purchasing decision.

[YKSE]

Thanks for another great report, Alan, many interesting details.

[jetstream]

Great report Alan.

[Pig]

Excellent read Alan, pity about the Moon being so low down   some very useful points made, great stuff

[BillP]

Alan,

Great report!  Your comments on the impact of the rectilinear distortion in the off-axis, which is fairly substantial in the older Nagler lines, is refreshing.  It is always a popular astronomical community addage that it is better to correct the off axis for angular magnification distortion (AMD) rather than rectilinear distortion (RD) since RD has less impact in observing situations.  I have always taken a different view and feel that it is observer and observing habit dependent as to how to strike the best balance between the two distortions.  I used to have the Nagler T6 line, but because I do a lot of lunar observing, the RD was very annoying to me as it distorted all the familiar shapes.  As you noted when moving to star clusters the RD is not readily apparent.  However, if you were brought up observing some of those clusters on Orthos, then for me at least they clusters just look "odd" when using an eyepiece with a not of RD since the relative position of the stars to each other is skewed.  Anyway, really liked how you highlighted the varying impact of the off-axis distortions by target, and how this can be important depending on how and what one likes to observe.

-Bill

[BillP]

...and ahhhh, I can't wait til I am able to edit my posts to correct my inevitable  typos. LOL

[alan potts]

Bill and the others, thank-you for the kind words.

Bill,

I will have to read through your reply with my little guide page which out-lines all the various distortions, one or two there are new to me.

This was the point I was making about eyepieces and the Moon, I don't know why but I have, as far as i can recall, never Naglered the Moon. If I have it must have been wide field and in the centre, as I have never seen this before, I thought I was ill.  I have always in the past used Meade SWA's 20mm and 16mm or Panoptic 24mm to start with, then it was onto Radians or later Delos's. Seems a bit odd really as i have 8 of them, I must check out the shorter ones when the Moon comes back.

P.S. one of our friends works in Virginia for a well known whisky brand, they all seem to love Jack here, but not me.

Many thanks,

Alan.

[jetstream]

Alan thanks for the factual reports.The more I learn & use my equipment, the more I can see & the more I can see wrong.I have noticed some things about my eyepieces telescope etc and other members have posted links to some very revealing info....http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2007/dscobel.27.html,http://www.brayebrookobservatory.org/BrayObsWebSite/HOMEPAGE/THE_EVER_WIDER_AFOV.html,http://aberrator.astronomy.net/scopetest/.John,great_bear & no doubt others have pointed the way to help us understand what we see when looking through our telescope.Unless there is a very noticeable distortion I don't think it matters(to me anyway),but it is great to here of when there is such a case.So it appears the 26mm Nagler isn't a moon eyepiece,good to know.I think this highlights the need to have a good assortment of various types of eyepieces in our arsenal.When I want to view the moon,I grab a couple of appropriate ones,DSO same thing, etc.I think the hardest thing is to find just a couple of eyepieces that do it all really well-and this should also point the way to the choice of a telescope(f ratio) if eyepiece selection is limited.

OH,OH,.....I see a white cube van outside......is it....could it be....the Christmas present truck is here... VX10 has landed,gotta go!!

[Rustysplit]

Great link Gerry. Seeing so many different startest results  really helps to interpret your own results.

[estwing]

wonderful Alan great report...you can see why the nagler has a massive fan base.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great report as always, Alan. I have used the 26 Nagler in Olly's 20" F/4.1 dob, and found it very usable with glasses (and I know I am fussy about that). I did not really check if I could see the entire FOV (I was having too much fun with the big scope ). Naglers do seem to have a bit more pincushion distortion than the Meade UWA series, if my experiences with the 14mm are anything to go by. I do find my Nagler 22T4 very usable on the moon, but my smaller scope allows me to see the whole disc, and pincushioning is barely noticable. At high mag I tend to prefer the Delos and XWs over the Naglers.  

[alan potts]

Michael

I guess that it is unlikely that they are all going to be the same and you have two I do not have in the shape of the 22mm and 17mm T4's. When the Moon come around again I am going to check mine out (31, 26, 20, 16, 12, 11, 9, and 7), but I won't be throwing them in the bin if they do distort.

I gather the correct name for it then is pincushion distortion, this is a term I know from camera lenses, As i said I do the same as you Delos  XW or Radians on the Moon.

Alan

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I gather there is a trade-off between edge sharpness and pincushion distortion in these ultra-wide-angle EPs. The Naglers have better edge sharpness than the Meade/MaxVision, at the expense of more pincushion distortion. The difference is not huge. I checked my Meade 14mm UWA by looking at objects with straight lines, and it did show a bit less distortion than the 17T4 and 22T4. In astronomical objects it is really only visible when moving the scope with respect to the objects, I find.

[Naemeth]

Nice report Alan, it does back up what I've read about these eyepieces - the Nagler is sharper but does have pincushion distortion, making it not as good for the Moon.

I gather there is a trade-off between edge sharpness and pincushion distortion in these ultra-wide-angle EPs. The Naglers have better edge sharpness than the Meade/MaxVision, at the expense of more pincushion distortion. The difference is not huge. I checked my Meade 14mm UWA by looking at objects with straight lines, and it did show a bit less distortion than the 17T4 and 22T4. In astronomical objects it is really only visible when moving the scope with respect to the objects, I find.

There is definitely a trade off, no eyepiece is perfect. The BGOs for example are excellent for planetary work, but you can't use glasses with them or enjoy wide fields .

[Stargazer_00]

Great report Alan thanks.  I was actually considering replacing my 24mm Meade UWA with a Nagler 26mm, Ethos 21mm or Panoptic 24mm but it punches well enough that it's still holding onto its spot in my case.

Considering I picked this eyepiece up for £150 together with the Meade 5000 Di-Electric 2" diagonal from that deal in the states last year I am still chuffed with it.  If you consider the UK cost of the diagonal then I effectivly got this eyepiece for nothing!

[alan potts]

Graham,

I think the 24mm is a rather under-rated eyepiece. I was going to off-load mine but since the Max-attack they are in effect worth, not very much. I think it is very unlikely I would find someone that was so intent on brand loyalty they would pay even 50% of what it cost.

Of the eyepieces you flagged up there the Ethos 21mm is one to go for, however I have the other as well so if you want a mini review for yourself I would be happy to let you know what I think, just remember my scopes are not as fast as your big one.

Alan

[Stargazer_00]

Thanks Alan, that's most kind of you.  I'll probably start thinking about my lower end in the new year at which point I will very much be interested in what you have to say

I want to give the 24mm a good run through early winter and see how well it stands up to the speed of my scopes first.  I dont mind the bulk of the eyepiece, the 350p is actually remarkably tail heavy so it needs a bit of weight on the nose to prevent over tighening of the tensioners stopping the mirror end sagging past 45 degrees.