branding of Astro Kit

[Sirius Starwatcher]

One of the Mods (John) mentioned in a previous post branding of equipment under various names but coming from the same manufacturers.

Does any one have a definitive list of the various brands and manufacturers. I think this would be handy especially when considering cost v Quality.

[John]

I do mention this from time to time where it seems relevent.

I don't know of any definative list though. The person who probably knows more than most about the topic is Don Pensack who posts on the Cloudynights forum and runs the "Eyepieces Etc" company in the USA but even he has given up trying to pin down who uses what from where now in his annual "buyers guide" because it's too complex to keep up with.

Until fairly recently with some searching around you could see which eyepieces were likely to be from at least the same source because they looked either the same or very similar apart from branding. Without fairly careful optical analysis even then you could not tell if the same glass types, coating qualities, quality assurance levels etc were used from brand to brand. You might assume that the more expensive variants were "better" in these departments - but were they really ?

Now it''s complicated further by the brands that buy larger quantities being able to specifiy bespoke body designs, eye cups, barrel profiles, etc, etc. We can make some educated guesses by comparing specifications, weight, etc but no more than that. For example, I think the eyepieces pictured below are the same optical design and from the same source but they do look rather different:

[Ruud]

Don Pensack has an eyepiece list on Cloudy Nights that mentions several multi branded eyepieces.

It's here: http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/498146-2015-eyepiece-buyers-guide/#entry6554292

[Sirius Starwatcher]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[ollypenrice]

It's also worth remembering that optical components can vary in quality. It seems unlikely to me that the factories making the optics just throw the poorer samples out so they must go

somewhere, but they won't look any different from the best ones. I'm told that the 'assemblers' sometimes have a choice of quality with the best optics, naturally, costing more. So perhaps the answer to the question, 'Is this scope really that scope? might be, 'Not necessarily.'

Olly

[rwilkey]

Bill Paolini's book 'Choosing and Using Astronomical Eyepieces' is also very good for comparing eyepieces with similar performances (often rebranded eyepieces).

[jnb]

Until fairly recently with some searching around you could see which eyepieces were likely to be from at least the same source because they looked either the same or very similar apart from branding. Without fairly careful optical analysis even then you could not tell if the same glass types, coating qualities, quality assurance levels etc were used from brand to brand. You might assume that the more expensive variants were "better" in these departments - but were they really ?

A lot of the difference between quality has nothing to do with the component quality but the quality control applied. I've noticed that a lot with binoculars. Cheap binoculars can be excellent, but you need to be lucky in the example you get.