15 or 16mm eyepieces?

[Andrew*]

Does anyone know of any good 1.25" eyepieces around 15-16 with good eye relief and a fairly wide FOV? At the moment I'm struggling to think of any!

The 15mm Panoptic is discontinued. There are a handful of 82° choices but they all have minimal ER.

Any suggestions?

[Pig]

I can think of a good 14mm & 17.3mm but not 15-16mm

[rwilkey]

The BST Explorer/StarGuider 15mm is pretty good with 60 degree AFoV and approx 18mm eye relief, from 'Sky's the Limit'.

[Schorhr]

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=140600338359 or the explore scientific (14, 18mm, 82 deg)

[Mark in Macc]

The Vixen NLVs are available as a 15 mm, but only have a 50 deg FOV. As far as I can tell so far though, they are rather good and are sharp to the edge. They do have 20mm eye relief though.

[Andrew*]

The Vixen NLVs are available as a 15 mm, but only have a 50 deg FOV. As far as I can tell so far though, they are rather good and are sharp to the edge. They do have 20mm eye relief though.

Yeah, they look good, and probably up to par with the other eyepieces in my collection. My only reservation is the quite small field of view...

The BST Explorer/StarGuider 15mm is pretty good with 60 degree AFoV and approx 18mm eye relief, from 'Sky's the Limit'.

Good suggestion. I've never tried the BSTs. I've heard a lot of good things about them, but I don't know if they'd be "right" in a set of Delos' and Pentax XWs...

The reason I'm after this particular focal length is it will plug the 12-24mm gap nicely, with the 2x barlow, the 7-10mm gap, and with the 2.5x Powermate, the 5-7mm gap - three birds, one eyepiece!

Andrew

[Pig]

Explore scientific have them in 82 degrees 15mm relief, they might not be out of place with the rest of your gear, perhaps

http://www.telescope...er_proofed.html

[andrew63]

Andrew - i'd forget BST/ Xcell as the contrast or lack of it would be noticeable against better glass and the eye relief of meade and es uwa has to be taken with a pinch of salt ! It's a pity about the tight relief of the meade maxvision 16mm as that could have been of serious consideration. I have been using it a lot lately and i think optically it is better overall than the 16 uwan swan i had for a while.

But your right not much at this range.

andrew

[Andrew*]

Andrew - i'd forget BST/ Xcell as the contrast or lack of it would be noticeable against better glass and the eye relief of meade and es uwa has to be taken with a pinch of salt ! It's a pity about the tight relief of the meade maxvision 16mm as that could have been of serious consideration. I have been using it a lot lately and i think optically it is better overall than the 16 uwan swan i had for a while.

But your right not much at this range.

Thanks Andrew. Strange, isn't it? I thought with the huge variety of choice now available there would be a 16mm SWA at the premium end, but it appears not. The X-Cel series makes a jump from 12mm to 18mm. I would definitely take a 15mm if it were available.

The ES eyepieces are definitely too short ER and there's nothing between 14mm and 18mm, so that's a no-go.

Looks like I'll have to make the 17.3mm fit and live with the gaps. Ah, life is hard!

Andrew

[Andrew*]

The Luminos range doesn't get much attention. Does anyone know if the 17mm eye relief on the 15mm is genuine?

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-eyepieces/celestron-luminos-eyepieces.html

[andrew63]

The Luminos range doesn't get much attention. Does anyone know if the 17mm eye relief on the 15mm is genuine?

http://www.firstligh...-eyepieces.html

I was looking at these yesterday - eye relief - that is the question ! These are £100 on sale and they say that relief has beeb increased over the old axiom - hope someone has some feedback for you.

Celestron Eyepieces < Telescope accessories - Series Telescope accessories: Luminos

[rwilkey]

I have the old Axiom LX versions, 7mm, 10mm and 23mm and the eye relief is quite good, though not as ggod as is claimed, but I find them very comfortable to use.

[cs1cjc]

The Explore Scientific 82* 14mm is very tight on usable eye relief and I found it unacceptable in practice. The ES68* 16mm is also tight but I find it quite usable. It is a beautiful small, lightweight eyepiece giving excellent views. The related Maxvision (http://www.explorescientific.de/maxvision-m-354.html?language=gb ) eyepiece is still available for 59 euros including shipping, which looks fantastic value!

[cs1cjc]

I also found that the Hyperion 17mm was better in an F/4.5 Newtonian (actually operating at about F/5 with a coma corrector) was a much better eyepiece than other reports had led me to believe. I used it mainly tuned down with a single 2" filter ring to about 15mm. This eyepiece was only sold because it was inconvenient to use alongside my other eyepieces. I did not like the weight nor the bulk and both the focus point and the eye relief were so different that I found the transition to and from my other eyepieces awkward.

[Stargazer_00]

The Luminos range have god forsaken eye caps that fall off all the time. Unless you want to use an elastic band to hold them in place or don't mind the potential of thumbprinting them in your eyepiece case I would consider something else.

There are worse things in life than having to put up withy a 17.3 Delos when you wanted a 16mm

[faulksy]

what about the 16mm nirvana uwan very good nagler performance at a lot cheaper cost

[alan potts]

This is a bit of a problem area. The 16mm SWA Meade/ExSc and the same Maxvision all have fairly tight ER. The 16mm Nagler is not that wonderfull for the same reason. I think I would tend to agree with Pig, 17.3mm 0r 14mm Delos, 14mm Radian maybe, sorry it's a Televue only answer.

There is a 17mm Baader Hyperion which would be fine in the 9.25 SC but if you were to go to a fast scope it will not perform.

Alan.

[Naemeth]

This is cheating, but how about this?

http://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/product.html?info=3100&xf88e8=610fe99b086976784dcd962409f1259b&xece83=7cc6ec39157a1457135df770c1ae5fd2&xece83=7cc6ec39157a1457135df770c1ae5fd2

18mm eye relief too .

[Mark in Macc]

The 16mm Nirvana is only quoted as having 12 mm eye relief. I asked a similar question a few months ago and got similar responses. There is limited choice in the 15 mm area. I opted for NLVs in the end as the feedback I got suggested that they were sharp to the edge, even though the FOV is only 50 deg. Don't discount the BSTs though. Alan offers a try before you buy service.

[AlexB67]

I am clueless never having had the experience of the better expensive glass, that being said I do recall reading that these are well respected

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-eyepieces/skywatcher-nirvana-uwa-82-degree-fov.html

eye relief is short though.

There is a 16mm. After all FLO sells them, so I'd be inclined to think this must be some way decent. A little review on them here,

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/review/eye-pieces/nirvana-uwa-82%C2%B0

[Bart]

The Explore Scientific 82* 14mm is very tight on usable eye relief and I found it unacceptable in practice. The ES68* 16mm is also tight but I find it quite usable. It is a beautiful small, lightweight eyepiece giving excellent views. The related Maxvision (http://www.explorescientific.de/maxvision-m-354.html?language=gb ) eyepiece is still available for 59 euros including shipping, which looks fantastic value!

Funny that, I found the 14mm ES fine for ER and for that matter, I found the 16mm 68* ES tighter but again, very useable. I recently got a type 1 Nagler 4.8mm , now THAT'S tight

Barry

[Stargazer_00]

In my opinion all the ES82s are useless if you wear glasses, the practical eyerelief is far too short.

[cs1cjc]

In my opinion all the ES82s are useless if you wear glasses, the practical eyerelief is far too short.

It depends on your eyes and glasses, I think.

I have close fitting spectacles, I am very short sighted (-10 dioptres) so the lens acts as a mild barlow extending the focus, and my pupil still expands to about 7mm (despite my age). I find them ES82s to be useable on the whole though I accept that I am probably an outlier. When I use them with glasses I do have the eye cup folded down. The ES82 11mm is quite comfortable, the 8.8mm is marginal while the 6.7mm is mildly vignetted. The 4.7mm is very vignetted and I would only use it with glasses to focus it for a friend. My astigmatism is small enough that the exit pupil is not too large for me to use all of these without glasses when I am observing on my own. I have a pair of glasses for observing with a loop so I take them off safely and let them hang round my neck.

I find the ES68 16mm tight and the 24mm to be comfortable with glasses.

[Stargazer_00]

I have the cups folded down and my eyes are 20/20 I still have my the eyepiece top jammed right into my eyesocket before I can get the whole field stop in view. My eyes are more or less on the glass with most of them.

[cs1cjc]

Note that I do not find any of my ES eyepieces, except the 24mm 68*, to be usable during the day when my iris is contracted. Having a wide open iris helps because it allows the eye to be moved back beyond the stated eye relief while still accepting the full fan of light rays. This is particularly true for wide angle eyepieces where the light rays diverge rapidly.