Meade series 5000 UWF 82 AFV

[View2]

Greetings,

I am new here at the longe. My telescope is an ES ED 127mm F/7.5 Apochromatic triplet (fl=952mm). Had first light Friday.  This is my second scope as I spent about 10 years with an 8-inch schmidt-cassegrain, and then about 15 years with nothing, now this.

I haven't seen a mention of meade eyepieces here at all. Are they any worse than Celestron? Just curious, I like mine.

I have a rather low quality 2x barlow and am considering replacing it with a 2" 2.5 x Barlow (which will also accept one and a quarter inch eyepieces with included adapter). My diagonal is 2".

Right now I have a 2" Meade series 5000 20mm widefied, 9mm Celestron X-el LX and a cheapo 6mm Plossl.

Now, the 2" barlows are really not much more than the 1-1/4" ones. I have only found 1 lens in the 2" 2.5X style.

The question I suppose is : Would it be decadent to replace a 2x 1-1/4" Barlow with a 2 inch barlow? It seems like it would be brighter.

 

[Louis D]

No change in brightness that I could ever discern.  My 2" barlows are usually sharper than my 1.25" ones, though.

[John]

The Meade UWA 82's are pretty decent ultra-wide eyepieces from what I've read of them. Should work well with your F/7.5 refractor.

For quite a while here in the UK the Meade 5000 UWA's were priced quite close to the Tele Vue Naglers so the latter tended to get the sales. More recently the Meade UWA design has appeared under the Maxvision branding in Europe with much lower pricing and these have proved very popular.

[alan potts]

Just to back John up a little, not that he needs it, I have had all the Meade UWA's apart from the 18mm, I found them jolly good eyepieces in all my scopes up to F 5.3. I only sold them as I got a very bad case of TeleVue Fever, of which there is no know cure. Had I not been able to afford the black and green devils I would have been more than happy with the Meades. Over where you are you should be able to pick them up S/H pretty easily.

you won't go far wrong with them unless you have an insanely fast scope.

Alan

[View2]

Indeed. I had the televue 40mm widefied but sold it 15 years ago....man it was nice.

[Louis D]

If you liked the TV 40mm widefield, you'll love the TV 41mm Panoptic, 40mm Meade 5000 SWA, or 40mm ES-68.  All are nearly perfectly corrected for astigmatism and lateral color to the edge.

[View2]

Just looked....good grief, over 500 clams for a 1-1/4" 41mm TV panoptic.  Drool. It has been decades, but I remember this aperture fever and eyepiece obsession...want them all.  I think my next eyepiece will be a televue.

[Louis D]

I have the 40mm Meade 5000 SWA and love it.  Unlike the 41mm TV Panoptic, there are no reports of a fuzzy field stop with it.  I can report it is razor sharp.  It really needs a field flattener in a short refractor and a coma corrector in a Newtonian to truly shine.  It's great without them, but near perfection with them.

On the other hand, I have the original mushroom top, non-nitrogen purged Explore Scientific 30mm 82 degree UWA eyepiece.  It falls apart in the last 10 degrees with astigmatism and lateral color.  The 31mm Nagler T5 apparently is perfect to the field stop.  I'm tempted to pony up the big bucks for one for that reason.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I had the Meade Series 5000 14mm UWA, and it held its own against the Nagler 17T4 and 22T4 in all things except eye relief. Its 14mm eye relief was plenty for most people, but for me with my glasses it was insufficient. Otherwise an excellent EP.

[Stu]

On 18 May 2016 at 17:55, View2 said:

Just looked....good grief, over 500 clams for a 1-1/4" 41mm TV panoptic.  Drool. It has been decades, but I remember this aperture fever and eyepiece obsession...want them all.  I think my next eyepiece will be a televue.

The 41mm Panoptic is a 2" eyepiece, and a big beast at that!