6mm planetary eyepiece

[Ben Ritchie]

I'm looking around for a 6mm eyepiece for planetary use. Eye relief is important (so no orthoscopics ) and a reasonable FOV is good too. Will be used mostly with the 12" dob.

There's obviously the B/TMB 6mm if I can find one, there's also a WO 6mm SPL that I know nothing about. Anybody tried those, or have other suggestions?

[philsail1]

Hello "Ritchie!"

Have you looked at these:-

http://www.orionoptics.co.uk/ACCESSORIES/eyepiecespage.html

I have the 5mm NLV Lanthanum which gives excellent high magnification views of the Moon and planets - and the field of view and eye relief are excellent. (placing of the eye to eyepiece is a bit critical though, otherwise you get a black circle at the edge one edge of view). This eyepiece gives very nearly as good a view as a similar size Orthoscopic, but has a much better field of view, and far better eye relief. The NLV is a much nicer eyepiece to use than my 6mm Orthoscopic. (Both eyepieces are made in Japan).

I also have a 10mm version of the NPL Plossl, which again is an excellent eyepiece for Moon and Planets. Good eye relief and no problems with blacking at edge of view. This eyepiece gives views on a par with a 10mm Celestron Plossl, with about the same good eye relief, and field of view.

Of the two eyepieces I bought from Orion Optics last year, in my opinion the cheaper 10mm NPL Plossl is a bit better value than the more expensive 5mm NLV Lanthanum - mainly because of the lack of darkening around the edge of field of view if you don't get your eye in the right position.

Hope this helps.

If you would like to try these two out, I would be willing to loan them to you to use for a few days. (All I would ask is for you to put a £1's worth of first class stamps in the package (to help me with postage costs) when you return them to me!).

Regards,

phisail1

philsail1

[John]

Hi Ben,

I've tried a couple of the clones of the BO / TMB Planetaries (the Telescope Services versions) and generally they were very good. My only hesitation is that I did have an older one (unbranded but looked identical to the BO / TMB's) that had some of the internal reflections that affected some of the initial production run and I had to so some light "surgery" on that one to blacken the lens retaining rings inside - once done though it also performed very well - certainly as good as my T6 Naglers. I can see why they are compared with TV Radians.

As a dob / porta mount user, wide field is important to me as well. In the end I've gone for a Nagler T6's / 2.5x Powermate combo because of that factor.

John