High power planetary eyepiece.

[Guest]

All very interesting points.As I mentioned, I have been using my Pentax XF 8.5 and 12mm with a 2 x Celestron Barlow.But I personally feel that a 4.5 or 5mm quality eyepiece on it's own would give me more.

I have just seen an ad for an Explore Scientific 4.5mm 82 degree eyepiece.I have never owned or looked through one before.

[jetstream]

The ES 82 deg are good eyepieces, but by design may not be everyones planetary/lunar choice. For me they are great for low-mid power.

A really good barlow is invisible in the optical path and may even help smooth some EP's out somehow, the Baader VIP I know works and I understand the TV barlow and Powermate are premium.

The 3-6 zoom is an excellent eyepiece, but under very good conditions it does not show quite as well as Delos class EP's on the moon where we can see really high resolution, on the planets IME it is very close if not equal to the Delos.

Another good option might be a Baader MKIII zoom/barlow, where I believe the FOV opens up with the mag. A lot of CN guys love these things, including those who have top tier oculars. We know one thing your 1/10PV scope wont be the limiting factor here lol! I heard the Pentax XF are hard to beat optically so this might be a hard decision to make.

So far there is only one eyepiece series mentioned I personally wouldn't use for the task at hand......