Cheap Eyepieces tested on the Moon

[Stub Mandrel]

Knowing it's likely to cloud over later, I decided to follow @Charl's example and get some quality lunar shots.

250 shots later, with the 150PL set up and tracking the moon I decided to work through my budget EP collection. I am no expert so I was looking at these things:

How clear/sharp the image was.

How contrasty the view was.

How comfy/easy to use the EP felt (I wear glasses)

Any trace of colour on the moon.

How the moon 'sat' in the view.

The moon is nearly full (97%) incredibly bright (it cast a shadow as bright as light from the house!) It was an amazing thing when swapping over the EP holder I saw the moon focused in my hand! I din't use a filter as although the moon was very bright, I have seen traces of colour in it under these circumstances before.

I tried three 25mm EPs. A stock Skywatcher Super 25mm, a cheap Opticstar 25mm plossl and an ultra-cheap 'Vite' (unbranded) 23mm aspheric.

The Skywatcher was OK but I was surprised by how much more contrast the cheap Vite eyepiece had. Dark patches on the central area really stood out. Craters on the terminator ranged from jet black to sparkling white. The Opticstar wasn't quite as contrasty but gave more room for the moon to 'breath'. It was the shortest ep that age the feeling of the moon being on a background. All these EPs were 'sharp', I think the Vite gave the most '3D' view and was most comfortable to look through.

Longer EPs were a Celestron 32mm plossl and a cheap unbranded 40mm plossl. The Celestron gave a strong hint of blue to some of the maria and excellent contrast, the dark patches near the centre of the disk were little chips of black and viewing was very relaxed. It gave a perfect 'silver disc on a  velvet blanket' view, lovely to see but a bit too small to enjoy the details. The 40mm wasn't quite as contrasty and also gave nice 'overview' but eye placement seemed to be more fussy.

Going shorter my circle-t 18mm ortho gave a 'wham' contrasty sharp image, probably eh best view, but spoilt because the moon almost exactly fitted the field of view. Although it may be the best eyepiece it was too narrow a view for a comfortable whole disc and too wide a view for details.

Comparing two 10mm eps, the skywatcher standard and another Vite Aspheric, it was no contest. very similar filed of view but the cheapie was sharper, clearer and more contrasty than the skywatcher by a country mile.  The seeing was causing noticeable rippling at this magnification (120x) but I could see lovely detail everywhere, such as the slumped sides of craters.

That left the 5mm and 2.5mm Skywatcher UWA 'Planetary' eyepieces. The 5mm was great, contrasty and despite the ripples 240x didn't seem remotely excessive. I was watching a tiny, isolated mountain peak appear just past the terminator grow from a tiny star to a tiny triangle. Clearly this is the ep to use looking for fine details. It also worked well on the rest of the disc, showing details in crater rays etc.

The 2.5mm was, predictably, a step too far at 480x. The seeing wobbles were major and I could see that no significant amount of extra detail was appearing.

I did have a peep at mars, but low down and without my ADC it was badly colour smeared with the 5mm ep and now so small I could not make out any details.

 

I'm sure my budget EPs are not the bet in the world, but I'm very happy with the 5mm SW, 32mm Celestron and 18mm circle t. I also think the Vite aspherics live up to the hype about them on Cloudy nights, they were easy to use and gave much better views than the standard Skywatcher equivalents. If you have a scope with the basic 10mm and 25mm eps and you are unsure about investing a lot of cash in new ones, invest £16 in a pair of these Vite ones as replacements! They have to be ideal for outreach - cheap enough it's no disaster if they are stolen, good enough you won't feel you are cheating people out of good views.

The 'gasp' award is shared by the Celestron 32mm plossl, supplied as standard with my C90 Mak, the only ep that made me swear out loud, and the 18mm circle-t because when popped into focus on the terminator the sudden clarity literally made me step back from the eyepiece.

[Stu]

Nice write up Neil, be careful we will make an observer out of you yet

Interesting differences, I guess the top performers are not a surprise, but the cheapy Vites certainly are. Worth a punt by the sounds of it.

[Ruud]

That was a good read, Neil.

Thanks

[Paz]

Very interesting report thanks for posting. I've compared my 32mm sky watcher plossl to an expensive one and the skywatcher is better to my eyes, specifically in relation to field curvature and barrel distortion.

[Stub Mandrel]

10 hours ago, Paz said:

Very interesting report thanks for posting. I've compared my 32mm sky watcher plossl to an expensive one and the skywatcher is better to my eyes, specifically in relation to field curvature and barrel distortion.

Interesting, the SW 32mm may be the same as the Celestron one.

[Stub Mandrel]

Update for those who may be interested. I tried the Vite aspheric EPs on my ED 66. They both worked really well on the moon, although a shot with my phone camera showed a thin blue line on the bright edge of the moon (I couldn't see it naked eye).

With the 10mm stars would not in focus in the edge of the view, which seemed to be quite wide.

The 18mm circle T ortho was stunning in the ED 66. Super sharp stars right across the rather smaller FOV. This is going to seem naive but looking at the Pleiades was confusing - not just the left/right flip but because all the stars seemed the almost same size, just different brightnesses. I imagine this is a sign of a great EP, in focus!