Very 1st eyepiece - Vixen Circle-V Er-32mm Erfle

[25585]

For a few happy moments this morning, I thought I had located my closure eyepiece at a store, but its out of stock!

One of these was my very first. The one I owned has disappeared, and its become an optical holy grail to find another.

Mine was bought from Fullerscopes with my first Newtonian, and had an AFOV of about 68 degrees. As the photos show, huge eye lens - even more so for a Japanese ep of the time.

Though I have better 30-ish mm eps, the first, like first anything, becomes more meaningful than its actual worth. The Vixen was the Panoptic of the 1980s.

[25585]

ENS sold a Tak 32mm Erfle they had in stock very quickly.

[John]

I recall these Vixen Erfles being sold by Astro Systems back in the 1980's. They originally had a Vixen screw fitting but you could get a chrome push fit adapter as fitted to the one in your pictures. With a 1.25" barrel fitted the AFoV was reduced to around 55 degrees I think, more if it was a 2" barrel.

Long ago I had a Vixen 32mm Erfle in the 1.25" fitting and naively thought that it would give a 60+ degree AFoV but it was no more than a 32mm plossl in reality of course !

 

 

[25585]

Mine was 36.4mm originally. Converted it to 2 inch with converter to 42mm and then a 42 to 50.8mm. Good edge stars in a 12 inch F5 Newtonian no astigmatism or coma. 

[John]

2 minutes ago, 25585 said:

.... Good edge stars in a 12 inch F5 Newtonian no astigmatism or coma. 

Thats really quite unusual for an erfle. The ones I've used (including the Vixen) have been decent in F/8 and slower scopes but showed plenty of astigmatism when the focal ratio became faster than that.

Al Nagler produced an improved erfle design with the TV Wide Field series eyepieces. A step up from standard erfles in terms of edge sharpness but not to Panoptic standards.

My 1st proper eyepieces were smoothside TV plossls in 21mm, 13mm and 7.4mm focal lengths. I actually bought them new from Sherwoods in Birmingham and thought I was spending a fortune at £50 apiece !

I hope you find another Vixen Efle one day

 

[25585]

I bought a TV Plossl for use alongside the Erfle as my filters were 31.7mm. Then later a 35mm Panoptic when I bought the Genesis. Both excellent, especially the 35mm. I would swap either or both to have the particular 32mm Erfle though!