Need advise on a Ethos?

[bamastar]

In the near future I may have the money to purchase an Tele Vue ethos Ep. This will be my first tele vue. With an ep with this amount of fov, I'm kinda stumped on which focal length to get. I have a 10" f/5 dob and my current ep's are listed in my signature. If you had my set up and had a chance to get just one ethos, what would that be? Thanks.

[estwing]

A 10" scope....13E

[brantuk]

Any of 17mm, 13mm, or 8mm to help fill out your range - my preference would be the 13mm if I could only get a single one. 

[damnut]

One of my favourite ep's is 13mmT2 Nagler. The Ethos is above and beyond, so another vote for the E13.

[John]

The 13mm Ethos was my 1st Ethos as well. I had a 10" F/4.8 newtonian back then. Funnily enough I find the 21mm, 8mm and 6mm get more use with the 12" F/5.3 that I have now but the 13mm is a very versatile eyepiece.

[laudropb]

+1 for the E13

[alan potts]

I would like to say all of them but 13mm will be a very good start.

Coma at F5 will bethere on the outer edges but not really bad, John has an F 5.3 and he feels he can do without a Paracorr, you should be in a similar boat, I need one at F4.3.

Alan

[Davey-T]

Ethos 13mm is one of my favourites along with the T5 31mm Nagler, bit of a size / weight culture shock after a Plossl.

Dave

[alan potts]

Davey-T,

One of the larger Plossl's too!

[Moonshane]

I can speak from experience (like others that have posted of course) but this is my own experience 

I had an Ethos (13mm) a couple years or so ago and although it was fabulous, I made the decision to sell it to fund among other things a solar scope and with the residue and later savings once they recovered a bit, bought a 16mm Type 2 Nagler and then a 12mm T2 Nagler. They were both wonderful eyepieces and I happily used them for a year or so until SGL10 in March. 

I tried a 17mm Ethos in my scope and the brightness difference in this eyepiece compared with my 16mm T2 shocked me a little. I almost immediately sold it and bought a 17.3mm Delos. This has the same qualities as they ethos other than longer eye relief and a narrower field although still expansive at 72 degrees. It's a much more comfortable eyepiece to use in my opinion.

I would definitely buy another Delos but not another Ethos as I feel that the Delos is a far more user friendly eyepiece and I feel more relaxed at the eyepiece using it than I did with the Ethos.

In truth you cannot go wrong with either but the above summarises my views. 

I have a good collection of various eyepieces (all TV) and this includes plossls (excellent on moon and sun), Naglers (all rounders), Delos and an old 40mm Widefield (Panoptic forerunner). They all have different feel and to some extent use but are all worth buying in my view.

[jetstream]

In the near future I may have the money to purchase an Tele Vue ethos Ep. This will be my first tele vue. With an ep with this amount of fov, I'm kinda stumped on which focal length to get. I have a 10" f/5 dob and my current ep's are listed in my signature. If you had my set up and had a chance to get just one ethos, what would that be? Thanks.

What do you want to view with it primarily? For dark site nebula obs with an OIII- the 21E is the perfect choice, for DSO hunting @ low mag the 17E and for a high contrast faint galaxy EP the 10E, this is with a scope similar to yours. Personally I love Ethos for low mag extreme widefield viewing.

Wait until you see the Veil with a 21E from a dark site.....

[kurtz9]

Just to be contrary

For the price of a single 21mm Ethos you could instead get:

An Explore Scientific 20mm 100 degree

AND

An Explore Scientific 14mm 100 degree

AND

A really nice steak dinner

and there's no shortage of folks who've directly compared the ES100-20 to the Ethos 21 and the ES100-14 to the Ethos 13 and found very little to no difference other than price.

(YMMV by scope, observer, location, and target of course)

[alan potts]

Kurtz9,

Very true but then you would always be wondering if the TeleVue is better, which it is, anyone that states there is NO difference for me is not looking hard enough. I have had ExSc amd many Meade eyepieces along side TV and Pentax and differences are there, it just depends if you want to pay for the extra mile. What I will agree is they make make very good quality and value for money eyepieces that come close to the afore mentioned.

The other thing is if you are able to pick any of these up secondhand they hold their value as do most originals after all they are not just clones of a design someone else spent ages on. 

Alan

[John]

Just to be contrary

For the price of a single 21mm Ethos you could instead get:

An Explore Scientific 20mm 100 degree

AND

An Explore Scientific 14mm 100 degree

AND

A really nice steak dinner

and there's no shortage of folks who've directly compared the ES100-20 to the Ethos 21 and the ES100-14 to the Ethos 13 and found very little to no difference other than price.

(YMMV by scope, observer, location, and target of course)

Or you could consider the Lunt 100 degree alternatives which seem to be as good as the ES 100's from recent Cloudynights reports and have another dinner on the savings over the ES's. Then there are the Zhumell 100's which are not quite as good as the ES ones but still every decent and cost just 50% as much as the ES 100's. More steak dinners to be had there, maybe even a couple of nights in a decent hotel !

Choices, choices

[triton1]

Aren't the Lunt sw myriads John?

[scarp15]

The problem could arise, that it may become apparent that just one ethos is not enough. At least this happened to me after I had purchased what I thought would be one ethos, a 13E and subsequently over time, an 8 and 21E followed. Fortunately I had previously built up a set of naglers to help off-set the cost. Delos as mentioned are very worth while considering to fill in some focal lengths to. Always worth keeping ahead with the classified such as ABS.

[John]

Aren't the Lunt sw myriads John?

Yes I believe they are the same as the Myriads, the TS XWA's and the William Optics XWA's. Lunt have had the top section tapered differently and have used soft rubber eyecups like the ES and Ethos ranges.

[triton1]

That,s seems to worry me too, buy the 13e you will then want the 21e then the holy hand grenade the31t5 nagler and then the 8e oh just typed out my whish list damm

[bamastar]

I was thinking of getting a couple of the ES line instead,or some other type, but I've been told by a few people that with my F/5 an ethos would be a workhorse in my scope. I own a ES82° 11mm now and I do love it. Little bit of coma at the edge but not enough to go out and buy a corrector for. I've used a few naglers before and actually wasn't all that impressed with them. They were good but the Orion Stratus ep I put in afterward I liked more. I thought that was weird cause I was thinking I would just fall in love with the nagler, but to me it was just kinda OK. I'm hoping to be at a star party on the 8th to test out a few ethos. I'm manly viewing anything deep sky. I'm trying to build a good ep collection so when I do buy my dream scope in a few years, I won't be buying more ep's for it as well.

[scarp15]

I'm hoping to be at a star party on the 8th to test out a few ethos. I'm manly viewing anything deep sky. I'm trying to build a good ep collection so when I do buy my dream scope in a few years, I won't be buying more ep's for it as well.

Good plan.

[John]

If you liked the Stratus more than a Nagler then my guess is that you may prefer the Delos to the Ethos. The eye relief of the Stratus (known as the Baader Hyperion over here) is quite a bit longer than the Naglers (and other UWA eyepieces) which would make it feel more comfortable to use. The Naglers optics are superior, especially in F/5 scopes but comfort is important as well.

The Delos will give you much better edge of field correction than the Stratus / Hyperion does in your scope.

To save Kurtz9 the trouble, I may as well mention that the ES 68 degree eyepieces are better performers than the Stratus / Hyperions too but they don't have the eye relief of the Delos.

Lets throw in the superb Pentax XW's to add to the mix

[allen g]

Marc, good thinking. That is exactly what I did and very happy about it.  There will be more than one scope in the future but great EPs last regardless of scope.  The ethos EPs are exceptional and you pay for that quality.  Optically the delos is the same but 72* instead of 100*.  I have both and they serve different purposes the former to planetary and the latter for lots of other targets, especially those that require wide field.   As for the ES 100* which I also have (14mm and viewed through others), they are fine EPs (although in my opinion not the same as ethos but of terrific value).  Skip the steak dinner as it only lasts one night and invest in your love. Go for it.   

[kurtz9]

Kurtz9,

Very true but then you would always be wondering if the TeleVue is better, which it is, anyone that states there is NO difference for me is not looking hard enough. I have had ExSc amd many Meade eyepieces along side TV and Pentax and differences are there, it just depends if you want to pay for the extra mile. What I will agree is they make make very good quality and value for money eyepieces that come close to the afore mentioned.

The other thing is if you are able to pick any of these up secondhand they hold their value as do most originals after all they are not just clones of a design someone else spent ages on. 

Alan

No I wouldn't, because it's not.

I'm running a 9.25" F/10 scope, and not getting it to any bortle 1 sights in the foreseable future.

I'd about bet cash money you couldn't tell the difference between TV and ES eps under those conditions in a blind comparison... (just as soon as someone figures out how to do an honest blind comparison of EPs )

When I compared them myself- and this was before I'd decided to "keep" either- so I had no horse in the race at that point- I was perfectly willing to keep the TVs if they were actually noticeably better.... they weren't.

Now- in a much darker sky, with a super highly trained observer, and a much faster scope (and maybe without any paracorr) maybe you can start to see differences that'd matter...  the folks who spent twice as much on EPs certainly seem to think so anyway

But an awful lot of people sure don't seem to be able to-

Heck, here's a guy who analyzed them so deeply he xrayed and was unable to find any significant difference between em even then (plus a lot of actual in-scope testing)

ES14-100 vs Ethos 13:

http://www.svenwienstein.de/HTML/es_14mm_ethos_13mm_English.html

For that matter, Rod Mollise, who presumably knows a bit about observing, having published a number of astronomy books and all, also commented that he couldn't find any significantly different-

It's quite possible your eyes are better than mine...but...

 

My result in one on one testing of the Ethos vs. ES100 at the Chiefland Astronomy Village a while back not long after the ESes came out was "virtually indistinguishable."

Here another thread-

http://www.cloudynig...tific-14mm-100/

Of the 4 people who have directly compared both on page 1 we get:

1 saying they're basically identical in performance

1 saying he prefers the ES

1 saying he only prefered the Ethos due to how ER impacted him

1 saying the ethos has a very very slight edge in field curvature

or this-

http://stargazerslou...fic-100-degree/

Here's another where he compares 3 different FLs of ES100 vs the comparable Ethos EPs and then another poster also mentions directly comparing ES100s and Ethoses

Again they're basically a pick-em situation with the 9mm ES beating the 10mm Ethos but the 13/21 ethos slightly better than the ES but "very close"

As to resale, gotta disagree there too.... we just had this conversation over on CN, and I was shocked how much resale $ the TV EPs lost...  $650 new Nagler 31s go for $450 used...just the lost resale there would cover almost 2/3rd of what I bought my equivalent ES82-30 for brand new... 

(Granted the TVs start with a lot higher price to lose value from....but I don't consider that a selling point either)

As to the steak dinner thing-  If you live someplace a steak costs over $500 (the price difference between a 20mm ES100 and a 21mm Ethos)... or even just over $200 (difference between the new ES100-14 I recently bought and a new Ethos 13).... you should really think about going vegan

[DRT]

In the near future I may have the money to purchase an Tele Vue ethos Ep. This will be my first tele vue. With an ep with this amount of fov, I'm kinda stumped on which focal length to get. I have a 10" f/5 dob and my current ep's are listed in my signature. If you had my set up and had a chance to get just one ethos, what would that be? Thanks.

I have quoted the above just to get back to the original poster's question

I have all of the Ethos range from 6mm to 21mm and absolutely agree with those who recommend the 13mm as a first stab into the Ethos world. It is the most versatile and most used EP in my case and has outlived many others that have come and gone over the past couple of years. It was the 13mm that made me decide to have the Ethos range as the backbone of my EP collection.

You will not regret buying a 13mm Ethos, especially if you can find one second hand and in mint condition.

[John]

.......For that matter, Rod Mollise, who presumably knows a bit about observing, having published a number of astronomy books and all, also commented that he couldn't find any significantly different-

It's quite possible your eyes are better than mine...but...

 

My result in one on one testing of the Ethos vs. ES100 at the Chiefland Astronomy Village a while back not long after the ESes came out was "virtually indistinguishable."

I've changed the colour of the Rod Mollise quote for you in your original post - black on dark grey is difficult to read !

I thought green on black was a little easier on the eyes