Now I'm really hooked...

[Andymarrison]

Someone generously gave me some Green Witch vouchers recently so I bought a Televue 17mm Delos from their stand at PSP 2012 last weekend and was completely blown away by the views of M42 and Jupiter. 13mm Ethos ordered on Monday and arrived today...oh dear.

[Moonshane]

I'd be extremely interested in these two compared. I'd considered possibly selling my Ethos 13mm and getting a Delos 17mm as they have about the same field and the mag of the Delos would fit my big dob a little better. I await your thoughts with interest.

[Andymarrison]

I'll let you know Shane - Friday night expected to be clear here. By the way, I was camped a few tents away from you at PSP - still can't figure out how you got that Dob and your massive tent in your car...

[Moonshane]

ha ha. my secret is a little help from my wife. she kindly came and filled up too (although you cannot get much in the back of a new beetle). good job this time as I had a 12" f4 as well as my dob. give us a shout next time it helps when you only live about 20 miles away.

[Mike73]

I took the gamble and sold the 13mm Ethos to get the 17.3mm Delos and to my rather dodgy inexperienced eyes they have both been the best EP's my eyes have ever had the pleasure of looking through.

Either side of the Delos I have a 10mm XW and 26mm T5 Nagler but its the Delos/Ethos sharpness which puts it ahead of others IMO, really tight stars across all the FoV in the Delos case anyway...we'll have to wait until next week till we see what its like at f/4.5 because thats when I get my new scope BTW did I mention I'm getting a new scope next week????

[Spec-Chum]

Mike! Mike! It's been 10 minutes since you mentioned your new scope. Are you OK??? We're all really worried...

[John]

Congratulations Andy on two superb additions to your eyepiece case

I think the XW's are on par with the Ethos for sharpness, light scatter control and light transmission. From what I've read I believe the Delos and the XW's are very similar too. I'd really like to try some Delos's though, just to see for myself

These are wonderful eyepieces and, in my opinion, as good as it gets unless you are prepared to use highly specialised eyepieces such as TMB Supermonocentrics or Zeiss ZAO / ZAO II's. Even then the performance gains are small and the loss of field of view and eye relief significant.

It is frightening how the cost stacks up though - a few of these and your eyepiece case is worth more than your scope, or scopes even

[Andymarrison]

Next on the list (and then I really am going to stop) is a really high quality wide field low mag EP - something with which I can get lovely sweeping views of star fields and bigger open clusters. Probably 28mm upwards, or thereabouts. Any recommendations?

[John]

Tele Vue have superb low power widefield eyepieces of course but your F/10 scope will work excellently with lower cost eyepieces like the Vixen NLVW 42mm which gives the largest apparent field of view you can get in the 2" size.

Other good options would be the Meade UWA 30mm, Explore Scientific 30mm and the UWAN / Nirvana 28mm all of which offer 82 degrees but a bit more magnification.

[Andymarrison]

Thanks John - I'll check those out.