Planetary eyepiece

[flanker]

4mm Plossl was merely usable. I didn't enjoy using it! It was indeed an unpleasant experience.

[John]

The Powermates are practiucally invisible, apart from the additional magnification. I've been carefully examining the high magnification performance of my TV plossls / 2.5x Powermate against TV Radians, Pentax XW's, Vixen SLV and some orthoscopics and I'd say that the TV Plossl / Powermate combination is a match for a Radian of a similar focal length but shows very slightly more ligtht scatter around a bright star or planet than the Pentax XW / Baader Genuine Orthoscopic and Vixen SLV. Not enough difference to impact the planetary or lunar detail you can see though, just a slightly larger pale halo of scattered light around the periphery of the object being viewed.

I could certainly live happily with the TV Plossl / Powermate performance though, knowing that I was not really loosing anything tangible in terms of feature or contrast resolution. I do like my wide field viewing though

[flanker]

Great! And I also feel a 2 inch collection would be an overkill for planetary viewing. A 20mm or higher Plossl should have more than sufficient eye relief.

I'm leaning over towards a larger 1.25 inch collection, rather than a smaller 2 inch collection. Is that the way to go? I'll get a Powermate and a bunch of Plossls.

[Dude_with_the_tube]

you dont really need Powermate/Barlow for planetary observations unless you cant get on with short focal length EP`s. Purely for planetary all you need is Ep`s ranging from 4 or 5mm up to 18mm.If you look at orthoscopic eye pieces,that was the range they where made,with maximum focal length available of 25mm.But thats if you really want a full set.Just for casual planetary observations with your scope,you will be perfectly fine with only 3 Ep`s to start off.Based on your scope,i would pick:  5mm for high powers giving you about 200-216 magnification;7mm giving X154;and 12.5mm(or 12mm Delos or 14mm pentax ) giving x86 .This would be a great start off point and later down the road if you feel you need more flexibility you can pick up other focal lengths where you feel there is a need.

If you dont like short ER,then go for pentax or Delos what has been mentioned many times over in this thread and you will have 20mm ER but i repeat again,for planetary,you dont need to go lower then 14mm in these as they are 70 degree Ep`s and you can get full disc of moon with 14mm.I actually doubt that 14mm will be the most used EP anyway

I am planetary observer and i like to have as less glass/optical elements in the way as possible,as such,i dont have any Ep`s with more then 4 elements.And i dont have any barlows or powermates either.