A word about the Tele Vue Powermate

[John]

The word is "superb"

It's big, heavy and pricey but it really does deliver in spades. Last night I was observing Saturn with my ED120 refractor. I used the 2 inch Powermate 2x with my 8mm and 6mm Ethos eyepieces to give 4mm (225x) and a rather extreme 3mm (300x) magnification.

Seeing conditions were good and the image quality held up well at high power, even stupidly high power. Comparing the views to those with un-amplified eyepieces such as my Pentax XW 5mm and 3.5mm's and my 6mm Ethos demonstrated how the Powermate managed to perform that impressive trick of becoming invisible, apart from the image scale boost.

Thats 13 pieces of glass, after the diagonal, giving orthoscopic quality views across a 100 degree field of view.

I centered Saturn in the field of view and could pick out 4 moons, the Cassini Division, the main equatorial cloud belt and polar and limb darkening which gave the globe a 3D effect. Letting the planet drift right across the field of view it was somewhat astonishing to see that there was no reduction in contrast or detail right out to the field stop, no increase in light scatter and no re-focusing required. Even as Saturn slipped behind the edge of the Ethos field stop, I could still see the fine detail and still the 10th magnitude pin points of Tethys and Dione sparkled clearly despite the proximity of a bright moon.

I don't know how Tele Vue manage to do this but it's very impressive - I now have 6.5mm, 4mm and 3mm focal length Ethos plus a 10mm ES 100

You need to be prepared to deal with heavy loads in the focuser but the results are something special with the Powermate

[Andrew*]

It's extraordinary really.

I think with the quality of glass we see these days, we can firmly put to bed some of the old rules of thumb:

You can't go higher magnification than 2x the aperture in mm (you're at 2.5x)

More glass lowers the light transmission/resolution/scatter control (15 elements with the objective doublet!)

[skir]

Damn it! Second hand prices of power mates are going to go up now!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Kef9]

Agreed 100%. I just wish it didn't weigh so much!

[John]

Agreed 100%. I just wish it didn't weigh so much!

Yes thats true - it's around another 1lb to add to the focuser. I'll be using it mostly with my ED120 refractor though which has a Moonlite focuser so it seems to handle the load OK.

The Antares 2" 1.6x is barlow also an excellent amplifier and does weigh (and cost) somewhat less.

[swamp thing]

I've often said its the best thing in my eyepiece case. Simply superb pieces of kit.

[John]

I've often said its the best thing in my eyepiece case. Simply superb pieces of kit.

You have, and you are right Steve

[alan potts]

Now that's a better reviewlet to that written by the person who writes in Astronomy now on Televue eyepieces. Note john saying stupidly high magnification at 300, not 600 plus. I thought the guy was writting a washing machine review and was talking spin speeds and some how got mixed up.

Nice one John, I am going to keep mine now.

Alan

[Damo636]

Yet another piece of kit I regret selling, even more so now! Nice review John.

[JamesM]

Thanks for the confirmation John and totally agree with your comments Andrew that its quality does put to bed some of the optical myths - be it at a price. On the subject of cost, although certainly not cheap and considering how well it performs and what it can achieve, it does represent good value for money given that it is going to be a keeper in the longer term!

Clear skies

James