New Christmas Eyepiece Reports

[alanjgreen]

2 hours ago, Timebandit said:

You have put me off my desire for an Ethos, and re enforces my choice of the likes of Pentax XW and my quality Ortho set.?

@Timebandit Don’t be put off so easy. If you are manual dob user then you will be shooting yourself in the foot  

Pick up a second hand one and make your own mind up!

[Timebandit]

22 minutes ago, John said:

Been there, done that, about 3 times !

I really like the TV plossls but my scopes are mostly used on undriven and alt-azimuth mounts so some additional AFoV is very welcome

In one sense you can say that it's remarkable that the TV plossl can rival an Ethos for sharpness and light throughput (not quite for light scatter or image tone though, IMHO) but another way of looking at it is that it is remarkable that the Ethos can deliver similar qualities across a 100 degree AFoV, deliver quite a bit more eye relief in the shorter focal lengths, and still meet Tele Vue's critera of being sharp right across the field even in fast scopes.

Of course you pay handsomely for this but it's not an easy (or cheap) thing to achieve.

If you can do without the AFoV there are lots of £'s to be saved though, no doubt about it

 

 

 

 

I still have the odd Televue Plossl, and very good they are to. One of my first proper eyepieces (by this a quality construction and quality optics eyepiece)

But when you do eventually look through a wider field eyepiece you do realise the meaning of looking through a straw when it comes to the viewing experience through a plossl. And in the short focal lengths especially, when you go to a better eye relief eyepiece you really start to appreciate the comfort a longer eye relief eyepiece can make at keeping you at the eyepiece longer. Thus making the whole experience of observation a more friendly experience.

Horse's for courses I suppose but presently I am more than happy with my Pentax XW and Nagler combination for comfortable wide field with great eye relief views. And my Orthos for there ultimate sharpness for planetary and lunar in the refractor and where I find the narrow field helps concentrate the eye better on the target without the distraction of a wide field of view. The TV plossl is now reserved in pairs for my binoviewers.

 

 

 

[alanjgreen]

15 minutes ago, Piero said:

In my case, UWA eyepieces have not (so far) trilled me. After reading so many comments about this topic and looking through Naglers and Lunt 100 myself, I wonder if this feeling of immersion is also somehow linked to the eye relief and face shape. I have to say that I find a 35 Panoptic more immersive than the 30mm ES 82 I had. This is surely a nonsense for most users, I believe. Same goes for the Docter as this seems to me more immersive than the Lunt 100. Possibly, a certain facial shape is needed for these 82 and 100 AFOV eyepieces in order to adjust and rotate the eye without effort. I don't know. However what I do know is that I find eye-tilting more distracting than enjoyable. 

Spending time at the EP is important. When I got my first Ethos(21mm) it took some time to get used to the change ( from Delos 72 degree ). The difference between 72 degree and 100 degree fov is overwhelming for the brain to take in at first, so much to see... But you get used to it and now I can get the full fov in my ethos’s with ease.

Eye placement is also no issue once you and your brain get used to using them.

We should take first light with a pinch of salt! Only after many lights do we experience what the designer has made for us. I am not sure I could go back to less than 100 degree now I have had many many hours using them and my brain has learned how to take it all in.

Patience my dear friend is the key to a happy relationship with your eyepiece  You learn to love each other in the end.

[Piero]

@alanjgreen 

Well, my problem with the 100 Ethos-like or 82 Naglers-like is not eye placement, but the fact that I don't like much moving my eye around the field. My favourite eyepieces are those where I have all the field of view in front of me, effortless, so that I can observe on-axis, but also be able to observe what happens off-axis. 

As I said, this has nothing to do with the eyepiece, 20mm Lunt, which is a very good and a bargain one, but with personal tastes.

[25585]

The eye end width is half same issue as binoculars, too wide and eye centre distance from nose can be frustratingly restrictive. Add critical positioning to avoid kidney bean/cut-offs etc, spectacles, and all the good aspects fade away as unusable.

When I owned a 13mm Nagler T1, it had a wonderful wide FOV. But my eyesight changed to need glasses, thus its eye relief became inadequate and I switched to Radians. But turning to Japanese makes, Vixen and Pentax, is currently as close to what I need. Both LVW and XW respectively are Erfle-level FOV. 

Delite 18mm is said to be the best of that range, a future purchase maybe next year. I think if you want to keep to 1.25, and have wide FOV shorter FL scopes are more important.

 

[alanjgreen]

1 hour ago, Piero said:

@alanjgreen 

Well, my problem with the 100 Ethos-like or 82 Naglers-like is not eye placement, but the fact that I don't like much moving my eye around the field. My favourite eyepieces are those where I have all the field of view in front of me, effortless, so that I can observe on-axis, but also be able to observe what happens off-axis. 

As I said, this has nothing to do with the eyepiece, 20mm Lunt, which is a very good and a bargain one, but with personal tastes.

@Piero I can now use all my ethos (except the 21) and take in the whole fov without moving my eye. It just took practice and time to learn how to do it. I never thought about it, it just happened naturally by itself. My brain must have worked it out on its own  

However, The 21mm fov is too vast and if I move my eye then I see more appear at the edges. 

[Moonshane]

With very wide fields I never tried to take the whole field in rather I looked at the centre and effectively saw the remainder with averted vision.

In other words don't try too hard

[YKSE]

2 hours ago, alanjgreen said:

@Piero I can now use all my ethos (except the 21) and take in the whole fov without moving my eye. It just took practice and time to learn how to do it. I never thought about it, it just happened naturally by itself. My brain must have worked it out on its own  

However, The 21mm fov is too vast and if I move my eye then I see more appear at the edges. 

Can you see the edge clearly without moving your eye? I mean to see star colour and sharpness while looking in this way?

[wookie1965]

As I have been unwell again and no clear weather I have not had the chance to try the 11mm TV plossl I acquired. 

[John]

34 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

As I have been unwell again and no clear weather I have not had the chance to try the 11mm TV plossl I acquired. 

Sorry that you are feeling unwell wookie - hope you are feeling better soon so you can put some photons through that quality glass

My excuse for not observing tonight was tickets to see the new Star Wars movie with my son and also I have a head cold as well so don't want to make it worse !

There will be other nights soon

[John]

38 minutes ago, YKSE said:

Can you see the edge clearly without moving your eye? I mean to see star colour and sharpness while looking in this way?

Without having some sort of sensor attached to the eyeball I think it's difficult to say, with certaintly, that it's not moving to take in the view.

What can be said, I think, is that some folks seem to be able to see the full 100 degree AFoV comfortably and some find it less than ideal. I've read reams on this on here and on Cloudynights and I'm sure the vast majority of the posts are giving a completely genuine view of how they found these eyepieces.

I've used 100 degree eyepieces by TV, Skywatcher, William Optics and Explore Scientific and I felt they were all wonderful pieces of work in terms of optics and machining. If you don't enjoy the hyper wide AFoV I don't think any of them will suit you though

I guess it's a similar situation to binoviewers - some people love them and some (like me) just don't get on with the things

 

 

[Piero]

Hope you gentlemen feel better soon! 

I also have a cold, but tonight was the first clear night after ages, the Berlebach arrived last week, the Ayo II arrived today.. Seriously... I could not resist! I spent two nice hours observing the Moon, M42 and the open cluster trio in Auriga..  Now I cannot stop sneezing and have some fever too, BUT, oh well.. I would have felt very sorry otherwise!  

[Charic]

7 hours ago, Timebandit said:

Newbies take note those extra £££ are seemingly going on getting a wide field view and eye relief, and note necessarily optics sharpness. The humble TV plossl can out gun for optical sharpness a much more expensive wide view eyepiece.

I would agree, that's where your money goes if you need the extra field and longer eye relief.
I found the image quality no better from a Delos over my Starguiders, on my f/6 reflector.

5 hours ago, Timebandit said:

Maybe time to go for a set of Televue Plossl by the sounds of things me thinks? 

The TeleVue Plössl brand is well known, but I still favour the revelations after my comparison tests.
Eye relief is very short, possibly the reason their shortest EP stops at 8mm.

[Piero]

On 26/12/2017 at 17:30, Piero said:

I only managed to try the 10mm BCO once since its arrival. It was a reasonably transparent moonless night, so I only enjoyed testing this eyepiece on DSOs against the Nikon MC Zoom, with and without Zeiss Barlow 2x. The BCO is certainly a nice eyepiece and a real bargain for £35 (in the s/h market). To be fair, this eyepiece is better than most eyepieces on DSOs, but lies behind the very top (which anyway can cost more than 4 times the cost of a new BCO). Personally, I expected the BCO to be in the same league with the Docter and Zeiss 20-75x zoom on DSO, but on all the tested targets, it was a tie between the BCO and the Nikon MC zoom. To my eye the Nikon MC zoom is a bit better (less scatter light) than the Vixen SLV on DSOs, whereas the level of sharpness is similar on planets. It's a lovely zoom and I reckon it should work successfully with binos, but to my eye, it is behind the Docter and Zeiss zoom. I'm looking forward to compare the Nikon zoom vs the BCO on Lunar. All the comparisons were done on-axis as I tend not to observe off-axis. The BCO is a bit soft off axis because the field was not cut off at 42-45 deg, but intentionally increased up to 52 deg to facilitate star-hopping. In any case, at least on my Tak f/7.4, the edge of the BCO was still usable.

Tonight I had a chance to (informally) observe the Moon with the 10mm BCO and Nikon MC zoom + Zeiss Barlow 2x. I tried hard to spot and compare the smallest visible craters, but these two eyepieces were essentially showing the same amount of detail at ~150x. To my eye the only difference was the colour tone, which was a bit cooler in the 10mm BCO. Anyway, the views through these eyepieces were very fine. 

[25585]

I always feel more comfortable with narrower FOV. Maybe all those years of 4:3 TV screens, movies (pan and scan), then square CRT monitors.

Even with nebulas, once found, I like zoning on areas rather than seeing the whole. Globulars and smaller objects images magnified. I have never seen the Veil Nebula knowingly, that as a whole is on my bucket list.

[25585]

9 minutes ago, Charic said:

I would agree, that's where your money goes if you need the extra field and longer eye relief.
I found the image quality no better from a Delos over my Starguiders, on my f/6 reflector.

The TeleVue Plössl brand is well known, but I still favour the revelations after my comparison tests.
Eye relief is very short, possibly the reason their shortest EP stops at 8mm.

Ethos eps may have longer eye relief than tv plossls, but its not long for spectacle wearing. Delite, then Delos are best mid-price TV optics all with good eye relief - 20mm.

[YKSE]

18 minutes ago, John said:

Without having some sort of sensor attached to the eyeball I think it's difficult to say, with certaintly, that it's not moving to take in the view.

What can be said, I think, is that some folks seem to be able to see the full 100 degree AFoV comfortably and some find it less than ideal. I've read reams on this on here and on Cloudynights and I'm sure the vast majority of the posts are giving a completely genuine view of how they found these eyepieces.

I've used 100 degree eyepieces by TV, Skywatcher, William Optics and Explore Scientific and I felt they were all wonderful pieces of work in terms of optics and machining. If you don't enjoy the hyper wide AFoV I don't think any of them will suit you though

I guess it's a similar situation to binoviewers - some people love them and some (like me) just don't get on with the things

John,

I think we're talking about different issues. seeing wider AFOV and seen wider AFOV clearly is different IMHO.

I agree with you that human eyes have no difficulty in seeing over 100 AFOV, we can easily verify that by looking straight ahead, and have periferal vision of estimated over 100°AFOV.

Just as easy to verify how wide AFOV we can see clearly:

Look at some straight lines, a slight open door ,e,g, turn some 30°, and look straight forward as you do observing, how clear can you see those lines? in My case, Nada.

So If we want to see the edge clearly (because only so we can determine if it's sharp in the edge or not), we need to move our eyes, to see clearly in a  AFOV of 60°.

Don Pensack has explained many times in CN, that in order to see clearly an AFOV of 82°+, it's not enough to roll the eye, we'll need to turn our head too, and that's the exercise  needed for UWA or XWA EPs:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/506575-ethos/?p=6735460

[wookie1965]

57 minutes ago, John said:

Sorry that you are feeling unwell wookie - hope you are feeling better soon so you can put some photons through that quality glass

My excuse for not observing tonight was tickets to see the new Star Wars movie with my son and also I have a head cold as well so don't want to make it worse !

There will be other nights soon

I had a lumber puncture last Thursday to drain fluid off my brain so its going to be a couple of weeks at least, thank you for your concern.

[Ags]

I got a Sky at Night magazine

[scarp15]

I think that it depends a bit on the scopes that you are using, the nature of the subjects you plan to observe and becoming quite clear as to specific roles that a particular eyepiece might contribute towards. A narrower field provides an intimate observation, an ultra wide field, encapsulates a subject amongst the geography of a star field or profiles an extended object or cluster of objects. It is interesting to compare the variations between differing eyepiece types, for example I used to own a 6mm Delos, which I'd replaced in time with a 6mm Ethos. When observing Jupiter, with my 8" F6 dob, the Delos had revealed slightly more subtle detailing compared to the Ethos, yet the Ethos view with the extended field and prolonged drift was personally compositionally pleasing at 200x, different characteristics. I also use a 20mm and 25mm TV plossl which have specific uses and is interesting to contrast on for example star clusters with other eyepiece types. Having a variety can provide for  a dynamic set of options. 

Beginning to feel as though I'd just about got over my own cough n' cold, hope that those suffering get over theirs soon.

[John]

28 minutes ago, YKSE said:

John,

I think we're talking about different issues. seeing wider AFOV and seen wider AFOV clearly is different IMHO.

I agree with you that human eyes have no difficulty in seeing over 100 AFOV, we can easily verify that by looking straight ahead, and have periferal vision of estimated over 100°AFOV.

Just as easy to verify how wide AFOV we can see clearly:

Look at some straight lines, a slight open door ,e,g, turn some 30°, and look straight forward as you do observing, how clear can you see those lines? in My case, Nada.

So If we want to see the edge clearly (because only so we can determine if it's sharp in the edge or not), we need to move our eyes, to see clearly in a  AFOV of 60°.

Don Pensack has explained many times in CN, that in order to see clearly an AFOV of 82°+, it's not enough to roll the eye, we'll need to turn our head too, and that's the exercise  needed for UWA or XWA EPs:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/506575-ethos/?p=6735460

Excellent stuff and I've been over it many times I can assure you

There was always a nack to getting the best from ultra and hyper wide eyepieces, as there is for short focal length orthos and other equipment types of course.

Don's favourite eyepieces include the Ethos range I believe so he clearly has got the technique sorted now.

But if you try a 100 degree eyepiece and don't enjoy it after a little while using it ........ don't buy any of them !

The nearest I got to an Xmas eyepiece was a new Delos 14mm which I purchased a couple of weeks before Xmas. Seems a very nice eyepiece

When I get a chance I'll compare it with my 13mm Ethos and report back on the results .....

 

[F15Rules]

Christmas this year for me coincided with the arrival of two new to me (used) eyepieces: a 7mm Pentax XL and a 40mm TSED Paracor (Aero/Paragon clone).

These nicely fill gaps in my line up and I am happy to have them ' on the team", so to speak.

Both arrived in lovely condition.

The weather over Christmas has been truly awful here, so when it cleared earlier this evening I hauled out the FS128 for a short session. It was a cold, breezy night, and frankly the log burner seemed much more attractive than the back garden!

But I viewed two objects, M42 and the Moon. The moon is waxing gibbous now and high up, so very bright. Mare Ibrium and the lunar Appenines presented really nicely in the 7mm XL, the Paragon 40mm and the Pentax zoom. M42 was still quite low at 08.15 this evening, but I caught the E star in the Trap with direct vision ?..no sign of F though, washed out by the Moon. 

First impressions encouraging and I'm happy to have 4 Pentax EPs in my stable now( 3 shown below and not shown is the 12mm XF which is a nice EP as well (time will tell if it justifies staying longer term, when the SMC zoom at 12mm setting gives just as sharp views with almost as wide a field)?.

Dave

[25585]

Pentax XL SMC Zoom 8 to 24mm. From FLO sale. 

Eye relief fine right through, a bit easier in fact than the XW. A really pleasant experience. 

Eye lens as can be seen is slightly dipped in the middle but is almost flush at the edges with the tube. 

[Louis D]

Well, it's only taken 6+ months, but I've finally gotten around to taking photos of my new (or new to me) eyepieces over the last couple of years with eyepieces I've had for years.  Hopefully, they'll help give people a sense of scale of the different lines when matched up against each other.  In particular, the ES-92s look innocent enough until you place them next to eyepieces like the Nagler T4s that people used to consider behemoths back in the day.  By comparison, they look positively svelte.

All of these eyepieces can be comfortably used with eyeglasses from my personal experience.  See my other thread, 30mm APM UFF vs. 27mm Panoptic vs. 30mm ES-82 opinions, for photos of my 27mm to 30mm eyepieces.

First up, the 12mm and 17mm ES-92 eyepieces:

Next up, my 17mm eyepieces as a group.  The ES-92 arrived Christmas '16.

Left to right, they are the Explore Scientific 92, Nagler Type 4, and Astro Tech AF70:

Here are my 12mm and 13mm eyepieces as a group.  The ES-92 arrived Christmas '17, the Meade sometime earlier that year.

Left to right they are ES-92, Nagler T4, AT AF70, and Meade 5000 HD-60:

Next up, the 14mm group.  The Morpheus and Meade arrived in '17.

Left to right, they are the Meade UWA smoothie, Morpheus (original eye cup), and Pentax XL

Finally, the 9mm and 10mm group.  The Morpheus arrived for Father's Day and the Meade in '17.

Left to right, Delos, Morpheus, Meade 5000 HD-60, and Vixen LV:

[Stu]

@Louis D great post, thanks for putting it together. Some lovely eyepieces you have collected over the years. It is amazing how the sizes vary isn't it? I've looked through a 17mm 92 degree ES and thought it was excellent, very comfortable and plenty of fov.