Show us your vintage eyepieces..

[Nakedgun]

3 hours ago, John said:

Those Celestron "Halloween" plossls are very hard to get in the .965 inch fitting. All of those are made in Taiwan I think.

The "diamond Z" 6mm ortho is made by Tanzutsu in Japan I think.

The Kellner 25mm might be of Vixen manufacture, again in Japan. I used to have one branded Vixen and it looked just the same. Similarly the Celestron branded barlow lens.

Hard to find these decent quality .965 inch items these days.

 

 

 

I took another look at the barrels on the Ploessls and you're quite right about the Taiwan origin. The 12.5mm says 1 1/4" on the barrel, the others - .96" and all four have what appears to be an added .965" attachment with "JAPAN" stickers on them. Apparently, these ep were made available for both formats at the time.

Like the barlow, the Celestron diagonal has Vixen logoed endcaps.

And, I agree finding quality .965" items difficult anymore. I'm not holding my breath a decent scope will be forthcoming, alas.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Nakedgun

[Rob]

My oldest eyepiece... Early 1980's - All glass optics made in Japan. My 127L loves it, very sharp!.

[badhex]

My small collection of vintage EPs:

• Swift-branded 0.965“ Circle-T 12mm and 20mm Kellner which came with my Charles Frank 6" Newt, donated to me by my Grandad
• Charles Frank "ultra-wide" RAS-threaded, again came with the scope. FL unknown but I believe this is ex-military, maybe for binoculars or a viewport of some kind. Here it's attached to the helical focuser
• Swift-branded 0.965“ Circle-T 26mm Kellner which I recently picked up

As I now have three of the set of four Swift branded Tani Optical EPs (TA-2, TA-3 and TA-4) it would be nice to pick up the final 40mm TA-1 Achromatic Huygens, even if it might not be upt to much and definitely restrictive in the FOV.