Things to consider before upgrading your eyepieces

[Chris]

Eyepieces are highly subjective, what somebody hates someone else might love. Here are some things to bear in mind before upgrading your stock eyepieces. 

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Chris

[John]

Excellent presentation Chris

I loved the "attack of the Tele Vue" !

Some really good stuff in there explained clearly and with a touch of humour.

I'd highly recommend people to have a look at this before jumping into the eyepiece world. In some ways the issues and options are almost more confusing than selecting a telescope 

Your video will help a lot though

[Pixies]

Yep - great vid. I've bookmarked it in case anyone has any EP questions.

Love the drama of the falling Huygens!

[Spile]

Excellent  - informative, well presented and entertaining.

I would also recommend the non-alcoholic Adnams beer brewed for M&S. But... Out of a glass please!!

[wookie1965]

Very interesting thankyou.

[Chris]

2 hours ago, John said:

Excellent presentation Chris

I loved the "attack of the Tele Vue" !

Some really good stuff in there explained clearly and with a touch of humour.

I'd highly recommend people to have a look at this before jumping into the eyepiece world. In some ways the issues and options are almost more confusing than selecting a telescope 

Your video will help a lot though

Hi John, thank you so much, I'm very relieved it's generally received the thumbs up! especially from someone as experienced with eyepieces as yourself I'm all too aware of how heated debates on eyepieces can get so it's a worry when you inject your own personal opinion here and there.  

In hindsight I was a little harsh on Plossls, especially for someone that went back to using nothing but Plossls for several years! I probably should have mentioned that Plossls make excellent planetary eyepieces with very long focal length telescopes E.g. a 10mm would give a nice 200x with a C8, and that would be reasonable on ER and the size of eye lens.

I think the only other thing was my slight exageration with my example using a 10mm 100 degree eyepiece for best contrast with an f/5 scope. Yes true it would give the magic 2mm exit pupil, but I'm aware we need to compromise on FOV in order to fit some objects in. I think what I was getting at is people often jump for something like a 35-42mm thinking it's going to be a great deep sky object eyepiece, but often all they're doing is blowing the contrast and softening the image, as well as having black outs from the magnified central obstruction and massive ER making it hard to position the eye. I think in reality something around 15-20mm with a very wide AFOV would be a better more practical compromise.        

[Chris]

1 hour ago, Pixies said:

Yep - great vid. I've bookmarked it in case anyone has any EP questions.

Love the drama of the falling Huygens!

Thank you! and I'm glad you enjoyed that bit 😃 lol just don't ask how many takes it took trying to film that scene in super slow mo ! 

[Chris]

1 hour ago, Spile said:

Excellent  - informative, well presented and entertaining.

I would also recommend the non-alcoholic Adnams beer brewed for M&S. But... Out of a glass please!!

Haha thank you! Not sure about the glass though, you've witnessed how clumsy I am 🤪

[RobertI]

Great vid as always Chris. Very informative. Exit pupil is a weird concept but you explained it really well. I think it’s hard for many people to understand that exit pupil is unaffected by the FOV of the eyepiece; so a 6mm Plossl with 50 degree FOV will produce the same diameter exit pupil as a 6mm Explore Scientific with twice the FOV. Counter-intuitive!  🙂

[Chris]

28 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Great vid as always Chris. Very informative. Exit pupil is a weird concept but you explained it really well. I think it’s hard for many people to understand that exit pupil is unaffected by the FOV of the eyepiece; so a 6mm Plossl with 50 degree FOV will produce the same diameter exit pupil as a 6mm Explore Scientific with twice the FOV. Counter-intuitive!  🙂

Hello Rob, cheers mate. Yeah it is counter intuitive when you think of it like that. I don't think exit pupil is considered that much in general. I never used to even think about it, just the focal length and the AFOV. Oh then I learnt about eye relief before exit pupil.