Looking forward to this .....

[John]

I've been wanting to try out the Explore Scientific 92 degree series eyepieces for some time. They seem to get overwhelmingly good feedback from those who have used them and are reputed to be the companies best eyepieces to date.

Not many eyepieces out there that are larger and a touch heavier than Ethos's. Just look at those eye lenses

So some dark winter nights with my trusty 12 inch dobsonian are called for to see how these beasts compare. Should be fun

[Stu]

I've looked through a 17mm John and it was very good, comfortable to use; a nice balance of eye relief and field of view. Think you will enjoy them.

[bingevader]

I for one, will eagerly await your excellently written reviews!

[John]

Brief 1st light for both the 12mm and 17mm tonight. The eye relief is slightly longer than the eye cup. Finding the correct eye positioning seemed to be more critical than for the 21mm and 13mm Ethos but I do have years of experience with those and just 20 minutes or so with the ES 92's !

The views were very immersive, more so than both the above Ethos. The ES 92's seem to "lift" the star field towards my eye more than the Ethos does. Not sure why - perhaps the massive eye lens and longer eye relief ?

The Ethos might have been a tiny touch sharper right across the field but the ES 92's seemed very well corrected in my F/5.3 dob too. As far as conditions would allow, light transmission and sky background darkness seemed to match the Ethos. Seeing conditions were far from perfect though (quite poor really) and I only had time to check out the double cluster and the M31 / 32 / 110 group before clouds intervened.

It's probably fairer to compare my Delos 17.3 to the ES 92 17mm rather than the Ethos 21 as the F/L difference will impact the views so it's not quite a level playing field.

Roll on a proper session under good skies !

[Louis D]

3 hours ago, John said:

It's probably fairer to compare my Delos 17.3 to the ES 92 17mm rather than the Ethos 21 as the F/L difference will impact the views so it's not quite a level playing field.

I compared my 17mm and 12mm ES-92s accidentally to my 14mm Morpheus when I just working upward in power one night.  I was shocked to find myself thinking the Morpheus felt like looking through a porthole compared to the two ES-92s.  I went back and forth, and sure enough, just going from 92 degrees to 76 degrees was enough to induce the same feeling I get going from the 76 degree Morpheus to 60 degree Meade HD-60s and Paradigms/Starguiders.  16 degrees is 16 degrees even when its 92 to 76 rather than 76 to 60.  Come to think of it, going from 60 degree eyepieces such as the HD-60s down 16 degrees to 44 degree eyepieces such as my Celestron Regal zoom at 24mm is also claustrophobia inducing as well.  Yet, going from 92 degrees to 44 degrees (less than half as wide) just seems so entirely different that I don't get that same constrictive feeling.  Sort of like going from a car to a bicycle.  Two entirely different experiences that are not really directly comparable.  Going from the ES-92 to the Morpheus is more like going from a high performance sports car to an above average performance sedan.  Both are good performers, but after driving the high performance vehicle, the above average vehicle feels decidedly lacking in comparison.  If I had never driven the sports car, that performance sedan would have seemed terrific based on my own limited experiences.

[Rob]

Interesting report thanks. I've been thinking about the ES range also. I'd like to try one at some point.

I have my Meade 82 degree EP's and love the width of field.. can only imagine how nice the extra 10 degree's would be.

Rob