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Choices choices. Planetary e.p's


paul schofield

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Good evening all. Thank you all for your recent advice I received regarding my purchase of a low powered 30-38m e.p. I ended up ordering a 35mm Skywatcher Aero ed. 

I am now looking at a planetary E.P's for use in my f5 203mm Bresser Messier around the 6mm mark & have a short list of, in price order;

Skywatcher Ultrawide 6mm at £28.00,

Skywatcher UWA  6mm at £39.00

Explore Scientific 52 6.5mm at £58.00

OVL Nirvana 7mm at £69.00

Or Explore Scientific 62 5.5mm at £76.00

I am trying to get any advice on performance regarding these ep's  on my f5 reflector.  Will it be a case of the most expensive will be the best ? 

Does anybody have experience with any of these at f5. Any advice greatly appreciated. Thank you. 

 

 

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I have experience with the Nirvana and they are very nice performers. It seems you're looking for a wide field eyepiece for planetary observing, but perhaps using a longer focal length good quality orthoscopic or Plossl along with a 2X barlow could be a better option. You'd retain the eye relief while you'd be using an eyepiece that's corrected well on axis for planets. Modern barlows are excellent and dont impede the performance of an eyepiece, and many planetary observers use them to great effect. 

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Not sure if I can give good advice on this as my experience is rather limited, but here are my observations on the EPs that you listed:

- I used SW UWA 58deg 7mm and I also used 6mm BCO (I see you have BGO 6mm listed in your signature). There is simply no contest between the two SW UWA that I had was indeed much more "user friendly" in terms of observing comfort due to longer eye relief - but that is it. Noticeably less sharp overall, threw ghosts on bright targets like Jupiter with my 8" F/6 dob. I don't remember pushing it much in terms of faster scopes although I'm certain that I used it with F/5 refractor at the time but since that refractor is achromat and was not meant to do high power views - I can't remember / comment on edge performance. I can only say that I don't remember any sort of disaster on the edge of the field. Don't have it anymore

- I recently purchased ES62 5.5mm and I find it very good. Again, experience is very limited, but I'm happy with that EP in terms of ergonomics and field of view. Sharpness is also very good. I can't be 100% certain on that since I used it with 4" Mak and at F/13 it is certainly going to be easy on EP and I was pushing mag of what Mak can really deliver - but view did not fall apart and I was able to observe the moon regardless the fact mag went over x230.

That EP was meant to be used in my other scopes (F/10 achro and F/6 newtonian) - but I still haven't used it like that, so above is very limited at best. I do have a feeling that it will be a good EP (I own a few more ES EPs - like 11m and 6.7mm 82 line and those are very good EPs but that is probably out of budget).

In any case, from list that you made, I would personally go with ES62 5.5 (and I did at some point not long ago) - but do bare in mind that this is based on fairly limited experience.

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I reckon you should be thinking about Vixen SLV's. They are really good planetary eyepieces and can be bought for less than £100 these days. Here is a review I did of them a while back - the 6mm was a wonderful planetary performer:

 

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Thank you all for that info. I've added the vixens to my short list too, thanks John. I do still own the Baader genuine ortho, but to tell the truth I never use it as I find it a real challenge like looking through a straw, albeit with a great image once found. 

Great suggestion Mike regarding Barlow use, I tend to use my Tal x2 with my 18 and 8 BST starguiders to good effect. 

Again thank you all for your valued suggestions. 

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1 hour ago, paul schofield said:

Thank you all for that info. I've added the vixens to my short list too, thanks John. I do still own the Baader genuine ortho, but to tell the truth I never use it as I find it a real challenge like looking through a straw, albeit with a great image once found. 

By all accounts, the Vixen SLVs below 9mm actually have a 45 degree field like their predecessors the NLV and LV did.  Thus, they're going to appear straw-like to you as well, but with much better eye relief.

The 6.5mm Meade 5000 HD-60 is very well corrected at f/6, has a 65 degree apparent field of view as I measured it via projection, and is comfortable with or without eyeglasses thanks to having both a flip up-down eye cup and a twist-up eye cup.

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Thank you all for that info. I've added the vixens to my short list too, thanks John. I do still own the Baader genuine ortho, but to tell the truth I never use it as I find it a real challenge like looking through a straw, albeit with a great image once found. 

Great suggestion Mike regarding Barlow use, I tend to use my Tal x2 with my 18 and 8 BST starguiders to good effect. 

Again thank you all for your valued suggestions. 

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