ES 68 24mm arrives!

[Andy_E]

After a wait of only four days I've just received a knock at the door with my shiny new ES 24mm. Heard some good things about this series from over the pond so decided to take the plunge and order from Agena Astro for the princely sum of just £94.29. The good news is it seems to have 'slipped through unnoticed' as well! . Can't seem to find many reviews from here in the UK (perhaps I'm not looking hard enough!) so I'm really intrigued as to how it performs.

My initial plan was to match my 19mm panoptic with it's 24mm brother, but (as you can probably see from my sig) I'm quite a fan of trying new things and have been rather impressed with the ES 82 series.

At 333g it feels well built without being overly heavy, and I'm a fan of the not overly engineered impression (recalling my TV and WO eps). The multi coatings seem (not surprisingly) identical to the 82 series, showing an ever so slightly warm colour cast and internal reflections also appear (in daylight) to be well controlled. Eye relief seems to be roughly as advertised at 18mm.

Skies not looking great for a while but hoping to post a mini review when I get a chance to put it through it's paces (particularly intrigued to see how it compares to the panoptic).

Some pics to follow.

[Reeny]

I have the MaxVision version from ES and it is excellent.

The double cluster should be one of your first port of calls with this one.

[Bart]

I use this EP for my 10" Dob and its an excellent finder or widefield. I'm sure you'll be happy

Barry

[Andy_E]

Cheers guys. Looking forward to April to play the how many galaxies can you fit in your FOV game... a favourite of mine

[Daniel-K]

very very interested how you get on with this i have a 18mm ES 82 and its very good, i need a nice low power EP

[Reeny]

very very interested how you get on with this i have a 18mm ES 82 and its very good, i need a nice low power EP

The only downside is that you will want to spend more on your gear.

I am assuming that the MaxVision uses the same optics as the Explore Scientific version.

With the MV 24mm 68, I can get Andromeda and it's two little buddies in the same view.

Where the eyepiece excells is the light capture. The stars positively sparkle.

The double cluster is just small enough to come into the 68 degree frame at 50x magnification.

For Pleiades and larger objects I need to use a wider view 2" eyepiece.

We have just bought a 42mm Revelation to use at 28x magnification.

Some good results so far, but no-where near the clarity and brightness of the 24mm Maxvision 68o from Explore Scientific

[Andy_E]

I've used wider EPs in the past but as the majority of my observing is done from my back garden sky glow becomes a real problem. I had a 32mm TV plossl for a while but sold it on as I simply wasn't getting the best from it. 32mm is about the lowest I could go anyway as the exit pupil would be getting a bit too large for my optics beyond that. Same story with 2" EPS... except they got sold mainly as I'm far too lazy to keep changing adaptors . I know the Maxvisions share the same optics as the Meade SWAs, but don't know about the ES 68s... anyone shed any more light on this?