John

I have less at the long FL end but a crowded short FL section: 31 - 21 - 13 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3.5 - 3

Does your TAL 125 Apolar bring 2" eyepieces to focus OK Wim ? The one I had to test did not have enough inwards focuser travel so I had to stay with 1.25" accessories.

Very nice selection now Shane. All bases covered I'd say I keep saying "thats it" with mine too but somehow something else slips in now and again. I've fallen for the Pentax XW's lately and I just need the 10mm to complete my short FL line of those. I could do with a short set of orthos again too I suppose ...... oh dear it never stops !

Mark, The bodies of the 3 SLV's that I have are all 50mm in diameter. The twist up eye cups are 48mm outside diameter. Hope that helps What we need is a little piece of software which lets us input the nose width and eyepiece type proposed and then calculates the interpupillary range that would be available. I think "Binoconksim" would be a good name for this application

Yes, definitely in my opinion. I've owned a couple of sets of TV plossls so I know and respect them well.

Thanks Mark (and to everybody else for the encouraging comments) I did have them at SGL9 and we did have a quick peek through one. Everything was a "quick peek" at SGL9 though ! On interesting little snippet I've picked up elsewhere is that there has apparently been a recent big price hike in low dispersion glasses such as Lanthanum when it's imported to Japan. It's cost has remained more reasonable in China though which might be a reason why the SLV's are made there now rather than Japan where the earlier LV and NLV ranges were manufactured. I guess labour and other production costs in China are lower as well so there are probably a number of factors at work here. Quality does not appear to have suffered though as I had the opportunity to compare the 6mm SLV with a Japanese made 6mm LV recently and the SLV was as good on all counts and rather better in terms of FoV and light transmission, in my view. The "click stop" eye cup adjustment is an improvement over the rather stiff roll down eye cup of the LV too

I used to have the 7.5mm "black top" made by Vixen but branded Celestron. It was a nice plossl but when I came to part with it I had a job to shift it even at £20. Of course the smart buyers pick up good things for a song when they fall out of fashion a bit I reckon the days of dirt cheap Circle-T orthos are gone now as well - I bought 5 mint ones for £80 a few years back but they seem to command more like £30+ each these days for clean ones.

Interesting. Those were the 2nd generation ones I think. The 1st gen ones tops were all silver and in 1 piece rather than having the black section on the top. I've no idea if there were any optical differences - probably not. Edit: The "Dude" beat me to it !

Yep - great choices available today

Some have: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/173218-explore-scientific-82-degree-vs-televue-nagler-at-f5/

With all these excellent and lower cost alternatives available it makes you wonder why so many folks are prepared to spend their hard earned £'s / $'s / Euros on Tele Vue, Pentax, Zeiss, Leica, Nikon, Takahashi etc ?

I believe the 30mm ES 82 is very, very close to Nagler performance too.

The 31mm T5's are expensive Michael but I agree that they are wonderful eyepieces. I get more of a "sense of occasion" when I put my 31mm Nagler in the scope than I do any other eyepiece

Trouble is, I've no idea how big a hand grenade is, never having seen one - it could be just a couple of cm long. Can't we just stick to the traditional tin of baked beans for scale ?

I'll be interested to hear about the TV Wide Fields from the folks who have got them. The 15mm, 19mm and 24mm TV WF's were my first foray into wide field eyepieces and worked very nicely at F/10 like most eyepiece do. The don't compete with Panoptics in faster scopes though. About the same as Hyperions perhaps ? I've been just as guilty on this having had low glass sets, ultra-wide sets and currently a set just for one scope - my 6" F/12 refractor

Nice eyepiece Shane I used to have the 1.25" Wide Fields in 15mm, 19mm and 24mm but I've not tried one of the 2" ones.

We do see things a little differently I reckon "Dude" I used to have a set of the NJ "smoothside" TV Plossls (except the 55mm) and a set of the newer shaped ones, with the rubber eye cups (again less the 55mm). They were both very good ranges but I felt the newer ones had greater light transmission and slightly less light scatter. Still, lets see what Alan makes of them !

I've found TV plossls very good all round eyepieces with high transmission levels. I've read that their "tone" particularly suits some objects such as Jupiter although I've never been particularly aware of this "tone" personally. They do seem to be slightly "warmer" than some eyepieces such as Baader GO's and Pentax XW's so that must be it. Of course it raises the spectre of the really keen eyepiece collector having not only a wide set and a low glass, narrower set but also a Jupiter set, Mars set, Saturn set, Lunar set etc, etc. I see that solar sets are creeping in as well - where will it all end ?

Back in the 1980's Vixen made equipment for Celestron and a few other companies including Orion (USA), Tele Vue and, believe it or not, some Tasco scopes were made by Vixen too. I've owned a few of the Vixen "silver tops" and some were branded Celestron. They were pretty decent plossls I seem to recall but I tend to prefer eyepieces with eye cups to help position the eye and keep stray light out. Vixen also made eyepieces marked as orthos in both the flat topped and volcano topped designs but they were in fact a symmetrical design rather similar to the plossl (I took a couple apart to clean once !). I've owned a Vixen made but Celestron branded 32mm Erfle a a few years back. Vixen used to put a (v) mark on stuff that they made even if the rest of the branding was another companies name. The Vixen "silver tops" do have a sort of simple elegance to their design though. I think my favourite was the 30mm

Yes, these have very much the look and finish of UWAN's / Nirvana's Michael. Quite possibly made by the same manufacturer I reckon.

First Light Optics have sent me an example of the new Skywatcher Myriad 9mm 100 degree eyepiece to compare with the William Optics XWA 101 degree 9mm that they sent me a few weeks earlier. Apart from the engraved branding and the QC sticker on the William Optics, I can't see any differences in the appearance of these eyepieces - can you ?. The Skywatcher Myriad did come with a 1.25" dust cap as well as the 2" one, which William Optics ommitted to provide. And the additional 1 degree that the William Optics claims to offer ?. Well they both look the same to me there as well. I guess I'd have to either dismantle the eyepieces and put a caliper on the field stop to check it's diameter or do some pretty accurate drift timing when the skies are clear. When I see "101" engraved on the barrel of the William Optics I see Nigel Tufnel of the band "Spinal Tap" in my minds eye: "..... well it's 1 wider isn't it ?. When you are as wide as you can go but you want to go further, where do you go ? - you go to 101 ........" Joking apart, I've only had a few brief peeks through these but they seem to be very decent performers. You do need to push your eye very close to the rather unyielding and hard eye cup to get the full field in view but, so far, I've not seen any optical oddities in the way they deliver that immersive view. It's flat too, that 100 / 101 degree field. No re-focusing as an object drifts across it. The sharpness stays all the way across, planets and craters retain their proportions and their details even in my F/5.3 dobsonian. Thats quite impressive They weigh in at 620 grams apiece and that svelte (?) body houses 9 lens elements in 6 groups. Skywatcher are apparently planning additional focal lengths for this range of 15mm and 20mm with 100 degree apparent fields of view and 5mm and 3mm at a whopping 110 degrees. William Optics have not been drawn as yet on whether or not there will be any more XWA's. I'll do some more testing and report back in due course but for now here are a few photos of this pair of clones, some with their 2" skirts removed ( ) and some fully clothed. Take it away Nigel:

Vixen SLV Eyepieces: 20mm, 12mm and 6mm Firstly I ought to apologise for the fact that i) this report has been some time coming and ii) that it’s not as long and thorough as some of the excellent reviews that have been posted by others recently. Nevertheless I hope it’s of some interest for anybody interested in these new Vixen eyepieces. I also hope I've got the history of these eyepieces correct - please let me know if you spot any bloopers and I'll gladly amend the piece Around about 1994 Vixen introduced a range of eyepieces that were a notable departure from the more normal orthoscopic, plossl and erfle designs in that they contained as many as 7 lenses, had a consistent and comfortable 20mm of eye relief and used exotic Lanthanum glass for some of the lenses. That range was called the Vixen Lanthanum LV and they rapidly became very popular despite their relatively high price tag and the fact that they resisted pursuing the wide and ultra wide apparent fields of view that Tele Vue and Meade had embraced with such enthusiasm with the Vixen LV’s sporting a modest 45 degree apparent field of view. The original Vixen LV range went all the way from 2.5mm to 40mm in the 1.25” fitting and also included a 2” format 30mm with a 60 degree field of view and finally a 50mm eyepiece. There was also an 8mm – 24mm zoom which was sufficiently good for Tele Vue to ask Vixen to re-brand a version for them. The Vixen LV’s received, and still receive very positive reviews and seemed to be owned and used by some pretty discerning amateur astronomers. They also proved very popular with those who wear glasses when observing as the high quality but moderate field of view was easily accessible to them due to the generous eye relief. Fast forward to late 2007 and Vixen produced the first re-vamp of this successful range in the shape of the Vixen NLV range which clad a similar (though not identical) optical design in a more modern looking body which incorporated a two position, twist and click, eyepiece top section and integrated eyecup to make finding the correct eye position more consistently easier. The NLV range covered a similar range of focal lengths to the LV range although the 30mm in the 2” format was dropped and the 50mm 2” had a body shape all of it’s own. The 1.25” NLV’s from 9mm and 25mm inclusive had gained 5 degrees of apparent field of view as well. It could be said that the NLV range was a careful and thoughtful evolution from the LV range, rather than a major step change, and I feel that the new Vixen SLV range, introduced in late 2013, introduces a similar further set of subtle improvements to an already excellent product. A further change is that the SLV’s are manufactured for Vixen in China rather than in Japan. In an earlier post here: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/211409-vixen-slvs-photos/ I described the physical attributes of the three Vixen SLV eyepieces that First Light Optics have been kind enough to lend me to try out, the 20mm, 12mm and 6mm focal length units. Since I’ve been using the eyepieces I’ve noticed that the twist up eyecup of the 6mm is a little looser in feel than that of the 12mm and 20mm. I’ve had a number of sessions with these eyepieces over the past couple of months, in combination with my 12” F/5.3 dobsonian scope and my 4” and 4.7” ED refractors. Initially during this period the Moon was a factor in the sky so I was limited to planetary, lunar and binary star observations but on later occasions I was able to view some of the better known galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. I usually wait until I have had a few sessions with an item before posting any performance reports on it however I was so impressed with the view through the SLV 6mm when I had first light with it that I broke this rule and posted a short exclamation on the forum: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/209170-vixen-slvs-now-available/?p=2253493 The 6mm seems to match the performance of the Baader Genuine Orthoscopic 6mm very closely and is perhaps a touch better on Mars and Jupiter than my Ethos 6mm showing just a little less light scatter and the contrast of the surface features is just a little more clearly defined. The subtle colour tints stand out as well as I have seen in any eyepiece. One of the toughest tests I know of for a high power eyepiece is to try and see Sirius B, the faint and challenging companion to the brightest star in the sky. My 12” dobsonian will show the “B” star but only under steady viewing conditions and when an eyepiece with excellent sharpness and control of light scatter is used. The 6mm Vixen SLV proved as good as the Baader Genuine Ortho at this task which is high praise because the 6mm BGO was, up to now, the best eyepiece I’d found for this. The only issue I've come across with the 6mm is some very slight pin cushion distortion right at the edge of the field of view. The effect of this is that Mars and Jupiter just start to elongate a little in the last few seconds as they drift towards the field stop edge, before disappearing behind it. This is a minor issue I feel though and it was a few sessions before I noticed it and only then when I was deliberately looking to see how the eyepiece performed right across it’s field of view. Having seen this in the 6mm I looked carefully at the edge of field performance of the the 12mm and 20mm SLV’s but they don't show this effect. This performance was consistent in all the scopes I tried the eyepieces in and the colour tint of the Vixen SLV’s seems very neutral, reminiscent of the Pentax XW’s which are another favourite eyepiece of mine. With my scopes, the 12mm Vixen SLV is a medium power eyepiece giving between 55x in my 4” refractor and 133x with my 12” dobsonian. I found it an excellent eyepiece for viewing planetary nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies. It showed the supernova SN214J that was in the galaxy Messier 82 earlier this year very well indeed and, in the 12” scope, impressive structure and contrast variation in the galaxy too. The challenging E & F stars in the Trapezium in Messier 42, the Orion Nebula were clearly picked out even with my 4.7” refractor at 75x with the great nebula itself spreading it’s bat-like wings around the cluster. The 20mm SLV mirrored the optical quality that the 6mm and 12mm displayed including maintaining sharply defined stars across the whole field, even in my F/5.3 dobsonian. Overall I’d say that the views given by the SLV’s are of similar quality to either a Pentax XW with 20 degrees less apparent field of view or a quality orthoscopic such as the Baader GO or Astro Hutech but with 8 degrees more field and a lot more eye relief, depending on which way you want to come at it. In the 3 focal lengths that I had on loan the SLV eyepieces are nearly but not quite par focal so a small adjustment to focus is needed as you swap between them. Just a quarter turn or so of the focuser knob though, so nothing drastic. I feel the Vixen SLV’s are excellent eyepieces for the observer that does not wish for wider fields of view and who is prepared to pay a little more for a 50 degree eyepiece which delivers top quality performance and comfortable viewing in a relatively compact but well made package. They should prove comfortable for those who wear glasses when observing too. I've included below some more photos of the 3 eyepieces I've had on loan with a Baader Genuine Orthoscopic 6mm for scale. Many thanks to First Light Optics for the loan of the 3 Vixen SLV eyepieces

Depsite having the Ethos 21 I can't let the Nagler 31 go either. I don't use it a great deal but there are some things that it does better than anything else, e.g: showing the whole of the Veil Nebula when used with my ED102 Vixen refractor.

And I should have listened to Steve from FLO and Rik several years back when they were singing the praises of the XW's before the Ethos and Delos were a black and green glint in their designers eye !

I've owned a TMB Supermoncentric 5mm and at the same time the Pentax XW and Baader GO 5 mm's. Under the best conditions the Supermono showed slightly better contrast and sharpness on the planets. It's only a "slightly" though and the conditions need to be towards the upper end of good to appreciate it. For me the narrow FoV, tiny eye lens and tight eye relief of the Supermono were not worth the slight optical advantage so I let it go. Back on the topic of the Pentax XW's, I've seen the the views through them described a number of times as orthoscopic-like and have used the term myself to describe the views through my 5mm and 3.5mm XW's. I'm sure the Delos matches that too. FWIW I feel the Ethos gets pretty close to that as well which figures as the Delos was derived from the Ethos design.