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William Optics eyepieces - any good?


fwm891

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I fancy treating myself to a new eyepiece(s) without taking out a mortgage. As I wear glasses (although I tend to remove them when looking through eyepieces and camera viewfinders!) I'd like something with longish eye relief. and the UWAN range was one that  caught my eye when going through the FLO website selection. Another was the Baader Morpheus range...

Looking for some thing in the 5 - 9mm range and possibly 20 - 24mm range. 1.25 or 2" fit.

So open to suggestions - would like to stay < £200 each

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I love my Meade 5000 series UWA. I'm a specs wearer (for screen and reading). I do however remove for EP usage. It took me a while to find the right fit EP's without busting the Bank!.. So I second the Opticstar XL UWA which is a take on the Maede

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The Baader Morpheus 6.5mm and 9mm are both quite fantastic and also have the long eye relief necessary for effective use with eyeglasses.  Finding something in the 20-24mm range also with close to 20mm eye relief will be a bit more difficult.  The 2" 24mm Explore Scientific 82deg is marketed as 17mm eye relief, but this is measured from the center of the eye lens, which I believe may be concave on that one (not sure).  If it is then the usable eye relief from the top of the folded down eye guard may be insufficient for eyeglasses.  I have not tried but it seems to get pretty good reviews, the APM 24mm Ultra Flat Field Eyepiece.  This is marketed as having 65° AFOV with a 29mm eye relief, plus is a smaller 1.25" eyepiece that might fit your need well.

 

Btw, I used to have the 28mm UWAN.  It is monstrously large and heavy which made it a pain to use so sold it.

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The APM 24mm UFF has about 17mm to 18mm of usable eye relief, so good enough to use with eyeglasses.  It isn't actually flat of field or sharp to the edge like its 30mm bretheren, but it's pretty good if you can pick one up used for much less than the new price.

The various 22mm 70 degree eyepieces marketed as Redline, Olivon, AF70, Astromania, Ultima LX, etc. are very well corrected to with 10% of the edge, sharp and contrasty, flat of field, and easy to use with eyeglasses without breaking the bank.

The 9mm Morpheus is quite well corrected and easy to use with eyeglasses as Bill P. says above.  If 60 degrees is enough field for you, the Meade HD-60s in 4.5mm, 6.5mm, and 9mm focal lengths are also extremely well corrected and easy to use with eyeglasses.

The UWANs and their bretheren under other marketing names are supposedly quite good for the money, but they don't have nearly enough eye relief for eyeglass users.

If you have strong astigmatism in your observing eye, you'll want to wear eyeglasses when observing, especially at lower powers (larger exit pupils).  At higher powers (smaller exit pupils), you may find you don't need your eyeglasses to get a sharp image.

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5 hours ago, BillP said:

The 2" 24mm Explore Scientific 82deg is marketed as 17mm eye relief, but this is measured from the center of the eye lens, which I believe may be concave on that one (not sure).  If it is then the usable eye relief from the top of the folded down eye guard may be insufficient for eyeglasses. 

I have the ES82 24mm and the eye relief is short. I use it mostly with the eye guard rolled down, and I don't wear glasses. I know everyone has different face shapes, but I think it very unlikely you are going to see anywhere near the full field with glasses.  Once you get down close enough, though, I do find it a great eyepiece!

Gordon

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Of the William Optics eyepieces that I have owned / used, I liked the following and thought them really well made and high performing eyepieces:

- UWAN's

- XWA 9mm (there are others in this 100 degree range now as well)

- SPL

Not so keen on the SWAN's as they seem to show quite a bit of astigmatism (seagull shaped stars !) towards the edges of the view in scopes faster than around F/8

If there had been a wider range of focal lengths available in the UWAN range I think they would have taken more sales from Tele Vue than they did. Still excellent value 82 degree eyepieces though and at around £75 - £80 each now for the 1.25" ones, quite a bargain.

 

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Agree with BilllP above,  the Baader Morpheus 6.5mm is a stunning EP with very generous eye relief, I don't think you will find better at such a reasonable price. 

I also have the ES 4.7mm but much prefer the image through the Morpheus.  

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15 minutes ago, heliumstar said:

What is it with Morpheus that it's so good? Why do all who tried them think the image is better/more pleasing through them? Me being one of them as well of course. I can't explain it...

Seeing is believing heliumstar! Once you've looked through one you just know..... ?

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I've not tried a Morpheus yet :dontknow:

The reports on them are very positive though so I'll have to take the plunge at some point :smiley:

Perhaps I'll ask FLO to lend me a couple so that I can compare them with my Tele Vue's and Pentax's and do a report for the forum :biggrin:

 

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This is off-topic for a William Optics eyepiece thread, but here is someones comparison of the Morpheus, TV Delos and Pentax XW:

http://jaysastronomyobservingblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/these-several-paragraphs-will-replace.html

I have the feeling that this comparison could be done several times by several different observers, with several different results though :smiley:

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11 hours ago, John said:

I've not tried a Morpheus yet :dontknow:

The reports on them are very positive though so I'll have to take the plunge at some point :smiley:

Perhaps I'll ask FLO to lend me a couple so that I can compare them with my Tele Vue's and Pentax's and do a report for the forum :biggrin:

 

I recommend you just go ahead and buy the 6.5mm John, and if you're not absolutely smitten I'll buy it off you and pay postage to Oz and buy myself a binoviewer! ?

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43 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

I recommend you just go ahead and buy the 6.5mm John, and if you're not absolutely smitten I'll buy it off you and pay postage to Oz and buy myself a binoviewer! ?

Thanks Geoff. I do have a few good eyepieces at or around that focal length already otherwise I might well be thinking of getting one :smiley:

If I ask nicely I think FLO would loan me a Morpheus or two to test and report back on at some point.

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Quote

 

Thanks All, It's been quite enlightening for me and the shift from William Optics to Baader through the thread is interesting and I will be looking at Baader more closely. The review above of the 4 eyepieces (by John) is interesting and I felt slightly biased from some of the wording (but then I might have been reading with a bank balanced bias !).

Comments still welcome as I haven't committed hard cash at this point...

Francis

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7 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Thanks All, It's been quite enlightening for me and the shift from William Optics to Baader through the thread is interesting and I will be looking at Baader more closely. The review above of the 4 eyepieces (by John) is interesting and I felt slightly biased from some of the wording (but then I might have been reading with a bank balanced bias !).

Comments still welcome as I haven't committed hard cash at this point...

Francis

Just to note, it's not a review by me. I just found it on the net and thought it might be of interest :smiley:

Here are a couple from me that do include William Optics eyepieces (the Skywatcher Nirvana is the same eyepiece as the WO UWAN):

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/53645-3-big-eyepieces/

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/218397-skywatcher-myriad-mwa-vs-william-optics-xwa-spot-the-difference/

 

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17 hours ago, heliumstar said:

What is it with Morpheus that it's so good? Why do all who tried them think the image is better/more pleasing through them? Me being one of them as well of course. I can't explain it...

 

I'm not sure we'll be able to ever figure it out.  Probably a combination of several factors all together (i.e., gestalt):

- Long eye relief with a very comfortable and well behaved exit pupil behavior (i.e., eye placement and holding the view).  So many long eye relief eyepieces have the design of their exit pupil such that head positioning is very sensitive and for some it just plain causes eye strain (Radians come to mind).

- AFOV is engagingly wide, but not so wide that you need to roll your eye.  So seems to be at an optimum usability point.

- Eye lens is not concave, which robs eye relief and forces you to "dip" into the eyepice to see entire AFOV.

- Housing was purposefully made as this as possible so when viewing through the eyepiece it has a very thin profile (trying to replicate the floating in space aspect of the view as much as possible like the 28 RKE).

- Contrast and clarity are exceptional (IMO) and a cut above many others;  Off axis well controlled as well.

- Thank goodness no undercut!! (a biggie for me)

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Morpheus also has very little angular magnification distortion (AMD).

Many eyepieces have positive AMD. Allowing positive AMD makes it easier for the designer to correct for astigmatism. Positive AMD means that the magnification of the eyepiece increases a few percent toward the edge of the field.  Positive AMD has the effect of radially stretching out objects (like craters) at the edge of the field, making them look elongated. It also exacerbates pincushion and it inflates the apparent field of view of an eyepiece (at the same afov, with zero AMD the true field of view is larger than with positive AMD).

Other eyepieces that have an AMD that is very close to zero are TV Delos, Ethos, and Nagler T4, and also Pentax XW. These eyepieces have a pleasing image geometry, which you notice when panning around in a dense star field, or when viewing the Moon.

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17 minutes ago, Ruud said:

Many eyepieces have positive AMD. Allowing positive AMD makes it easier for the designer to correct for astigmatism. Positive AMD means that the magnification of the eyepiece increases a few percent toward the edge of the field.

Using a yard stick and a cell phone camera, I measured the increased magnification at the edge of my 27mm Panoptic to be over 25% more than in the center.  It is quite noticeable compared to a similar photo through a Pentax XL which shows very little magnification (I didn't measure it, though).  Working backwards from the measured TFOV, it has a 65 degree effective AFOV if you want to calculate the TFOV from magnification and eAFOV.  Its actual AFOV is 69 degrees when measured with the flashlight projection method.

By comparison, the 14mm Pentax XL I was using has a measured 65 degree AFOV and a 66 degree eAFOV for TFOV calculation purposes, so it must actually be shrinking the edges rather than expanding them as in the Panoptic.  I'll have to check that Pentax photo's edges to see if that is indeed the case.

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1 hour ago, fwm891 said:

Well FLO have just taken my order on a Baader Morpheus 6.5 so I can concentrate on a longer fl now...

Thanks for all the persuasive dialogue folks ?

I really like the new 30mm APM UFF.  It's a bit lower in power than you were thinking of, but it's a really sweet eyepiece for wide, low power views with good eye relief and moderate weight and size.

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Thanks LouisD will look at that. Is this the one: https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/eyepieces/58-74-wide-angle/apm-ultra-flat-eyepieces/apm-ultra-flat-field-30mm-eyepiece-70-fov.html  ?

I've been playing with FLO's field of view options and quite taken by the fov with a ES 68° series 28mm - any thoughts anyone?

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