celestron omni 40mm

[Jiggy 67]

Right, after several months of agonising and after recieving several envelopes of cash over Xmas, I'm in a position to upgrade my ep's, hence a visit to Opticstar in Manchester tomorrow. The plan is to invest in the Hyperion Mark III Zoom and I'm pretty set on that now. I also need a low power ep aswell and I was thinking of the celestron omni 40mm. I have the SW 200PDS reflector which is an F5. Some reports on tinternet say that this ep is best at f6 and above?!?!....before I take the plunge, does anyone agree or disagree with this??

[chiltonstar]

I have one I use with an ED80 (f8) and a Mak 127mm (f11) - it works well with both of these, giving me a "comfortable" view - ie enough eyepiece relief and a field of view that is large enough, but not so large as to cause eyestrain. However, I've not used it with anything faster than f8.

Chris

[rwilkey]

I believe the Plossl 40mm is better at f/6 and slower, you would be better with something like a Panaview, which works very well at f/5, the 32mm I would recommend.

[John]

If you have to stay with 1.25" fitting eyepieces then I'd choose the 32mm over the 40mm plossl as it shows about the same amount of sky and the slightly higher magnification darkens the sky background a bit. Also the 52 degrees apparent field of view of the 32mm plossl is more attractive to view than the 43 degrees of the 40mm.

[Jiggy 67]

Thanks for the advice guys, I took notice and went for the 32mm instead of the 40mm, bought both the Hyperion Zoom and the 32mm Celestron Omni Plossi today, can't wait to put them to use, looking forward to not having to phaff about changing ep's!!!