[settled] 12 mm Planetary Eyepiece. Ortho or Zoom?

[alex_stars]

Hi all and once again thank you all for your valuable input. 😀👍

I had now two nights (rather short as clouds moved in) to play with my existing 8-24 mm zoom and come up with a list of priorities. Without looking at my post from early on, here is my list of properties that are important to me for my new EP:

• sharper, more contrast views.
• eye relief not too short (even though I don't wear glasses)
• FOV can be narrow, don't mind that. My current zoom has a calculated FOV of 47.5 at 18 mm and I am just fine with that for Jupiter and Saturn
• eye lens of my current zoom is 24 mm, nice.
• A yes and I have to honestly say I really enjoy zooming.

Now I observe quite often with an ADC in my visual light path, which moves the effective focal length of my 180 Mak to 2956 mm. Also when I use the ADC, I don't want too huge and too heavy EPs, even though a Morpheus should be possible. Taking together all the ideas of the post so far, I decided to go for the following options:

• 7.2-21.5 mm Hyperflex. This is just too tempting. Thanks @John, @johninderby, @chiltonstar(via PM)
• 18 mm Baader Classic Ortho. That still has some nice eye relief and should be very sharp. Using an ADC, this results in 164x magnification with my setup and an exit pupil of 1.1 mm. This should be really nice for Jupiter. I enjoyed the views of my current zoom at 18 mm the last two nights
• Baader 1.3x / 2.25x Q-Barlow. That one will bring the 18 mm BCO down to 13.85 mm with the 1.3x element screwed into the ortho. This results (with ADC) in 214x magnification and an exit pupil of 0.84 mm and I guess that just should be really pleasant for Saturn. I played a bit with my zoom today and got some nice views, even though the seeing was not the best.

As I have also a Hyperion Barlow, I can push the 18 mm BCO down to 8 mm. Thanks @F15Rules for the BCO and Barlow idea. Having the new zoom and an ortho will allow my to do all kinds of comparisons, between the two zooms and the ortho... with and without ADC... I look forward to that.

Upgrade paths for the future are also clear:

• one day maybe a 12.5 or a 14 mm Morpheus, that would be interesting too. Thanks @iPeace
• or one day maybe a 14 mm Pentax XW. Thanks @dweller25

In a few days I will place an order so comments are still welcome.

Again thanks to all who participated. I really enjoy these discussions.

Clear nights,

Alex

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by alex_stars

[iPeace]

I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Clear skies.