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Purchased Televue 8mm plossl


lionel

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Hi all, Just purchased a second hand Televue 8mm plossl of ebay. £61 including p&p. Just had to try one to see if the praise for Televue is all its cracked up to be.

I know its only 50 degrees, but with Jupiter in such a great position i can test it against my BST, Xcel, TMB and even my 82 degree Speers Wallers. Just want to compare it.

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Hope you enjoy the new lens - televue plossl are as good optically as anything else out there costing several hundreds of pounds. As Damo hinted the 8mm is on the tight sight for comfortable viewing - but the view of jupiter will be worth it!

andrew

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Are Speer Waler any good? I'm doing the eyepiece dance at the moment for my 300pds.

Hello 8kids,

I love them for the price. I have the 17mm, 13.4mm,9.4mm, 7.2mm. I opted for the Nirvana at 4mm though. And plan on getting the 8.5 to 12 zoom.

They sold me on the whole wide angled view. In my 10 inch Orion (fast scope at 4.7) the view is astounding. Great eye relief, light enough to not cause me any issues with balance. BUT..

They are so good for 85% of the view, the last 15% starts to get not so good. And i find myself thinking if that last bit was as good as the rest and i start checking collimation again and again just to be sure. Or is it that i don't have a paracor as these scopes are harsh on eyepieces.

I always think i must try to save for a Nagler again just to compare, But as you know the price of them is high.

One day

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Hi 8kids. I too love Speers Waler eyepieces, and own four. Remember there are three versions - Mk1 84 degree, Mk1 72 degree, and the current Mk2 84mm versions, and there are various differences between these models. Another important point: they all require more focuser in-travel than most eyepieces, in the case of the 18mm and 17mm models around 25mm more than the Skywatcher standard Super MAs, or 30mm more than Televues. The other Speers Walers don't need as much as this, but they seem to need 10 - 15 mm more than other eyepieces. Hope this helps. If you would like further info, PM me.

Jim

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Congratulations - it will be interesting to hear your views on how it compares :smiley:

I really liked the Tele Plossls that I've owned but it took me a while to appreciate them. I was rather naive when I bought them in the early 1990's and actually thought they might show me things that my other eyepieces (decent but lower cost plossls) could not.

Not the case of course but I gradually realised that the TV plossls did offer some subtle improvements that I did come to value. Then I got the wide field bug ..... :rolleyes2:

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I have a number of TV plossls' and find them all to be extremely sharp. I use the 8mm in my dob when I haven't got my frac out as and the seeing isn't great. The eye relief is a little tight some, not for me however, its certainly not an issue. The build quality is typical TV even for a plossl.

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I have an Ethos, two Naglers and two Radians and my 32mm and 15mm TV Plossls (and a previous 11mm TV Plossl I wish I had never sold) stand shoulder to shoulder with all the others in every respect other than field of view. You'll love it. The eye relief is a little tight (but normal for this focal length in a plossl) but it's as sharp as anything.

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Well it arrived and low and behold after the snow we had a clear BUT COLD evening. Just had to give it a trial run. Jupiter was calling me i told the wife, who thinks I'm absolutely crazy for going out in minus something or other.

Setup the scope and let it stand for an hour. Got wrapped up like i was going to the North Pole, it was just after 9pm. The metal tube was already showing frost on it.

Check collimation with laser, a little off, so a minor tweek here and there and i was happy enough. I thought i'd do a star test latter........ (Never did though)

I have just upgraded the firmware on the GoTo so i wanted to see if that had had any affect as well, so chose two star align, Betelgeuse and Pollux will do, a couple of minutes and its programmed. Jupiter here i come.

In goes the 8mm TV plossl, nothing there, i thinks, i did take the cap of the eyepiece didnt i, of couse i did. Move the scope manually using the finder and look again. There it is, fine tune the goto and focus the eyepiece.

As Damo said the eye relief it tight, but i dont wear glasses to view so i snuggled my eye right in there.

In the 50 degree field of view i could just see Jupiter and its 4 galilean moons, only just though. Europa was very close to Jupiter and i wandered if i would see it transit.

The view, well space was black, jet black..nice

Jupiter was extreemely bright, giving a slight glow to the surrounding space. Adding a Baader Neodymium filter did the trick

Jupiter was what looked like a perfect circle, never noticed before, but rather than round i felt it looked totally symetrical if i have explained that right. The edge of the planet where razor sharp not a glimmer of blur, it seemed to cut into space.

Bonus. as i just sat and watched, while the scope tracked, Europa was definatly getting closer to Jupiter. This is my first transit through a scope rather than on Television or Stellarium. I was eager to see if i would see any shadow on Jupiter from Europa.

Alas i did not, but i watched with crystal clarity (except for the odd passing cloud that was starting to build) as Europa passed a quarter of the way across, with a slightly diagnally downward path, a very bright speck, glistening even, across the top right of the planet (to my upside down, reveresed Dobsonian view).

Time to compare

In went the 4 mm Nirvana, i know not a fair comparison (but i wanted to compare the clarity of a Televue rather than magnification or wide field view) The view was ok, bit too blurry, too much magification for my light polluted Midlands sky.

In went the 5mm BST, much more comfortable eye position straight away, and a wider view. Good view, some planet glow though, not a great view, but very pleasing, If i had not seen how crisp the view could be on the planets outer shape or how black space was in the TV at 8mm which is x150 for my scope, i would be more than happy with the larger 240x view from the BST. But still a little too much magnification for the sky rather than any fault of the ep i think.

In went the 6mm Planetary II, a little less magnification now x200, the view every bit as good as the BST. Not much in it.

In went a 7mm Xcel LX, Now i was getting there, straight away their was a noticable improvement, x171 mag a 60 degree view with very nice eye relief. The actual clarity of the view was getting closer to the TV plossl, space was black, a slight glow from Jupiter, even with the filter was still there though as in the 5mm and 6mm but slightly less.

Check the 8mm TV again, both with and without the filter. With the filter no glow, without the filter some glow, but not Moon type glow. If you know what i mean.

At this stage i could no longer feel my feet and my fingers were bigning to go numb.

In went the 9.4 mm Speers Waller 2, Wow, what a great wide view, huge eye lens and good eye relief, i could see Jupiter and the 4 moons and stars showing through towards the edges of the field of view. This felt very very comfortable, yes at x127 magnification Jupiter was smaller, but it was comfortable viewing thats the best way i can describe it. But there was more planet glow in this ep than any of the others, which was a little disapointing.

By now i had lost Europa as it crossed Jupiter and i was so cold i could not keep my eye still at the focusser so i had to call it a night.

Certainly pleased with the 8mm televue and am really looking forward to viewing Saturn with it.

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Interesting report comparing some interesting eyepieces - thanks for posting it :smiley:

If you look carefully Jupiter isn't actually a perfectly circular disk, it has an equatorial bulge due to it's rotational forces - so it's an oblate disk.

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  • 1 year later...

lionel........hi, I much like your report, though I'm not sure how I missed this thread earlier as its been my intention for some time to test the 8mm Televue Plossl against my BST's! just for clarification.


I highly rate the BST's but have never tried the more expensive brands, and I have to  wonder, if at all, would they make any improvements to my present set-up.


I have 1.50 dioptre Sph in my right eye, an improvement over the 1.75 previously reported, and 1.00 dioptre of astigmatism. My telescope has a true aperture of f/5.91 (f6) so I don't really need any speciality lenses to correct anything.


From your report, I understand that your final image for "your eyes"  would appear to be of better quality with the TV at the time of the test in comparison with the other eyepieces. That is obviously a sign of just better optical glass components and light transmission in the eyepiece and the reason they have the prices they command, especially as you move on up to, say, the Nagler and the Ethos.


On that assumption alone, and with the reduction of the eye-relief and FOV against my BST's,  you have already made my mind up, and I will discount the TeleVues form my wants/test list. Even my  (ex) TMBII Planetary 6mm felt inferior to the BST?


If there was a perfect telescope and a perfect eyepiece, we would all have one, but would still have to wait for the bad weather to clear!

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My 8mm tv plossl was £45 sh. I was unsure about the ER prior to purchase, but I needn't have been. It's not vastly different from the 9.6 mm I already have. The 8mm tv plossl is comfortable to use. It's a very fine EP indeed and the fov is not too restrictive.

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Charic, if you need to wear glasses it should be a simple choice for you as you say, don't even consider the plossls in short focal length, they would not be useable, the eyerelief is typically 70 - 80% percent or so of the focal length, that should rule them out.  If you did consider just in case. The TV plossls of 20mm and longer would be the only ones that would work with glasses and provide enough eye relief I imagine for you, if you are tempted to try one at some point.  

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AlexB67........ I only wear glasses for driving, fishing and sometimes for the TV, I don't tend to wear them for anything else. But I found I  needed them to focus on my Telrad, but not the Eyepiece, so I sold that to bambuko and he did a nice custom chop on it!


When I first started here, my EP collection was going to be based on the Meade 4000(JAPAN) series EP's, but they were hard to source / not available, then I started to look at ES and others, but was always attracted to the BST's


My Telescope &  EP's were  purchased using the guidance here at SGL and my self imposed restriction with my wallet? To be honest TeleVue were also on the list, and I would have bought a whole set in the same amount of time that it took me to buy the Starguiders,  But I always question, do I need it, do I want it? It would be very nice, to own a set of TV's, but surely there is always something that will give just as good a view without the cost. I don't always need the' bling'  factor, for example my mechanical watch that is no more accurate than a cheap quartz/battery watch from a high street store, could provide  a Years wages for someone, and it only tells the time, The quartz would work just as well. Also,  If the TV`s are at the top of  desirability stakes, what telescope should match that? Not my lowly, but fully capable f/6 Skyliner

I see from signatures, that several folk have chosen to obtain, what they feel, are the best EP`s,  for their needs and there seems to be several brands within their choices. I unfortunately  don't have several brands or the experience of viewing through them, so I thought that If I bought a TV to trial, at least I would be in a better position to advise, rather than just harping on about the BST's with little knowledge of the other EPs. I could have easily sold the TV after testing, if I did not like the results. Thanks for your reply. Lastly, did I mention how good the BST's are  :smiley:

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I purchased a 8mm tv plossl a while back and think its great for planetary viewing. I also compared the 8mm tv against the 8mm bst, firstly on my 8se.

8mm is about the limit for viewing planets on this scope and this really showed on the 8mm bst, which really struggled. The tv manage to give much brighter image of Jupiter and seemed to cope with the magnification better.

I then swapped to my friends celestron 127 mak. With the lower magnification the difference became less obvious. Although i feel the space was still darker using the tv. However as others have mentioned the eye relief is very tight on the tv, where the bst has a twist up eyecup providing much more confortable viewing. Another thin to mention is the tv while great for viewing planets the fov is very limiting for viewing anything else.

Overall I would say the tv is the better ep and only cost a fraction more new than the bst. However do not buy if you are a glasses wearer.

I may end up getting a 8mm delos in the future, however the 8mm plossl will be staying just for its close up planetary viewing

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  • 8 months later...

.......as a follow-up to this thread, and through the kindness of ghostdance I was loaned the 8mm  TeleVue Plossl. I found the eye-relief at 6mm was far to short  and uncomfortable in use. Eye-relief increases as the focal lengths grow, in the Plossl range, but for comfort alone I did not like the 8mm.

I considered a collection of Plossl EPs since the start of my hobby.   I never really needed to study the full performance of the TV 8mm, its already quoted and loved by many that they are the best, and limiting my budget at the time, I have no regrets in the EPs purchased thus so far.  

My best attempt at Planetary viewing recently, through the clouds! was with the 6mm WO SPL. I'm still waiting to get the right conditions to see if it's  the best  Planetary eyepiece for my scope being 6mm - f/6 - 1mm exit pupil - 200x which just matches the Skyliner specifications.

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.......as a follow-up to this thread, and through the kindness of ghostdance I was loaned the 8mm  TeleVue Plossl. I found the eye-relief at 6mm was far to short  and uncomfortable in use. Eye-relief increases as the focal lengths grow, in the Plossl range, but for comfort alone I did not like the 8mm.

That was a very kind gesture of Ghostdance, and goes some way of demonstrating the mutual comradeship, respect and trust held by so many here at SGL :grin:

I agree that eye relief of a Plossl may be tight for some, so too with an Orthoscopic eyepiece, but this is merely a feature inherent in the design. Stated as such, the level of satisfaction with these types of eyepieces probably has more to do with the design than the actual quality of the eyepieces.

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