Meade 4000 6.4mm eyepiece?

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Hi guys,

What are your thoughts on the Meade 4000 6.4mm eyepiece?

I am looking to purchase a Skywatcher Heritage 130p Dob, but was hoping to purchase an extra (reasonably priced) eyepiece and barlow to compliment the supplied kit lenses.

I was hoping for some advice on how the Meade 4000 might suit suit the 130p please?

The barlow I had in mind was the Revelation Astro 2.5x Barlow, and so if anyone has an opinion on that too, I'd be grateful of any advice.

Thank you

Russ

[nightfisher]

You might find at 6.4mm the ep is a little high on the magnification for most nights

[Digger1895]

I use a 6mm unbranded plossl on my Heritage 130p and the magnification is fine, I also find the eye relief ok but some may not. I have a 4mm UWA and that is ok most observing nights but you don't want to power it up any further though especially with a 2.5 barlow. I've trid to barlow the 6mm with a 2x and atomospherics just won't have it, and it's never quite in focus so you just end up with boiling blurry image of what you want to see.

[Ruud]

Meade says the eye relief is 2mm.

see here: http://www.meade.com/series-4000-super-plossl-6-4mm-1-25.html

According to Lord's eyepiece evolution tree, a Plössl has an eye relief of 0.57 times the focal length. That would be  about 3.6mm for a 6.4mm Plössl.  

Its strange. Usually manufacturers exaggerate the eye relief. In any case: a Plössl as short as this is not going to be comfortable at all and may need cleaning after every use.

Lord-Eyepiece-Evolution-Tree.PDF

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I use a 6mm unbranded plossl on my Heritage 130p and the magnification is fine, I also find the eye relief ok but some may not. I have a 4mm UWA and that is ok most observing nights but you don't want to power it up any further though especially with a 2.5 barlow. I've trid to barlow the 6mm with a 2x and atomospherics just won't have it, and it's never quite in focus so you just end up with boiling blurry image of what you want to see.

Thanks for the response guys.

So which magnification would you recommend out of the 4x or 6x for getting closer into the planets etc?  You say that you have tried both in your heritage.. which would you say gives you the best results?  Does the 4x make for an extremely dim image?

I was also looking at the Celestron Omni eyepiece range.  They seem to be reasonably priced and appear to get decent reviews.  Has anyone got any experience with these?

Thanks again for the replies

Russ

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Any thoughts on TMB eyepieces?

[rwilkey]

Hi Russ, the Celestron Omni range are quite good plossl's, easier to use in my opinion than most others, but like all suffer from poor eye-relief at the shorter focal lengths.  The TMB's have a good following in these parts but I have not tried one myself.