Incoming: New book on eyepieces

[YKSE]

I'm with you John. If I ever hit hard times, I'd have no worries about selling my wide fields and keeping my plossls and orthos. at about £50 a pop they are not overly expensive.

....  Frankly, if I had to do it all over again (observing), I think the best advice is to stay away from short focal ratio telescopes as they get you in all kind of eyepiece troubles!  :-D

Seems that Mr. EPs draw more or less similar conclusions after years' of EP use.

[allen g]

Amazon sells it in the US for 28.98 (no shipping charge). I ordered it after reviewing sections from the downloaded Table of contents - very informative and contemporary read. check it out.

[baggywrinkle]

I took the plunge and bought the e-version and I am glad I did.

Firstly I am always a bit worried about Kindle and e-versions of books. Some I have have been absolute...well you know.

This version is great, it is searchable (via the subject titles) and all the illustrations and pics are present.

I bought it as I am about to spend some money this weekend in Tokyo on some Nikon or Takahashi EP's and I wanted to try and get ahead of the game by properly understanding some of the technical jargon that the ad's for ep's use to bamboozle us into buying.

The content of the book did that for me as well as clearly explaining the various types of lenses and going into how to look at eye relief and exit pupils, as well as easy to use formula to calculate these and TFOV and AFOV.

Great set of charts  summarising the ep's that have been available (now obsolete) and of course the ones that are available and their pedigree.

Some of the book repeats itself a bit but that is OK, to me it just hammered home what I need to know before I part with any of my slush fund.

Well worth the  money if you are off to buy expensive ep's. Well done to the author.

[AndyH]

.....................And btw, after the book got published I received email from the TAL eyepiece folks so will be getting a batch of their eyepieces to put through the paces. I'm looking forward to that

Thx,

-Bill

 Just noticed your post on CN.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=6154838&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=all&fpart=1&vc=&PHPSESSID=

Am now off to have a read of those pdf reviews.

Andy.

[YKSE]

After reading some extracts online, I decide to take the plunge and have ordered a hard-copy

[rwilkey]

I have no doubt that this new book on eyepieces will be excellent.

It's by William Paolini, a well-respected and well-liked contributor - BillP - over on CloudyNights.

(I'm not associated with Bill or this book in any way)

Hi Jeremy, Bill's book is really good and I am sure you will enjoy it, as I certainly did.  Very little out there on this subject, apart from Chris Lord's excellent papers on the evolution of astronomical eyepieces.  Bill's book brings things right up to date, and you'll be amazed at the amount of ground he covers.

[baggywrinkle]

I am glad I bought it, albeit the Kindle version, I was then able to buy some Takahashi EP's with an understanding of what I was buying.

[Guest]

Looking forward to my copy.Bought as a Christmas pressy.

[BillP]

Looking forward to my copy.Bought as a Christmas pressy.

Merry Christmas

[BillP]

I wonder if this book contains some sort of question and answer section which tells you if you might as well save and buy TeleVue from day one and save yourself money in working your way up to them, or if your the lucky sort of person who is genuinely content with something of a lesser quality.

Now that is advice you can sell!

Basically, to answer that difficult question, look to Chapter 5 - Advice from the Amateur Community.  This chapter has essays from amateur astronomers from around the world relative to eyepieces.  It was a fun section to compile.  If the publisher does a 2nd printing I hope to expand that with more advice gathered from more of us.  It's great reading everyone's perspectives in their own words.  That chapter IMO gives a little astro-board flavor to the book...so like being here in a chat room

[Paul73]

£40?? To get the right eyepiece for the job? Sounds like a bargain to me.

Looking at the amount people spend on eyepieces, it sounds like a no brainier purchase. However...... I am sure that Mr Paolini is a first rate writer and an expert in the subject matter. But I kind of like ferreting through the various threads which often throw up some extra suprise nuggets and are often thoroughly entertaining to boot.

Paul

[Paul73]

Sorry. Rather behind on the thread was responding to page 1.

Hope that the book is selling well and that folks are finding it useful.

Paul

[L8-Nite]

Less than 10p per page. Not bad value for a quality reference book really.

That's about 400 pages, "all" about eyepieces, and not a general over view about astronomy which can be found elsewhere  ?

That would be the kind of book I like.

[BillP]

That's about 400 pages, "all" about eyepieces, and not a general over view about astronomy which can be found elsewhere  ?

That would be the kind of book I like.

Everything in the book is relative to, or from the perspective of, the eyepiece.  So no rehash of general astronomy