Eyepieces... again?

[pevsfreedom]

I made a thread a few weeks ago about eyepiece recommendations.

I've tried Celestron Luminos 15 & 10mm

Meade 8-24mm zoom,

Celestron 8-24mm zoom,

and Celestron LX 9mm eye pieces.

None of them were any better, and most were probably worse then the stock eye pieces that came with my scope. It came with a Super View 30mm and a standard 9mm plossl.

The Luminos had severe ghosting on anything remotely bright, and were just as sharp as my stock EP's. The meade zoom would not achieve focus whatsoever, and the Celestron 8-24mm zoom and LX both had severe 'kidney beaning' I guess is the phrase and were unusable. 

What gives? Do I have to spend hundreds to get an EP worth keeping or am I just not noticing the differences, or am I just getting duds? Are you just paying for diff. magnifications/field's of views rather than actual quality? None of these I tried were 'as good' as my stock EP's, though obviously had diff. characteristics (eye relief, FOV, etc.)... is that all you're paying for? 

I also wonder if having a f/5 scope is the problem? Are fast scopes more 'picky?' 

[alan potts]

You must have been very lucky with your stock eyepieces as most are not that wonderful. I am surprised that you fround Luminos not to your liking, ghosting is something that I saw in my Meade S 5000's 82 degree eyepieces but only on Venus Sirius and Jupiter and the odd very bright star. I didn't find it that bad and could live with it.

To get away from that type of issue you will have to spend TeleVue money as in ultra wide eyepieces it is more difficult to control abberations of all types. Personally i have never seen ghosting in any of mine and I do have a few (too many really).

My advice is try to get hold of some Meade's or ExSc 82 degrees EP's and see how they are for you, other than that it is either look the other way or spend rather a lot of Dollars.

Kidney beaning is often just a case of getting used to an eyepiece, some need more time than others, TV eyepiece's do have this issue on one or two but once you know where to place the eye, they are fine.

Alan

[pevsfreedom]

Thanks for the recommendations. I was looking at those Meade 82's as the wide FoV in the Luminos was nice. 

My stock 30mm Super View is actually leaps and bounds above everything I've tried. The plossl is 'just as good' as all of the ones I tried so justifying the $ is hard. 

[alan potts]

You are living in the right place to take advantage of the massive secondhand market the USA has. Plossl eyepieces are really good but they suffer from short eye-relief below about 10mm F/L because of design, even TeleVue stop their range at 8mm, I always wondered why until I bought the 11mm Plossl, then I had the answer.

How is the air there in LA these days, last time I was there it was not really that good for seeing stars, I bet there are some wonderful sites after a drive out of town though.

Alan

[pevsfreedom]

You are living in the right place to take advantage of the massive secondhand market the USA has. Plossl eyepieces are really good but they suffer from short eye-relief below about 10mm F/L because of design, even TeleVue stop their range at 8mm, I always wondered why until I bought the 11mm Plossl, then I had the answer.

How is the air there in LA these days, last time I was there it was not really that good for seeing stars, I bet there are some wonderful sites after a drive out of town though.

Alan

That's the reason I looked beyond the Plossl because the eye relief is so ridiculously small but honestly I preferred it over everything else I tried! Odd.

The sky here is horrible. I went up to a college observatory a little out of town last weekend as I was -AMAZED- at how many stars I could see, and that sky was really 'bad' too, just not as 'bad' as my sky The constellations were actually 'constellations' rather than the one star per constellation like I'm used to here.

That could be another thing with the EP's I'm sure, if everything looks bad maybe I just can't notice the differences due to the overall 'badness'!

Having said all of that you have to be very, very patient (at least while stargazing) to see anything here, but I pride myself on my star-hopping abilities and I can usually find what I'm looking for!   I live in the suburbs and do most of my observing from my driveway (which luckily has 20 foot hedges surrounding it that block out a lot of street light). At that event last weekend (my first star party) everyone was relying on GoTo's, and I was finding objects left and right with the 'opened up' skies, it was fun. I can't wait to drag it out to a real 'dark sky' site, which I'm planning next new moon. 

[ronin]

I am not familiar with the Luminos, usually zooms forgo performance (at least a little) for the multiple focal lengths available - so them not doing great I can understand - the X-Cel's I would have expected better from.

f/5 scopes are sort of at the boarderline of where problems begin. Slower then you tend to be OK with eyepieces, faster and you may need to consider the more premium varieties.

If the sky is really bad then a scope will not really make it better, they just collect all the light and so you still get everything.

Better eyepieces are going to be difficult. All options tend to mean spending money to find out as well.

TV Plossl:

If the eye relief on the plossl is acceptable then there are the TV Plossl's to try, the shortest is 8mm so you would get 5-6mm of eye relief, they are good, generally sharp everywhere and will work down to f/4

Paradigms:

These get reports as being good and are the same cost as the X-Cels, thought here is that they may work when for whatever reason the X-Cels don't quite.

ES 82's.

Liked by a lot of people, they have the 82 degree field, however they do not come in long focal lengths at 1.25" format. Not sure of the 68 degree eyepieces that ES do, have read some poor reports of them.

TV:

Delos: Another very good eyepiece, but the cost is now around $350.

Nagler: Again very good and again up around $400.

Ethos: Another from the TV stable of eyepieces, $570 area.

TV do the Panoptic but not 100% sure of these, I actually thought they ceased producing them some years ago. However Eyepiecesetc list a number of them. The "new" Delite's seem to be non-existant - they were announced and no one actually has a stock of them, not sure what TV are doing with these.

Vixen SLV:
No experience of these but a couple of people here have them and rate them highly, $240. If wide views are what you want I think these do not supply that aspect, 50 degrees seem normal.

Vixen LVW's no idea of these.

Pentax:
Another that has an excellent reputation, again I know nothing of these, again $360 area.

With your scope I would avoid the Baader's as they tend to not be good in a fast scope.

If you know anyone with a TV Plossl that you could try at a decent location I would suggest that as a first option. The TV Plossl is a simple eyepiece, but they have a habit of performing very well indeed. What a TV Plossl is not is a big impressive looking eyepiece, and a lot want big impressive looking.

[Tzitzis]

I think I'm going to start a topic about filters and EP's cause I'm new but I would like to ask here, what's an eye relief? 

[Andy Mitchell]

Its the distance your eyeball needs to be from the last bit of glass in the eyepiece.

With the plossl design the eye relief is proportional to the focal length (something like 2/3rds ish) so for short focal lengths your eyeball is almost touching, which is less pleasent to use and means you cant keep your spectacles on if you need them.

[Tzitzis]

Got it thanks. My EP's do not have that I think xD

[rwilkey]

Eye-relief is the distance your eye needs to be from the eyepiece glass, ie good eye-relief means the eye does not have to be close to the glass whereas poor eye-relief means you have to get the eye ever closer to the optical plane to see the view. Good eye-relief is considered to be around 15-20mm, but sometimes you get what is called 'kidney-beaning', this means the eye is not quite in the right place to encapture the view.  The telescope and eyepiece produce what used to be called the 'Ramsdon disk' or now called 'Exit pupil', this is a small image produced by the optics and sets at a certain height from the optics of the ep.  Perhaps this image demonstrates (from Wikipedia):

Eye relief
1 - Real image 2 - Field diaphragm 3 - Eye relief 4 - Exit pupil

[Chris]

Really surprised about the Luminos, I've not noticed any ghosting on Jupiter and Saturn with mine. I've also heard very good things about the LX. 

Maybe try a second hand Vixen SLV or ES82 next, there must be an eyepiece out there that suits you other than the stock eyepieces. It's usually the stock eyepieces that are bad.

[John]

Really surprised about the Luminos, I've not noticed any ghosting on Jupiter and Saturn with mine. I've also heard very good things about the LX. 

Maybe try a second hand Vixen SLV or ES82 next, there must be an eyepiece out there that suits you other than the stock eyepieces. It's usually the stock eyepieces that are bad.

I'm really surprised about the 30mm Super View. I used to own one a few years back and found it very poorly corrected across the 2nd half of the field of view even with my F/6.5 refractor. My thinking was that it was "astigamtism city" in anything faster

[Tzitzis]

So EP's with good eyerelief have like a rubber extension covering this distance (distance 3 in the WIikipedia pic) in order to place your eye upon?

I mean I can't have my eye away from the EP. I am sticking my eye as close as I can to my EP that's what I do now with my (crappy) EP's which i guess have no eye relief. 

P.S: I'm embarassed but I do not know how to add a pic with my EP stored in my PC. How do I do that            

[pevsfreedom]

Really surprised about the Luminos, I've not noticed any ghosting on Jupiter and Saturn with mine. I've also heard very good things about the LX. 

Maybe try a second hand Vixen SLV or ES82 next, there must be an eyepiece out there that suits you other than the stock eyepieces. It's usually the stock eyepieces that are bad.

I could barely see Saturn from all the ghosting with the Luminos. LX was definitely worse then my stock plossl. 

I'm really surprised about the 30mm Super View. I used to own one a few years back and found it very poorly corrected across the 2nd half of the field of view even with my F/6.5 refractor. My thinking was that it was "astigamtism city" in anything faster

I was surprised too. I did some reading and found they are usually pretty favorable actually. It gave me the best views of DSO's out of the lot by far, especially with the 2x barlow (~80x with my scope). 

[jetstream]

Something is wrong, with your Luminos or possibly the collimation/cooling of your scope. I have 3 Luminos and they work very well, are you talking about scatter that makes Saturn hard to see? My 7mm Luminos is an excellent widefield planetary eyepiece that would rival ( or beat) ES or black and green with the same AFOV.

What form of ghosting or aberrations are the Luminos giving?

[Chris]

I could barely see Saturn from all the ghosting with the Luminos. LX was definitely worse then my stock plossl. 

Something sounds a bit wrong here if you ask me. I'm not sure what though? Admittedly the fastest scope I've used the Luminos with is a slow f9 and your scope is no doubt faster than this, but usually it's just the edge sharpness that suffers with fast scopes.

Next time I'm observing I'll try moving my eye position around to see if I can invoke any ghosting. 

[pevsfreedom]

Collimations good, I'm very OCD about getting it right. Everything looked good in the other EP's. The 10mm Luminos was by far the worst. The 15mm had no ghosting on Saturn, but the 10mm had ghosting on nearly everything, including scatter. It was really bad. I sent it back. The 15mm didn't impress besides the wide FoV. I think I'm gonna save up and get the Meade 8.8mm 82 degree and maybe the 20mm and try those out, since the wide FoV is pretty nice to have. 

[pevsfreedom]

Something is wrong, with your Luminos or possibly the collimation/cooling of your scope. I have 3 Luminos and they work very well, are you talking about scatter that makes Saturn hard to see? My 7mm Luminos is an excellent widefield planetary eyepiece that would rival ( or beat) ES or black and green with the same AFOV.

What form of ghosting or aberrations are the Luminos giving?

It was about a week ago but for Saturn specifically it would give off 'ghost' Saturns that moved opposite of where Saturn was in the field. There would also be random aberrations of light around the field, it was a mess and I think that the 10mm might have been defective. Those issues weren't present in the 15mm but the 15mm didn't stand out as any better then my stock 30mm (barlowed of course to be also 15mm basically). 

[Chris]

I've heard the 10mm is the worst in the range, but your description sounds so bad I can only think it must have been a Friday at 4.59pm in the eyepiece factory Luminos. Good call sending it back.

[pevsfreedom]

I've heard the 10mm is the worst in the range, but your description sounds so bad I can only think it must have been a Friday at 4.59pm in the eyepiece factory Luminos. Good call sending it back.

Lol. Very well could have been it.

[SpaceWalker]

I made a thread a few weeks ago about eyepiece recommendations.

I've tried Celestron Luminos 15 & 10mm

Meade 8-24mm zoom,

Celestron 8-24mm zoom,

and Celestron LX 9mm eye pieces.

None of them were any better, and most were probably worse then the stock eye pieces that came with my scope. It came with a Super View 30mm and a standard 9mm plossl.

You must be kidding... the 30mm SuperView is the worst eyepiece I looked through ever (I currently have more than 2 dozens EPs), the 9mm plossl was just OK, looked through it once. IMO, something is wrong with your skies and/or scope (mirror, collimation etc) 

[SpaceWalker]

I'm gonna save up and get the Meade 8.8mm 82 degree and maybe the 20mm and try those out, since the wide FoV is pretty nice to have. 

The 8.8mm Meade UWA (as well as the ES82) is one of the best in this line, I have it and enjoy a lot in my f/6 Dob. As for the 20mm Meade UWA, be careful,  It got a lot of negative feedback on CN and Amazon just few days ago had 4 of them used (probably, returns) priced approx. 50% of new and significantly lower than 1.25" UWAs. From my experience it happens when there is something wrong with an eyepiece. I can recommend the 18mm ES82 or even the 20mm ES68 instead. To my taste the 20mm ES68 provide not wide enough TFOV that why I got the 82*AFOV eyepiece in this FL range, but it's subjective and you may like it. Optically, both of them are perfect.

[pevsfreedom]

The 8.8mm Meade UWA (as well as the ES82) is one of the best in this line, I have it and enjoy a lot in my f/6 Dob. As for the 20mm Meade UWA, be careful,  It got a lot of negative feedback on CN and Amazon just few days ago had 4 of them used (probably, returns) priced approx. 50% of new and significantly lower than 1.25" UWAs. From my experience it happens when there is something wrong with an eyepiece. I can recommend the 18mm ES82 or even the 20mm ES68 instead. To my taste the 20mm ES68 provide not wide enough TFOV that why I got the 82*AFOV eyepiece in this FL range, but it's subjective and you may like it. Optically, both of them are perfect.

I picked the 8.8mm up new on eBay for $85 with 2 day delivery and free returns. Don't think I could have found a better deal. The 8.8mm will put me at 142x which is the 'sweet spot' for the LA skies, so I'm excited to try it out. Interesting you mention the 20mm, I was actually thinking of trying that out too. Maybe I'll just stick with my stock 2" and grab the 14mm to fill in the gap between 9 and 30mm. Thanks for the recommendations. 

[pevsfreedom]

You must be kidding... the 30mm SuperView is the worst eyepiece I looked through ever (I currently have more than 2 dozens EPs), the 9mm plossl was just OK, looked through it once. IMO, something is wrong with your skies and/or scope (mirror, collimation etc) 

I swear it was my favorite. I found it got pretty decent reviews actually online. Something is definitely up with my skies