favorite double star eyepieces

[Perseus_m45]

Ok fella's here is how I work it out at the union street observatory. I use the older orion epic ed2 straight barrel of which I have the whole set to find the object . And I use them a lot as to observe the object just because I have come to enjoy the comfort of the long eye relief . but I will call my orion epics my working eyepieces. then I will go to my orthos or my siebert optics ball lens . how do you guys do it?

                                                                         mike h

[avtaram]

For double stars I use the Baader Hyperion Zoom MKlll in my ed 120 and if I need higher magnification I screw in the Baader 2.25 Barlow to the nose piece of the zoom.

Avtar

[Moonshane]

It depends on the double really. I mostly use my 3-6mm Nagler zoom though. Normally I can locate the double with my RDF/RACI even with my long FL scopes (1340mm, 1600mm and 1840mm).

[cotterless45]

5.5mm Meade 5000 UW, then down to 4.5mm Tmb. This gives a respectable x218 and x266. Probably maximum in our lovely damp climate, hurrah !

Nick.

[John]

My high power set comprises of Pentax XW's at 5mm and 3.5mm and Tele Vue Radians at 4mm and 3mm. Most of my binary star viewing is done with an ED120 refractor between 180x and 300x.

[NGC404]

My 25 year (ish) old 10mm TMB Monocentric 

[AlexB67]

I try to split with the lower mag if I can just to see, for the fun of it, but generally for the most pleasurable views I like my 5mm BGO the most, seems to have little less scatter compared to the 6mm Radian for example I also use, but all my 5 - 8mm range do the job well. 

One thing I also like about  the orthos is that the subtle colours hints come through when they are not obvious which is an aspect I lke to see in splitting doubles as much as whether it is a tight split or not, which is another challenge mostly people seem to be more interested in.

Pentax XW 7mm is also really good for the colours and splits.  The Radians while perform very respectably are nevertheless the least good for best colour rendition to my eyes. Still vey good of course, not just not quite as good I would say, due the Televue coffee colour effect that tends to shift colour perception to me, which can actually be very nice on some targets like Jupiter I find, but that is a different topic

[Perseus_m45]

For double stars I use the Baader Hyperion Zoom MKlll in my ed 120 and if I need higher magnification I screw in the Baader 2.25 Barlow to the nose piece of the zoom.

Avtar

For you guys with your zoomers do you find that they may lesson the details abit more the a regular eyepiece?

                                                                                                                                               mike h

[John]

For you guys with your zoomers do you find that they may lesson the details abit more the a regular eyepiece?

                                                                                                                                               mike h

I've found that you can get a little more light scatter in zooms than in fixed focal length designs and occasionally a little ghosting when viewing bright objects. The Baader 8-24 Mk III zoom seems to keep these issues pretty well controlled though, compared to some lesser quality zooms.

[todd8137]

Depends on the scope I guess I never have probs splitting doubles with the 16" inch dob even rubbish plossls split them

Pat

[John]

Depends on the scope I guess I never have probs splitting doubles with the 16" inch dob even rubbish plossls split them

Pat

Even the really tough ones such as Zeta Hercules, Sirius etc ?

[todd8137]

Hi John never tried but as and when I will

Pat

[Perseus_m45]

Even the really tough ones such as Zeta Hercules, Sirius etc ?

should be interesting to see the outcome !

[chiltonstar]

I use mainly an 8mm and a 12mm BST with my Mak, and an Orion ED-2 (older style) 3.7mm with my ED80. When I need more mag, I use a 6mm Celestron Plossl, or a 3x barlow with the 12mm BST.

Chris

[todd8137]

should be interesting to see the outcome !

As any one split these may be not from the back garden but the dark site maybe

Pat

[Moonshane]

I have split ZH from home (16" f4 masked to 170mm f11) and Sirius from a dark site (same set-up).

[Perseus_m45]

I wish it were dark here.

[avtaram]

For you guys with your zoomers do you find that they may lesson the details abit more the a regular eyepiece?

mike h

I have used the Skywatcher SWA 70* 3.5mm and the 5mm BST Explorer to split doubles but I found that these give a little more light scatter than I like.

The Baader Zoom gives me a much cleaner more pleasing image with hardly if any light scatter, thats to my eyes anyway, for others it may be different. Every time I use it I am surprised as to how good it is, surprised because we are told all the time that individual eyepieces are better than zooms. It all depends on which eyepieces I would say.

Avtar

[Perseus_m45]

I have heard a lot of good things about the  Baader Zoom

[todd8137]

The baader I had the use of the "click stop I found was very hard to turn whilst in the scope

Pat

[Stu]

I mainly use my BGO's in my fracs, either the Vixen 150ED or TV85 these days. I sometimes use the Baader VIP Barlow to give higher power and extend the eye relief and this works well. I use a Zeiss T2 prism too which helps minimize light scatter.

I do sometimes also use a 3 to 6 Nag zoom, or my sole remaining radian which is the 3mm for highest power.

I am hopeful of getting a Leica ASPH to join the zoom crowd, I've heard very good things about them for high power viewing so it will be interesting to see how it performs on doubles.

Most of all though, it would be nice to get some decent seeing conditions, I've not had a really steady night for ages! :-(

Cheers,

Stu

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Moonshane]

I wish Televue would create a 6-12mm 'Radian' zoom with a 60 degree field. Now that would be a good eyepiece for double stars!

[MahlerMoonMan]

I don't have a favourite 'star-splitting' eye piece just yet, as I've never looked at double stars before! But I am going to have a go at a few next opportunity I get ... My highest power eye piece is my Orion planetary 6mm giving me 100x on my ED80, and I can Barlow it to x200 ... I hope I'll find it to perform well ...! Otherwise I have a BST 8mm which i can Barlow giving me x150 ... Probably a more usable mag I'd expect ...?

So hopefully, weather/time permitting, I can have a good idea within a few weeks which eye piece I like best for splitting doubles .... And then I can start thinking about refining my eye pieces for double star observing!!

Clear skies!

Donaldo

[John]

With binary stars I find it's good to have the option to push the power right up when needed - 200x would not be outrageous with an ED80 for trying to split tight binary stars.

The baader I had the use of the "click stop I found was very hard to turn whilst in the scope
Pat

Interesting Pat. The Mk III Baader zoom I currently have has a pretty sweet and light zoom movement between the subtle click stops. No force needed at all really. I have heard tales of them seizing up under very cold conditions though.

[Mark at Beaufort]

I always preferred a zoom when looking at doubles either in my 4" APO frac or the 180mm Mak/Cass. Until recently I used a Baader zoom which was v.good on doubles. A few weeks ago I bought a Pentax 6.5 - 19.5 zoom and this will become the work horse. I have only tried this new zoom in my PST and the quality is very good.

So at the moment I cannot give a proper opinion on this zoom using it for doubles. However, on the 180 Mak/Cass I will have a range of mags from 138x to 415x so it should in theory be pretty good.