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Heads-up on a possible eyepiece bargain

cathalferris

By cathalferris
in Discussions - Eyepieces

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cathalferris

cathalferris

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I've been looking around at the sales on the Celestron Luminos 82 degree eyepieces.

I did a little bit of checking on Amazon for these eyepieces and I found this..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008N96C7K/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Listing the 31mm at ~£50 or so delivered - not bad at all for an eyepiece that generally compares well to the 31T4 

Only one or two left.

The 7mm is also not at a bad price at £85.

I ordered and I haven not been notified that the price is in error, so it looks likely that Celestron are just clearing out the stock.

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cathalferris

cathalferris

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Wow. That price jumped quickly! 

It was definitely only £52 when I looked and ordered, and my order history reflects that price. I deliberately don't have much credit on the card used as it's for online purchases only, so if there's an attempt to charge £319 it'll fail.

Well if it gets cancelled due to it being an error then so be it. 

Sorry for getting the hopes up! 

-Cathal

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cathalferris

cathalferris

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Shipped apparently.. Got an email this morning with a shipping notice.

*fingers crossed*  

I've worked out the fov/mag for my scopes all of which thankfully have 2" focusers. 

70mm frac is 6.3 degrees at 13x.. (would fit two Veils in the FOV)

80mm frac will have 5.1 degrees at 16x..

12" dob will have 1.7 degrees at 48x. 

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Chris

Chris

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Looking and behold.. A box was handed to me by the postman today..

https://flic.kr/p/qY9BYe

And

https://flic.kr/p/qFyVaq

Thank you Amazon! I know who got one of the other 31mm at that price, and they received theirs as well.

Happy Days!

Sent from my GT-I9295 using Tapatalk

Brilliant what a result ! Such a bargain its unreal !

Let us know what you think of it under the stars Cathal?

I'll be keeping my eye on Amazon from now on..

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cathalferris

cathalferris

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Very quickest of first lights, taking the 12" dob out between the sleety showers taking advantage of the sucker holes.. Waxing gibbous moon does make it hard to identify any deep sky stuff!

I know that given the exit pupil of this eyepiece on any of my scopes it will only use the full aperture of the scope when *fully* dark adapted, at least past the point where the pupil no longer expands any more, this is about 10-15 minutes after stepping into the near or complete darkness. Tonight was nowhere near dark so I knew my eyes wouldn't adjust close to that point given the time I had available.. Still got a good idea of the eyepiece.

First impressions in the hand are that this is a hand grenade of an EP. 1160 grams or so on my cheap kitchen weigh scales! The screw up eyeguard rotates the opposite way to what I would expect when raising it which was a little odd.

Eye relief was enough that I could comfortably see the edge of field without removing the glasses. I have 0.75 diopters of astigmatism so exit pupils of about 2mm and larger show seagulls without my glasses. It's really nice to be able to have a wide FOV and still see sharply. With the eyeglasses on, the FOV appeared as sharp as I would expect. Correct eye placement does appear to be quite important, and it'll take a little practice to get that right.

The FOV is massive - I could see any two of the Belt stars at the same time, I could have the whole of the Sword in the field at the same time. Still very easy to see the trapezium, and the brightest sections of M42 were very clear even allowing for the moonlight.

The Moon came to a sharp focus allowing for the uncooled scope and the blustery conditions. The view was crisp and reflection free from what I could see so far, and there didn't appear to be any issues with ghosting or changes in focus from center to near the edge. The Moon also projected onto a card a little away from the eyepiece quite well.

M35 was beautiful, condensed into the center 1/3 or 1.4 of the FOV. I think it may have looked better because I could not see the usual raft of faint stars through the FOV (couldn't see NGC2158 either in the quick glance I had).

Jupiter was seen through a leafless twiggy tree, so there was a large diffraction halo around it. Easily seen belts but the image scale is far too small to see any useful detail. All of the satellites were nowhere near the edge of the FOV

Overall this eyepiece appeared to be comfortable enough to use, it will cause balance issues and gives me something to think about when I am planning my counterweight and balance system for the Dob. Appears at first glance to be well corrected across the FOV. I didn't notice any non-coma aberrations at the edge, but I didn't have enough time to examine closely. Coma wasn't any more noticeable than with either of the the other 82 degree eyepieces I own (18 and 24mm Meade 5000) but I don't really notice it (coma) anyway. Other aberrations are a lot more noticeable and I won't use an eyepiece that is astigmatic..

I think that this eyepiece will come into its own on those properly dark nights, even if I have to transport the scope to a mate's house in the countryside to get skies dark enough! Those 5 minutes taken tonight were enough to show me that I have not made a mistake in buying this EP, especially at the cost it was offered at. It's still a great buy at the sale price, but I would never have gone near it at the original prices, as I would have gone for a second hand green-writing offering instead.

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John

John

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Excellent write up :smiley:

Big eyepieces but they show big views !


.....The FLO price of £189 is still decent though, I'm not sure you'd get a 2nd hand 82° TV for that price.

Used Naglers start at around £70 for a Type 1 4.8mm or 7mm. The Nagler equivilent of the Luminos 31mm would cost £300+ used though. I got very lucky and got mine for £200 :grin:

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