Eyepiece brands

[cutepetgroomer]

Okay so I know Meade and celestron are eyepiece brands . After that I know there are different designs of the eyepieces. After looking carefully at my eyepieces , I have discovered I have two brand name eps; my Meade 25mm wide MA and my Meade 40 which it doesn't say plossl so I'm assuming am as well. I have four H eps that came with telescopes but only three I actively use as one two of the four are 20H. My 4mm is an unknown brand but has SR on it . The 40 and the 25 I use more often. I don't know why. I do know I am trying to figure out which brand would be good for my budget all around.

[RikM]

I don't think just sticking to Brand name will be a good way to chose eyepieces. You need to match the properties of the eyepiece to the telescope you will use them in taking into account your budget and observing preferences. Do you want a wide apparent field of view or are you happy with the 40-50deg you have now? Do you need long eyerelief or are you happy to get your eye really close to the lens? Does your telescope have a fast focal ratio (f/5) or slower (f/10)? Once you know what you want from your eyepieces, then you can look for those that fall with your budget.

I need long eyerelief because I wear glasses to observe. I want an extra wide but not ultra wide field of view because I find this more comfortable and pleasing to look through. I have a fast f/4.7 telescope. I chose eyepieces with 20mm eyerelief, 68-70deg aFOV and they are well corrected (unfortunately, this combination means they are expensive!) Eyepieces from Baader, Explore Scientific and Pentax fit the bill and I have all three types in my EP case. The majority of my observing is done at moderate focal lengths so the better/more expensive Pentax cover these. The very high and very low magnification are less frequently used, so the cheaper but still good Baader and ES fill these spots.

[John]

Meade and Celestron are brands. MA, Plossl, SR and H are eyepiece designs (or abbreviations of them). Most brands carry their versions of a number of designs to cater for different user requirements, eg: wide field, high contrast, long eye relief etc, etc.

The plossl is a good budget design and most brands have a plossl line. In some cases they are actually exactly the same eyepiece with different branding stamped on them !. This happens quite a lot in the astro equipment world and can be quite confusing

[ronin]

MA is a Modified Achromat design,

H is a Huygens design,

SR will be a Ramsden design, just no idea what the S is for.

This is a reasonable site for a quick idea of eyepiece designs: http://www.handprint.com/ASTRO/ae5.html

Concerning brands it gets difficult:

Meade plossls are I think made by GSO.

GSO and Revelation are also I believe the same.

In effect Meade=GSO=Revelation.

Not sure who makes Celestron plossls, however at present a lot of Celestron eyepieces are seemingly made by Barsta.

Equally the plossl's could be from Long Perng or United Optics, I would suspect one of these two.

Most of the Astro-Tech eyepieces seem to be manufactured by Barsta.

Eyepieces can pass lots of time trying to work out who makes and supplies who.

Celestron plossls seem nice and I would also suggest looking at the Astro-Tech items, simply as Barsta seem to be producing some fairly good items at present and hopefully this is carried through to the plossl's they produce. for A-T.

[cutepetgroomer]

Well I do wear eyeglasses but I have done observing without them (makes little difference ). I mainly use my fast scope but I also have the not so fast scopes as well. I like the MA eyepieces quite a bit the provide the best eye relief for me. Here's a picture of all my eps I have so far. The eyepiece on the far left is my Meade 40ma