Meade 5000?

[Robindonne]

Hello fellow umbrella gazers.  I have a question about a set i probably going to pick up this weekend.  Im really very inexperienced so i dont exactly know what these eyepieces are.  It looks like a series 5000 to me.  But is it a model thats rated well or is it from a bad series.  It has the 20, 14, 9 and 5,5 mm in it.   Im really curious how these are rated by veterans.  

[John]

They are Series 5000 plossls.

I have owned a couple of them. They are fairly average performers I thought. The Meade HD60's (below) are much better:

[Robindonne]

Hm ok thx.  Do you mean they underperform compared to a more common plössl? One from the green 4000 series for example. Iwill check the state they’re in before i pick them up.   Very much thx.  You might have been one of the veterans i hoped to hear from😅

[John]

I seem to recall that they perform about as well as the Meade 4000's and 3000's but have a flashier body. They pushed the field of view out to 60 degrees but the design didn't really handle that well so the edge correction is lacking. If your scope is F/8 or slower they should be OK.

The HD60's were a different optical design and handled the 60 degree field somewhat better.

 

 

 

[Louis D]

They are 5 element, 60 degree, positive only eyepieces except for the 5.5mm which has 6 elements and might be negative-positive design.  They are very sharp in the inner 50% (30 degrees) and then get progressively worse to the edge in sub-f/6 scopes.  It's been rumored that they were resurrected as the ES-62 line of eyepieces since all the focal lengths match up.

[Robindonne]

Oke.  Well they might work then.  They are for a young girl traveling with her mak.   So not really a fast scope.   Thx for the information and opinions.  

[John]

1 hour ago, Robindonne said:

Oke.  Well they might work then.  They are for a young girl traveling with her mak.   So not really a fast scope.   Thx for the information and opinions.  

For a Mak they should be fine.

I recently bought a low cost 25mm eyepiece as a travel eyepiece for my F/14 90mm mak and it is really sharp right across the field in that scope. I doubt it would do well in my F/5.3 dob but thats not the scope it will be used with.

 

[Louis D]

Here's how the Meade 5000 Plossl 40mm looks in a field flattened AT72ED f/6 refractor (top) and in a Synta (Orion/Celestron) 127mm f/12 Mak (bottom).  The difference in scale is due to the difference in focal lengths between the two scopes.  However, it's pretty clear that at f/6, things get ugly toward the edge, but at f/12, it looks pretty nice.  You may need to select and expand the f/6 version to see the details.

[Robindonne]

Cancelled it.   It was part of a etx-90 deal. But the scope had some damage.  Plus the average rated eyepieces made me decide to skip this one.  Thx for all the help and opinions