Tele-Vue 9mm T6 Nagler and Meade 8.8mm UWA

[alan potts]

Meade 8.8mm UWA Mk 1 and the Tele-Vue 9mm Nagler.

I am beginning to find that the 9mm area is not one that I use that often though I am sure many never let it leave the scope. For me it is a little too high power for everyday use in the two longest scopes I have, both of which measure close to and just over 3 meters. And it is too long for my shorter scopes all of which are either 1 meter or less. Is 9mm Nagler trying tell me it is time to buy something in the 1500-1600mm area where it would see light a lot more often.

Meade 8.8mm UWA from the series 5000 range.

Now I firmly believe we are looking at an eyepiece that has had to be re-tooled by another manufacturer as JOC who once made these had some problems with Meade and I believe they have parted company. Therefore I will call this without any real proof the Mark One 8.8mm UWA as the one on sale now is waterproofed where as this is not, the shape is slightly different and there are visual changes in the wording on the blue band, so clearly not exactly the same.

The eyepiece has a quality feel about it as all of the 5000 range have and tips the scales at about 260 grams so this is not a heavy weight that we find at the other end of the series range. The full range employs the same type of twist up eye-guard system which has a very solid feel about it though I have seen too much stray grease used in this general area for my liking on some of the eyepieces I have owned. Eye-relief is given at 15mm though this feels a lot less in use with the rather large recess of the eye lens by maybe 3mm, I would suggest that anyone wearing glasses would have no chance of using this as my half baked test using reading glasses proved. It has a 7 element construction and contains exotic glass, what ever that means.

The full range of these eyepieces, and I have had most of them come in bomb proof boxes which are velvet lined and really look and feel the part, you could almost say it was a little over the top but it creates a very good first impression.       

Tele-Vue Nagler 9mm 82 degree field of view.

The Nagler T6 range must be among if not the smallest 82 degree range of eyepieces on the market, it really looks small when up against some of it’s large family members in the shape of the 31mm T5 Nagler. The eyepiece barely troubles my Argos special scales at 190 grams but for all that it exudes quality from all areas even though it is relatively simple to look at. The eye-guard is a soft rubber affair which can be folded down if you desire, the eye lens is not in the same league size wise with the Delos range but one would not call it orthoscopic looking either. The T6 ranges all come in the same type of box wrapped in a thick plastic bag which is adequate for the job but not in the same class as the Meade, but to better than that a walnut case and brass hidges would be required.

The eye-relief is given as 12mm for the again 7 element construction but in use it seem the same of slightly better than the Meade. The one thing that you can do with this is get closer to the actual eye lens as there is nowhere near the same recess arrangement. This again is a none starter for anyone who has to wear glasses as my simple test with reading glasses showed. All in all I have two quality eyepieces before me to put into a few scopes and see how they perform. The Meade once cost in the 190 pounds area and the Tele-Vue a fair bit more at 265 pounds though they have come down in price since then. Now the 8.8mm Meade which has changed in some ways is much less, costing about 125 pounds, this again leads me to believe something has changed other than wording and the fact it can now take a dip.

Scopes.

For this I have used my two shorter scopes, 115mm APO and 190mm Mak/Newtonian and my 180mm Mak which at 2.7 meter will take care of any high power issues but at F15 is going to be very kind on any aberrations that may show in a faster scope..  Observations were over a 10 week period and 18 hours were spent at the scopes in total.

I have tried to pick targets that suite the focal length of the scope rather than sticking to a rigid list.

Messier 11, The Wild Duck

Messier 22, one of my favourite clusters.

The Moon, difficult to leave out.

Saturn.

The Blue Snowball planetary nebula. NGC 7662,

Messier 25, open cluster

Arcturus

Messier 81 and 82 Galaxies

  

This year has been tough on me, the wet, correction very wet weather in early Summer, made the mosquito population grow out of hand. The Appilation Controlee of the mosquito world awarded my blood 3 Michelin Stars and every up and coming young blood sucker wanted to dine out at my restaurant. So it was Autan by the bottle full or fly spray, both seem to work though what the latter does to me is another matter.

115mm APO,

This scope is F7 and as such not really fast enough to blow holes in very good quality eyepiece, but not having an f 4 115mm  refractor then this will have to do.

Messier 11 The Wild Duck.

Not sure where the duck bit comes in here as no matter how much I look at it I can’t see it, still maybe in a larger scope. Now the two eyepieces here were giving me X91 and X89, so close that I feel no one could see a difference, this power I feel frames the cluster rather nicely. The cluster is situated in a very star rich area of the Milky Way and in itself has over 2000 stars, it is a fine sight in even a small telescope and well worth a look.

Both eyepieces showed the cluster beautifully on nights of different seeing one of them being very good indeed and from memory I am sure I could see even more stars this night. I have to say that framing the Wild Duck or NGC  6705 in the centre of a driven scope I could not tell the two eyepieces apart both giving top line performances. The one thing I was noticing though was difficulty in seeing the full 82 degrees offered by both eyepieces. The eye lens of the Meade is recessed into the main body which is no help and the 9mm Nagler was by no means easy. This however could just be a getting used to it situation as I have not used the 9mm very much and the Meade does not belong to me. When placing the main body of the star rich cluster at the edge of the scope I could see a mildly better rendition at the very edge from the Tele-Vue but nothing to start screaming about, it was so mild that if I did not do this type of test often I am sure I would not see it. Tel-Vue though true to their words, ‘if it is not sharp why show it’.

Arcturus.

This is a star that is known to most astronomers and is I believe the brightest star in our hemisphere, Sirius being in the Southern. Testing eyepieces on something this bright generally separates the men from boys. On axis the disc of the star was very nice as it was still high in the sky when I conducted this part of the review though last night is was noticeable lower and will not be long before we lose it to sunlight.  There was not very much to choose between the two here with maybe just a slightly tighter airy disc being awarded to the Nagler. With Arcturus being so high I was sitting on concrete, still slightly warm from the day’s sunshine. This is one of the down sides of having a few scopes, one mount and being too lazy to adjust anything.

Placing Arcturus at the edge of the field of view did show a little lateral colour in the Meade at the last 10% of the field with a slight elongation of the disc. The Tele-Vue also showed the smallest amount at the very extreme and for 95% of the field was pretty much unchanged, however I could not detect any elongation. Light scatter was very well handled in both and apart from testing on Venus which is out the way at this time of day I would say both eyepieces were showing their quality.

The Moon,

This is an object that I am beginning to grow to like, something that I never really ever thought would happen. I got the Moon at 3 stations in its phase, the first being 4 days old which is one of my favourites. At this power as well I can see the whole surface with both eyepieces but it is surprising just how much detail you can see as the warm air rising does not really affect the view to much and everything looks super sharp.  Macrobius and Tisserand were well on show and two craters that I do not believe I have studied before, they are situated at the 10 o’clock position near to the Mare Crisium. There was also the ‘C’ component of Macrobius sitting on the edge of the main crater, my laptop was telling me I needed a 100mm scope to see this so I was feeling well pleased with the clear view. I could also see craters Swift and Peirce which are in the Mare Crisium as well as Greaves, thought he played for Tottenham, a fairly small crater at 9 miles but clear in the scope and both eyepieces. The hour I spent before greenery got in the way showed me no real differences between either the Meade of Tele-vue, contrast appeared equal as did sharpness.

First quarter is I guess most peoples favourite Moon as the terminator seems to give Earths satellite an almost three dimensional look and by the time it is six days old we can always see it in a dark sky, well at least from here. I was looking at a part of the surface that had a very Roman feel with, Julius Caesar and Agrippa with all of his alphabetical followers. Moving north on the surface coming to Linne A 1 in the Mare Sirenitatus and many others which was starting to sound more like algebra, this area really needs some extra coal on the fire to see them well but I could discern them, though very small and only just.

Again I could not really do anything but enjoy the views from these two fine eyepieces. If I was being hyper-critical the very edge was just a little tighter in the 9mm Nagler but by the smallest of margins. The area where the Meade came out on top was the edge distortion which as far as I could see fairly flat, there is always a bending of the surface that can be seen at the very edge with the Nagler range, the cost of the extra sharpness I would imagine. Purely a personal thing but any of my Naglers would not be my first choice for viewing the Moon. It may well be worth mentioning that all sighting were checked with a higher magnification so I could be sure I was seeing the correct letter in the alphabet or mathematical equation.

Sky-watcher 180mm Maksutov.

This scope is under used and often just gets over looked by me. These two eyepiece give a lot of power on this scope, the Meade at X306 and the Tele-Vue giving a nice round X300. As the scope is F15 I was not expecting any serious problems to raise there ugly head and none did.

The Moon.

This is one of the few targets that can handle this much magnification and return pleasing images at the eyepiece, it is so bright. The Moon was just passed the quarter phase and I was able to have a closer look at the tiny craters I was viewing the night before in a slightly different light. Linne A1 2, 3, & 4 were easy to see with the larger aperture and good quality optics, this scope is really rather good at the Moon. Everything looked pretty sharp when you consider the power and there was only minor distortions caused by heat rising which subsided considerably as the night cooled down. Archimedes was nicely on view and this whole area has many interesting formations with a range of mountains thrown in for good measure.

The other observation night I used this scope on the Luna surface was at 5 days old and it was so long ago I almost managed to tape over my verbal notes. I was observing an area to the edge of Mare Nectaris where the large crater Theophilus is located and to the east of it the smaller Madler, at 17 mile diameter not the tiniest on the Moon by any means but there were plenty of ‘As’ ‘Bs’ and ‘Ks’ to keep me looking for some considerable time. I guess it is no surprise that seeing a difference between these two oculars in a scope like this was going to be a tall order and I have to say I could not; even the edge distortion associated with the Nagler was next to impossible to see and because of the extra power the possible softer edge of the Meade was likewise.

Saturn.

I had one superb night where the air was still and the day had not been too hot and thought this was a good chance to ramp up the volume (to eleven) on Saturn. The planet was not too badly placed as I am talking several weeks back, though it was not overhead either. This is a little more power than I use most of the time on this planet but I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw, Cassini was well on display though it was drifting a little in air turbulence but it was there most of the time if not razor sharp. I could see shading on the surface and darker polar areas, though I have to say when I dropped the magnification to around X220 the disc did benefit from this, the classic case of more being less.

I felt the 9mm just had the edge here though again it was very close and there is no way I would call a winner or loser, if anything the Meade gave a slight richer colour to the surface, and going back a little thought it made Arcturus more orange as well. I did not have a good enough night to repeat this observation.

Sky watcher Mak/Newtonian 190mm.

This is my fastest scope and in saying that it will not break any land speed records at F5.26 but it has been fleet enough of foot to find out some lesser eyepieces from the premium ones in the past. The power here is X113 from the Meade 8.8mm and X111 or Nelson as I remember from my cricketing days, for the 9mm Tele-Vue.

The Blue Snowball NGC 7662.

Now I guess you are never going to see this well unless you have a scope with a mirror the size of a dustbin lid, which I do not have. Checking on this tells me that an aperture of 16 inches shows colour which I do not agree with as I have clearly seen colour in this planetary nebula when using my 12 inch. I have to say I even feel I could discern a faint hint of blue with this scope though I would not call it ultramarine by any stretch of the imagination. The target is well placed for me at the moment getting very high in the sky well before midnight. I could not see any on-axis differences between the two combatants here though the Nagler was better when I placed the nebula close to the edge of the field of view, which I have to say is one of the last things you would do with a driven scope. However as this is a small object and a fair power is required, on a Dobsonian scope edge definition is rather important. I believe the Nagler would be my choice here as I just felt it was better, albeit not by much.

One thing that was becoming ever more obvious was both these eyepieces are much easier to use sitting down than standing. The very edge was fairly hard to see and involved head turning and constant re-adjustment, I went to get the 8mm Ethos and this was much easier to see the full field which I have to say set me thinking, it was much easier all round to be fair, even the eye-relief seemed  more than a few millimeters extra.

Messier 22

This must be one of my favourite globular clusters but I imagine that from England it is very low even when the horizon is clean enough to view, I can not recall ever seeing this from Hull but that could be because of houses being in the way or a memory failure. Some clusters of this type need a good deal of two things, aperture and power. Clusters like M80 in Scorpius are very compact and I find that at least X220 is need and I am sure a half meter mirror would not go amiss either. M22 though is lovely at around X100 and these eyepieces show it very well in my humble opinion. I was rather nasty to the two eyepieces here as I moved the mount so only half the cluster was in view, I am sure Mr Al Nagler would have me taken outside and flogged for doing this. The 9mm perform very well indeed under these testing conditions where as the Meade just lagged behind a little showing a tiny bit of mushiness at the very edge. With the Nagler you could almost say it was a direct cut off at the field stop though even with this there was a very small decline in on-axis sharpness where the stars just looked like diamond dust on a black velvet cloth. I try to convey to people that read this how close some of these calls really are and I am beginning to think it is time for me to buy a Thesaurus so I can come up with some new synonyms to keep it interesting.

Messier 25,

Not a million miles away from the last target and the goto system found it without problem at X113, the mount works much better now I have up-graded the software to the 3.35 version. M25 is a fairly large open cluster at 32 arc minutes that will almost fill the field of view and one that I have looked at hundreds of times. It is quite something that the same normally unchanging group of stars can be visited so many time without getting boring, I am sure I am not alone in this thought.

Sure enough the cluster was almost filling the field of view and there was a little scintillation from one or two of the brighter stars but this is only because it is low and this night the sky was not at it’s best. The second night was much better and a good deal clearer, I would even go so far as to say I could see more stars. There was nothing between the two eyepieces when used under normal condition. The 9mm which by design has a good deal of edge distortion or pincushion, some how never seems to show itself to me when I view anything else other than the Moon and no doubt the Sun if I ever looked at it. This is a lovely cluster and one that can get high enough for a good view in England and well worth a visit even with smaller instruments as it has a surface brightness of magnitude 4.6 which should be visible to the naked eye, if you were in a dark enough place.

Messier 81 and 82.

These two galaxies have been talked about a good deal of late largely due to the supernova which was visible in fairly small instruments, though I cheated and used a 12 inch scope. The two distant worlds fit nicely into the same field of view and do look splendid though the same power and another 10 inches of mirror would really deliver the goods. The purpose of using this was to see if I had any better light transmission from one eyepiece as opposed to the other. Even after a total of 70 minutes over two very clear and good seeing nights I cannot split them and one eyepiece was no better than the other.

Conculsion.

I think this is the closest review I have undertaken and it is difficult for me to say there was an out and out winner, yes the Tele-Vue 9mm was better but by such small amounts and using such devious tests that we really never do. It has to be said that if you were a Dobsonian owner and this was a higher power eyepiece it would be very nice to have that pristine super sharpness right to the edge but let us not forget though in second place the Meade 8.8mm was hardly miles behind. Both eyepiece were harder to use than my 8mm Ethos but this could just be a lack of practice on my part, I found seated observation easier to view the edges and stop kidney beaning blackout, at times standing was a chore and I had to take frequent rests to compose myself, maybe at 58 I am a bit wobbly on my feet but I don’t think I am. If you have the money it is always nice to own an eyepiece from a market innovator like Tele-Vue and the 9mm T6 is a very small and well built package, a great grab and go or travel eyepiece. The Meade though runs the Nagler a very close second and must be considered to be a very high quality mid to high power (depending on focal length) eyepiece and with it costing less can never be consider as a loser. If you want an eyepiece that can get in the ring with the best of them and as this model is now only available on the secondhand market at around 100 pounds, it would have to be top of any ones list that was working to a budget.

Not having enough words to use to describe how this turned out, I would say this review was Squiddly Diddly close, it was on television at the time.

Again many thanks to site member AstroDani who loaned me the Meade to review.

Alan.         

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice report again, Alan. The claim exotic glass always has me worried the view might wobble as it belly dances in the EP

[John]

Excellent stuff again Alan

I was a great Nagler T6 fan in the past. Very compact packages for what they deliver.

I does get hard to separate these quality pieces of kit doesn't it ?. When they are this close budget and egonomic preferences probably play the largest part in the final decision.

[Damo636]

Nice work Alan, another enjoyable and informative read. I've owned a few of the t6 Naglers in the past & enjoyed them, but never any of the 5000 series. I wonder by any chance does the ES 8.8mm house the same optics as the Meade 5000?

[alan potts]

Damo,

I think this is the x million dollar question, are they the same. I said and feel that the ExSc 4.7mm was not as good as I remember my 4.7mm Meade to have been, the trouble is memory is not accurate as so many things can have been different, conditions being only one of them. I only raise the question about like for like as the prices have changed a fair bit lately but without knowing all the facts I am only guessing which I hope I have made clear.

In this case though the Meade 8.8mm was very close to the Nagler but it was one of the older ones from about 4 years back. I have read some very poor reports about the newer waterproof model which I don't see as being the same. One thing I didn't put in the review was they were almost parfocal with each other, the difference being about the amount the lens was recessed into the eye-guard.

John,

I think budget plays the biggest part in anyones selection and I have to say I would not be disappointed to own another one of this 8.8mm Meade instead of the 9mm T6 as much as I like Tele-Vues equipment.

Alan.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

As I have said many times before, I had the Meade UWA 14mm S5K (old version) and it was a cracking EP, which compared well to a Nagler 17T4 even at F/4.1 in Olly's 20" dob. Only larger eye relief made me switch to a Nagler 12T4

[alan potts]

I had one for a while Michael secondhand it too was very good indeed, the wheels have come off somewhere I am sure, mine would be the same model as yours about 31/2 years back.

In my books it was their best range and all the ones I once had which was all barr the 18mm compared well with Tele-Vue but most of that comment is on the back of a memory that is not as good as it once was.

I always like to have the two or however many in my hand under same conditions as I am sure you do.

Alan