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My First Ever TV Eyepieces - Delos


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I got my first ever TV eyepieces yesterday. I bought a TS130mm F/7 Refractor to replace my ES AR152 Refractor. So I headed to my local astronomy store (Cloud Break Optics in Seattle, WA) yesterday to see if they would put it, AR152, on consignment or possibly do a trade. They made me a very good trade in price. So I got a 3.5mm and 6mm Delos eyepieces with part of it. I've never owned TV eyepieces because I couldn't afford them. So this was a golden opportunity to get a couple and they are on sale 15% off! I had the 130mm scope out 2 nights ago and found I needed some short fl eyepieces to go with it. I have some short ES eyepieces but wanted to try TV to see the difference they might make. As always it was cloudy yesterday night so I wonder how long it will be this time before I get a clear night again to try them out!!!  I won't be able to get out tonight as I have to go to work early in the morning!:hmh:

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Nice looking scope and two very good eyepieces, many congratulations! I have had all of the Delos range and the 6mm was the first I bought a good while back when they came out, it is a cracking eyepiece in many ways, mine especially as it got dropped and smashed, I bought another S/H so that must say something about the quality. I still have the 3.5mm and it should perform well in your scope which is 15mm larger than mine, I find this is about my top power.

Alan

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Well, I now have 3 Delos eyepieces!! I ordered the 10mm Delos last night from Agena Astro and they shipped it this morning! I should have it Monday or Tuesday. I have NO self control when it comes to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!! I need a 20 step program for my addiction to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, it's only money right!! I mean you can't take it with you. I told my adult kids I'm spending their inheritance.  :icon_biggrin:

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3 hours ago, gunfighter48 said:

Well, I now have 3 Delos eyepieces!! I ordered the 10mm Delos last night from Agena Astro and they shipped it this morning! I should have it Monday or Tuesday. I have NO self control when it comes to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!! I need a 20 step program for my addiction to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, it's only money right!! I mean you can't take it with you. I told my adult kids I'm spending their inheritance.  :icon_biggrin:

We understand.

:happy11:

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5 hours ago, gunfighter48 said:

Well, I now have 3 Delos eyepieces!! I ordered the 10mm Delos last night from Agena Astro and they shipped it this morning! I should have it Monday or Tuesday. I have NO self control when it comes to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!! I need a 20 step program for my addiction to good eyepieces!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, it's only money right!! I mean you can't take it with you. I told my adult kids I'm spending their inheritance.  :icon_biggrin:

Check out this long running thread:

There are lots of fellow sufferers from "occularitis" here !

 

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Terrific first TeleVue eyepieces. My first Delos was the 10mm, truly stunning eyepiece that receives continued use, even though subsequently becoming inflicted with a heavy dose of Ethos fever.

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.....still waiting to  further test mine under better conditions, so far blaming the weather, and now the brighter nights, just can't win!
Having said that, on my first quick  test, under far from perfect  conditions, the 6 &  8mm  TV's gave similar  image  detail  to my eyes, apart from the wider field afforded by the TV's.
Its just my opinion, but I don't see a remarkable difference,, considering their price and stature. If it was the case that TV's were my first choice,  I would certainly be happy with them, however my  present eyepieces work very well indeed, when conditions allow.
The next time I think conditions are perfect  with my regular EPs  I'll try the TV's again.

Its my assumption the the premium EP's should be better! Only my eyes will tell, if not......?  

The  TV15% off should be a good deal stateside,  compared to UK prices, but the second hand market  here  is Ok.

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You need decent conditions to tease out the differences between good and premium optics in my experience. Moderate or poor conditions are a great leveller.

 

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yes John quite true...... still learning from you and others as I go,  not only that, my f/6 is easily pleased, or maybe my old eyes are just happy with what they see!

Its a minefield of reasons, logic, experience,  self experiment, and fun learning.

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5 hours ago, John said:

You need decent conditions to tease out the differences between good and premium optics in my experience. Moderate or poor conditions are a great leveller.

^^^ Totally agree with this, and, if I can add, another test is to push the magnification. In my limited experience with a `premium` optics the image breaks less easy than a `good` optics.

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Under steady, semi-desert skies, the differences between Delos/XW eyepieces and other long eye relief, wide field attempts are painfully obvious in the better control of astigmatism and lateral color starting at 50% out from center.  Control of spherical aberration of the exit pupil is also markedly better (no kidney-beaning at all).  I never bought a TV Radian because of their kidney-beaning problems.  Give them time to let them show you what they're capable of.

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A couple of years back I owned a couple of very decent 5mm eyepieces, a University Optics HD Orthoscopic and a TMB Supermonocentric. The latter is often held up as one of the very best planetary eyepieces around, almost on par with the legendary Zeiss ZAO orthos.

Over a couple of months I compared the performance of these eyepieces "back to back" as often as I could. Of these sessions, two had what I'd call very good seeing. The others were more "ordinary". Try as I might I could not detect any performance differences between the eyepieces under the normal seeing conditions. On the two better nights the discernable difference was that the TMB Supermono showed the most subtle and challenging features visible on Jupiter with the scope that I was using just a little more readily than the HD Ortho. They could still be seen in the ortho but they were very slightly better defined with the TMB eyepiece. We are not talking about the regular features such as the GRS, belts and festoons here but small white spots and the mottling in the polar regions of the planet.

And that was it. The HD ortho can be bought used for around £50, maybe a little less sometimes. The TMB Supermonocentrics change hands for £300-£400 apiece nowadays.

Would anyone pay all that additional money for just a smidgeon more performance under optimal conditions ? - plenty of folks judging by how quickly the TMB Supermono's and others in their class sell !

 

 

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My new Delos 10mm got here today. Looks perfect to my eyes. No bits, dust, paint chips, etc. inside the eyepiece. Now if the weather would just give me one night of very good seeing I could see what the difference is between them and my ES eyepieces.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Well I finally got 75 minutes with NO clouds to observe with my C9.25 scope and three of the Delos eyepieces and a few of my ES eyepieces. I had the Delos 6mm, 10mm, and 17.3mm eyepieces and the 11mm, 14mm, 16mm, 18mm, 20mm, and 24mm ES eyepieces out. The Moon was out and high in the sky so that was the target of choice. First off I love the "portal view" that people have commented on with the Delos eyepieces. The adjustable eyeguards are great and make using them very enjoyable. I didn't have time to get everything down to ambient temp but after the first 50 minutes the scope cooled down enough to give me some fairly steady views of the moon. The 6mm Delos was too much for the seeing so couldn't do much of a test with it. But the 10mm and 17.3mm did a great job with excellent contrast, sharpness, and resolution.  My ES eyepieces held up just fine in comparison with the Delos. My opinion is that the Delos may have been very slightly sharper than the ES. But I'll need to try this again when I can get out and let everything cool down properly to make a final judgement call!!  The 17.3mm Delos needed quite a bit more in focus that the other two. They also have a warmer tint, coffee colored is what some people say, than the ES. The ES have a colder tint, very stark very slight blueish/white tint.  I bought the Delos mainly for my TS 130mm F/7 and ES 102mm F/7 refractors so I really want to do the next test in those scopes. Both of my SCTs are F/10 so nearly any decent eyepiece will look good thru them. But the Delos with be in my eyepiece case for a long while to come!!!:icon_biggrin:

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On 5/14/2016 at 22:40, John said:

You need decent conditions to tease out the differences between good and premium optics in my experience. Moderate or poor conditions are a great leveller.

 

Very true. It gets worse as you progress upwards through the ranks of more and more expensive EPs. I was expecting to see some difference between my Nagler 12T4 and Olly's Ethos 13mm, but the conditions were such that I could not really see any difference, except that the Nagler had the edge in eye relief.

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