28-32mm ep choice

[nicks90]

You know what - sometimes this hobby can be mind bogglingly complicated and frustrating! Its choices are positively stressing me out!

With fathers day approaching and my birthday in 2 weeks, I have been asked by a few people what I want and I have asked for some vouchers for my local astro shop so I can buy a new ep.

I currently have a panaview 32mm - which although an ideal fl for my 12" F5 dob - does not really cut the mustard anymore. Initially I loved it, but the pincushion effect and softness in the outer 30% are becoming more noticeable the more I use it. Especially when browsing the sky, the outer 5% distortion/pin cushion is unbearable as stars come in view. To the point where i dont use it anymore and just default straight to my 15mm wherever possible, or my 8mm for higher mags.

but I really want a nice widefield ep for things like the pliaedes and other open clusters and for browsing around cygnus etc.

Budget - about £130 i reckon.

contenders so far are:

SW 30mm Aero ED

WO 28mm UWAN

ES 68deg AR purged 28mm

maxvision 68deg 28mm

Baader hyperion aspheric 31mm

not like I'm asking for much - not like this is a terribly crowded part of the EP market with multiple clones of the same glass, absolute dogs, hidden gems etc - but essentially I want the best widefield ep in the 'mid price' bracket around for a fast scope - mission impossible!!! Mid focal length eps are easy, I just plonk for BSTs and be done with it, proper little gems. But this widefield choice is killing me. I may end up selling a kidney and buying a nagler, but for now i;m stuck with the budget i have.

My head is now completely spinning from reading reviews. From what I've read on here, I dont think any of the above are to be considered rubbish, but this sort of opportunity to spend money is extremely few and far between. Plus this is my first new ep, as i;ve always had second hand before and I want to make the best choice possible.

any help would be super appreciated

Nick

[John]

Of the ones you list, the 28mm UWAN (or it's clone the 28mm Skywatcher Nirvana) would be the best in your F/5 scope in my opinion. It's 95% as goos as the Nagler 31 when I compared them a while back so while the price might be mid-range the performance is top end or very close to it. 

Bear in mind that these at big chunks of metal and glass though and may affect the balance of your scope. The Aero ED and Baader Aspheric are lighter but optically can't compete with the UWAN / Nirvana.

I've personally tried / owned the Aero ED, the 28mm UWAN / Nirvana and the 31mm Aspheric and used them in F/5 scopes. Owners of the ES and Maxvision can feedback on those as I've not used them.

[nicks90]

Not sure how I did not notice, but there is a significant price jump between the WO uwan's from the 16mm to the 28mm - its well into the £250 + category and therefore out of range. Damn.

[John]

Not sure how I did not notice, but there is a significant price jump between the WO uwan's from the 16mm to the 28mm - its well into the £250 + category and therefore out of range. Damn.

You can get 28mm Nirvana's / UWAN's on the used market for around £150 but they do cost more when new. Getting really good ultra-wide eyepiece performance in fast scopes is not a cheap business, unfortunately. 

[Damo636]

Slightly over budget this one but it's an excellent eyepiece and serves up all but identical views to the 31 Nagler (I've owned and compared both side by side in my f5 newtonian) at a fraction of the price....

http://www.365astronomy.com/explore-scientific-82%C3%82%C2%B0-n2-eyepiece-30mm-2-p-3868.html

[damnut]

Hi There,

A review in the sky at night a little while ago rated the Moonfish as the winner in their c30mm test, Yes that included a TV nagler.

For £130 you coud get a used mfish 30mm and a used a new es 70deg 35mm from germany for £77.

Also good ep's come up for sale in the classifieds and astrobuy & sell.

[John]

Hi There,

A review in the sky at night a little while ago rated the Moonfish as the winner in their c30mm test, Yes that included a TV nagler.

For £130 you coud get a used mfish 30mm and a used a new es 70deg 35mm from germany for £77.

Also good ep's come up for sale in the classifieds and astrobuy & sell.

Much as I hate to disagree with the Sky @ Night Magazine, I've used a Moonfish 30mm in an F/5 and also the KK Widescan III 30mm from Japan, which the Moonfish and it's kin were cloned from - neither gets anywhere close to the Nagler or any of other others mentioned above in terms of optical performance outside the central 50% of the field of view. Astigmatism becomes really distracting in the outer 50% of the field of view with stars becoming really quite distended towards the field stop.

These low cost 30mm / 80 degree eyepieces are fine with F/10 scopes, great value in fact, but I feel the poster would be disappointed with their performance at F/5.

I'm really not trying to advocate loads of expenditure here but there are some combinations that are really not so good together in my opinion.

[russ.will]

Having had the ES82 30mm (fantastic EP) and having let it go because the Maxvision 28mm SWA is so good, I'd have to say that in that list, the MV 28mm is the bang-for-your-buck king. With a Meade badge on it, the SWAs were frequently mentioned in the same breath as TV Panoptics (although you'd have to take the word of others for that) and they stack up nicely in my f4.9 Dob.

Russell

[RikM]

I'll add my vote to Russell's. I have the ES 28/68 and love it. As far as I know this is optically the same as the MV so on that basis the MV is the champ. I prefer the ergonomics of the ES and was prepared to pay extra for that. My other EP's are mainly Pentax XW and the ES is not far away for about half the money. I mainly use an f/4.7 10" Dob.

[alan potts]

The 28mm WO is a fine eyepiece, I even read a review where it said it out Naglered the Nagler, though I am not sure I believed it.

I myself would go for the Russell 's selection here the 28mm Maxvision or the Meade SWA, they are one and the same, though the latter if available will still cost 200 quid. These work in fast scopes and are crisp pretty much to the edge. I had the full range and this was my favourite, I would buy another if I ever see one here.

Alan

[swamp thing]

Like John I have the Nagler 31mm and have compared a few of these suggestions.

My choice would also be the 28mm UWAN. It's the closest I've tried to the Nagler except for a Pentax 30mm XW which was as good. (And yes Rik I actually got on with this one, lovely eyepiece )

My comparisons were all done in a faster f/4.5 scope.

[Caldwell14]

TeleVue in the guise of the humble plossl is just as sharp as they come. I have owned my little number for 3 years and would never part with.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Paul73]

If you are looking to get the whole Pleiades in with any sort of frame, you may need a bit more than 28mm 68°.

I have the MV version and love it. Stepping up to the 34mm would push the exit pupil up towards 7mm which is too much for most eyes to really use.

Paul

[triton1]

I also recommend the mv28 mm.Great eyepiece for the price and works well at f5.

[nicks90]

sorry for rumbling this thread on some more - but I have one more question.

I cant afford a "Decent" eyepeice, in other words a top flight ep like the nagler or an ES82 ete. But I really dont want to upgrade my panaviews with something that is only marginally better like the aeroED for instance. I would essentially be swapping from 30% of the outer view with seaguls/comets/[insert description] and pincushion to 15% outer view distortion, but I would still HAVE distortions, which is what I would like to minimise hence why I want better eps!

So what effect would a skywatcher comma corrector have when used with a panaview?

I could afford one of them, and I'm thinking if this cleaned up all the abherations you get with lower budget widefields, wouldnt this be a better catch-all solution - allowing me to get fantastic performance from more budget eps? Or does it not work like that?

If it does clear up most of the problems cheaper widefields suffer, it would then open up getting great views with a bunch of BSTs or lower end ES70 eps in the smaller focal length too.

[John]

A coma corrector will clear up coma which might help a bit with your Panaview but you would still have the astigmatism (seagulls) which are eyepiece generated. Generally outer field aberrations in a fast newtonian are a mix of coma and astigmatism with the dominant one depending on how well corrected the eyepiece is. The better corrected (and usually more expensive) eyepieces show more coma than astigmatism and the less well corrected ones the opposite.

If there was a magic bullet to really clean up the outer field of low cost wide angle eyepieces used in fast scopes then I guess we would all use it and Tele Vue / ES etc would not sell any expensive wide field eyepieces.

[Dude_with_the_tube]

my 5 p on this.you are saying your budget is 130 quid.what stops you from saving lets say another 30 or 40 giving you total of 170 quid and then you can look into second hand market for a nice meade 5000 series 30mm or ES 30mm 82 deg??

That will eliminate all that hassle about i would love to have that but i ended up with that? At the end of a day you have a 12" fast dob what will be demanding piece of equipment to your eye pieces so why spoil all the views? Understandably 31t5 nagler is out of your budget,but clearly a second hand market is wide open.Save up a bit, dont rush and get the eye piece you really want.You have as a minimum another 3 month before you can start utilizing your dob! it doesnt get dark now so getting now whatever eye piece you can afford would be a bit silly.

[Damo636]

Another 2 cents worth....

Sell the Panaview and add the proceeds to your £130 budget and buy this......

http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Explore-Scientific-68--Ar-purged-Eyepiece-28mm.html

[bingevader]

Hmmm, but then he might as well save his proceeds and get the MV instead as Russell suggested. 

[Damo636]

Hmmm, but then he might as well save his proceeds and get the MV instead as Russell suggested. 

IF the MV does indeed house the same optics as speculated, it's a steal at that price. I currently use the 28mm ES as my low power widefield and find it performs admirably in my f5 dob.