24mm panoptic.

[rory]

IF i had a panoptic 24mm eyepiece and only had enough funds for either one other eyepiece OR a quality barlow ,what would i best investing in ?

just out of curiosity of course .

a 24mm panoptic would give x50 in my 8" skyliner .

thoughts /opinions ?

cheers , clear skies.

[rory]

should point out that the eyepiece or barlow should be under £100 ,

[Stargazer_00]

hard to say without understanding what else you have, what you like looking at etc

[rory]

perhaps i should be asking firstly , is it really suitable barlowing a 24 panoptic ,will the eye relief become to much ?

[faulksy]

hi rory, dont no what format the 24mm is but i imagine 1.25. if you use a quality barlow or the proper name image amplifier the eye relief will not alter. the only image amplifiers that i know of that are in that catagory are the meade telextenders and the televue power mates, hope this helps

[Stargazer_00]

A 1.25" telexentder will double the magnfication but leave the eye relief unchanged. The Meade/ES offerings are apparently quite good. russ.will posted a review of the ES offering in the member equipment reviews section.

[John]

perhaps i should be asking firstly , is it really suitable barlowing a 24 panoptic ,will the eye relief become to much ?

The eye relief with the Pan 24 is 15mm so a barlow could push it out to, say, 20mm. That may or may not be OK. As Graham says, a TeleXtender / Powermate will leave the eye relief the same so that might be a better bet.

The 24mm Pan is 1.25" but has a fat body so it will look a little like a "toffee apple on a stick" but the Pentax XW's look like that all the time so thats not an issue really !

[rory]

i think it may be pushing it to be honest. ive been reading up on the bc ortho's youve been reviewing. very good price,i might stick the barlow on the backburner and bag myself a 18mm and 10mm .

[Stargazer_00]

forgive me for asking but i've never much seen the point of an 18mm ortho in a fast newt. I can understand it in a long focal length SCT or something so that it gives comparable views to a short focal length ortho in a fast newt but not otherwise. An 18mm in a 1200fl scope is 66x. Nothing much is going to be giving up detail worthy of the narrow field of view of an ortho at that magnification in my honest opinion. you'd be better off with a 18mm BST or something for the price.

[rory]

forgive me for asking but i've never much seen the point of an 18mm ortho in a fast newt. I can understand it in a long focal length SCT or something so that it gives comparable views to a short focal length ortho in a fast newt but not otherwise. An 18mm in a 1200fl scope is 66x. Nothing much is going to be giving up detail worthy of the narrow field of view of an ortho at that magnification in my honest opinion. you'd be better off with a 18mm BST or something for the price.

i see ,thanks for that. ive had bst's before and thought they worked well. i was thrown by the sharpness and contrast mentioned in the ortho review, and thought they would be ideal. showing my inexperience .

thanks.

[rory]

hi rory, dont no what format the 24mm is but i imagine 1.25. if you use a quality barlow or the proper name image amplifier the eye relief will not alter. the only image amplifiers that i know of that are in that catagory are the meade telextenders and the televue power mates, hope this helps

thanks faulksy.

[Stargazer_00]

i think orthos give comparable to premium quality on axis but suffer with a narrow field of view. my understanding was that they are used at high mangification when you need critical viewing. at lower magnficiations most eyepieces these days show decent on axis and with a dob i think you'd get much more comfort out of a wider afov eyepiece like a bst or something of that ilk. depends on your budget really. ES do some nice 68 degree offerings. I'm not sure how these perform in a fast newt though.

[rory]

ive read much on the es range , both 68* and the 82* offerings. but i have to watch the budget now , and i really dont fancy ordering from the u.s.a at the moment.

perhaps i should give a full picture of the dilema. ive just sold my hyperion zoom along with my 31mm aspheric. the reason being was two fold. 1. i was having backfocus issues with 2" low power ep's ,so had the aspheric half hanging out of the focuser ,which i felt uncomfortable with .the zoom was nice at the higher end ,but the low powers of 20-24mm were not to my taste.

2. i had a few bad nights viewing and become a little bemused by it all and considered selling up.

so i decided in the end to keep the scope , sell the e/p's and get 2 lower priced e/ps for the odd viewing session. no sooner sold them and a panoptic popped up at a good price ( forum member i believe ) on astro b&s. and couldnt resist getting it .

so obviously now ive gone the opposite way i was supposed to be going !! . so now im trying to work out the best way to build around it ,with initially thinking a barlow would be advantageous ,then add maybe another eyepiece later on . i think the 24mm pan will act as my lowest power eyepiece ,so its the medium to high im going to fill.

thanks for your thoughts.ill check out the telextenders.

[John]

I can understand why you jumped at the 24mm Panoptic, assuming the price was good, but an eyepiece of that quality can be a "double edged sword" as it can make any thing else in your eyepiece case seem just a little ordinary

Orthoscopics won't match the eye relief or wide FoV of the Panoptic but, within the confines of their specifications, do provide premium quality performance for a very resonable cost.

What the very best widefield eyepieces (by this I mean Ethos, Delos, and Pentax XW's) do is deliver orthoscopic quality optical performance over a wide field of view and with more comfortable eye relief. No mean trick and you pay handsomely for it of course.

[faulksy]

as a thought rory theres a lovely 16mm wo for sale in our classified andrew 63, but i dont no what you have in your range

[rory]

i see it ,very tempted, although the mrs may throw a wobbler .

[Qualia]

I decided...to keep the scope, sell the e/p's...and a panoptic popped up...so now im trying to work out the best way to build around it

Great to hear you're back on form, Rory!

The BGOs are superbly executed eyepieces and not only limited to planetary viewing. Indeed, I think the only reason they are not classed as top, premium eyepieces is simply because they lack the important and more expensive features of premium EPs, viz, wide fields and more comforting eye-relief.

I feel the same can equally be said of Televue Plossls, which also provide sharp, high contrast and bright on-axis performance, although anything less than a 11mm might be tight. Nevertheless, in terms of sharpness and contrast, the premium EP is not going to outperform either a TVP or BGO.

You can pick up a TVP for around £50 to £65 secondhand and if you avoid the current madness craze in the UK, BGOs will crop up from time to time for around the same price and if you ever decide to sell them on, you'll receive about the same money.

So, personally speaking, if I didn't want to be spending a load of money and you didn't have a problem with eye-relief, I'd buy just two more eyepieces for now:

8" f/5

24mm TV Pan= 50x, 4.8mm exit pupil, 1.36º true field.

15mm TV Pl = 80x, 3mm exit pupil, 0.63º true field.

11mm TV Pl = 110x, 2.2mm exit pupil, 0.45º true field.

Or

9mm BGO = 133x, 1.8 exit pupil, 0.37º true field.

And when expenses allowed, I'd go for a 7mm BGO for some serious planetary and Lunar work.

The way I figure it is if your abide your time, you'll be able to have a really decent EP set up for a good price and in the meantime you just compromise your observing plans as you piece together your kit.

On a personal note, I decided to sell all my Hyperions and X-Cel LXs and bought (secondhand) a run of BGOs: 5mm, 6mm, 7mm, 9mm and a 15mm TV Pl. With the little extra cash I made I started saving and after two months saving and biding my time, I have just completed a deal on a 10mm Delos! With this done, I figure in the future the 15mm can go and I will gradually save, step by step for a 17mm Nagler or Delos. I feel this kind of plan - which can only be made after we've had a little experience in this game - is a lot better than rushing out for that cheaper, almost-premium EP and a year down the line selling it up only to lose a load more money.

Not sure if this helped but great to see you back in astronomy-mood, Rory

[rory]

Qualia ,thats some great advice sir. i was originally asking about barlowing the pan ,as it would be a stop gap while building up some spare cash (if that exists !) a x2 would have given me x 50 and x100 . i shall do more thinking . be nice to try out a green that everyone raves about . with my experience though ,ill probably not notice any difference !