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Which 3 of your eyepieces get the most use, and why?


F15Rules

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9 hours ago, Ian McCallum said:

For me it's my second hand 28mm 2" LET, great for wide views. 

Second would be my BST StarGuider 12mm ED, for closer in observing. 

Lastly would have to be the BST StarGuider ED 8mm for occasions when the seeing is good. 

That's a nice spread of powers, Ian..

The 28mm LET 2" is actually a really nice eyepiece at F8 or slower, giving nice, crisp views..ok, the edge correction can't match a really expensive eyepiece, but when viewing on axis, it gives a lovely, quite wide "context" to the  views👍.

Dave

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13 hours ago, Kon said:

It used to be 25mm box standard plossl that came with the Dob, 15mm and 8mm BST with my 8" Dob. I have recently upgraded all of them to ES including 24mm 68 degrees, 14 and 8.8 mm 82 degrees. (If seeing is good I might use the 6.7mm 82 degrees). I have decided to stick with 1.25" format for now.

Hi Kon,

That's a lovely upgrade set you have there..I've owned the ES24mm 68 deg (can you believe I got one some years ago in a Bresser Germany online sale, brand new, for £59!!😱).

It was a fine eyepiece, and only gave way to a remarkable 22mm Vixen LVW.

Dave

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13 hours ago, callisto said:

I mostly use my 4.5mm Delos for close work on Moon/planets along with a 7mm Nirvana...big widefield scanning with my ES 34mm & 24mm Maxvision...and my OVL 7.2mm-21.5mm zoom for solar work :thumbsup:

Nice selection there, Callisto👍😊.

There does seem to something of a pattern emerging here..lots of high power (10mm or less), and low power (22mm or more) being quoted, and far less in between 11 and 21mm? 🤔

Dave

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5 hours ago, jock1958 said:

Not counting the variety of eyepieces I use for binoviewing it’s my TV 3-6 zoom for planetary / double stars, TV 14mm Delos for nubulae / galaxies also TV 24mm Panoptic & TV 31mm Nagler for widefield star patterns / galaxies /  nebulae. 

Er...isn't that 4 excluding the zoom, Iain??🤭😋😂

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24 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

There does seem to something of a pattern emerging here..lots of high power (10mm or less), and low power (22mm or more) being quoted, and far less in between 11 and 21mm? 🤔

Your right...I also have the 10, 14, 17.3mm Delos what cost me a fair bit but I use the others more 🙄

 

Mark.

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36 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

Er...isn't that 4 excluding the zoom, Iain??🤭😋😂

Your right Dave, am I bad? Which one shall I delete 🤔 maybe the 14mm Delos or the 24mm Pan? Tell you what I’ll get back to you 🤣

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52 minutes ago, callisto said:

Your right...I also have the 10, 14, 17.3mm Delos what cost me a fair bit but I use the others more 🙄

 

Mark.

Thanks Mark..I love my Morpheus 17.5mm (I originally had two for binoviewing),  but so far this year I have found myself using the 9mm more, both natively and with a barlow.. using the 2.25x Baader barlow and the 9mm in my FS128 gives me 260x with a 76 deg fov, for some wonderful views of doubles.

I am going to be really interested to compare the Morpheus 17.5 with the Axiom 23mm on winter objects like M42.. in a few days the moon will be out of the way!😊

Dave

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19 minutes ago, Dave scutt said:

20211121_151229.thumb.jpg.3ccfbb868fc111c653b138beb63909a0.jpgI'm still trying to aquire more ep's I've only got 4 .

Haven't had a chance to use the 14mm yet but tonight might be clear 😱🤞

Great selection there, Dave. Not sure I'd make many changes or additions there..maybe replace the 28mm with a similar focal length ES widefield? I've owned bother the Es 24mm 68 and the ES 34mm and really liked them. The 34mm gave me some memorable views of the Double Cluster in Perseus, for example.

That extender is also very nice, and gives you some worthwhile additional options with your existing set👍

Dave

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2 hours ago, F15Rules said:

I doubt that.. John's refractors have good, strong focusers.....

 

The focusers would cope OK I think, especially the Feathertouch on the TMB/LZOS 130 - it's in another league :smiley:

Sorry for the intermittent involvement - we had our booster jabs yesterday and are feeling a little groggy today :rolleyes2:

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Just now, John said:

The focusers would cope OK I think, especially the Feathertouch on the TMB/LZOS 130 - it's in another league :smiley:

Sorry for the intermittent involvement - we had our booster jabs yesterday and are feeling a little groggy today :rolleyes2:

Ditto, John! My wife and I had them at a large sports centre about 16miles from home, as our surgery haven't any, and to be honest were much less than helpful.. same with the flu jab which we had last week 🥴.

We got the flu jabs from Boots Chemist (25 miles away, but free) last weekend, and Covid Boosters yesterday at 6pm..with quite a long queue behind us.

We both had Moderna this time, so not sure what to expect..it's now been c23 hours and so far we feel a bit lethargic and with a sore jab arm.

Ironically, the forecast is for clearing skies tonight, but I'm not sure I'm going to be tempted, as it's gone very cold here today, and the pull of the log burner and post-supper Lindor truffles may just be too hard to resist!!😂

I hope you and yours feel back to normal soon.

Dave

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8 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

Ditto, John! My wife and I had them at a large sports centre about 16miles from home, as our surgery haven't any, and to be honest were much less than helpful.. same with the flu jab which we had last week 🥴.

We got the flu jabs from Boots Chemist (25 miles away, but free) last weekend, and Covid Boosters yesterday at 6pm..with quite a long queue behind us.

We both had Moderna this time, so not sure what to expect..it's now been c23 hours and so far we feel a bit lethargic and with a sore jab arm.

Ironically, the forecast is for clearing skies tonight, but I'm not sure I'm going to be tempted, as it's gone very cold here today, and the pull of the log burner and post-supper Lindor truffles may just be too hard to resist!!😂

I hope you and yours feel back to normal soon.

Dave

Thanks Dave - we had Modena as well. Lindor truffles sound a nice way to recover !

More mundanely paracetamols seem to help but I'll probably resist the temptation to observe tonight even if the clouds do clear here. I may be doing an outreach event with Bristol AS tomorrow evening so I'll need some energy for that !

John

 

Edited by John
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This is a good chin scratcher...

As it's most used and not favourite, number 1 is my Baader Hyperion Zoom 8-24. All my other eyepieces are fixed focal lengths and give better views at their length (although the difference can be pretty marginal), but the convenience of zooming up and down in seconds to get the best view for the conditions and object makes it pretty unbeatable. 

Next would be the Aero ED SWA 30mm 68 degree. The wider views that it gives on big targets are fantastically immersive, and on targets like the double cluster there's a fair degree of colour. At a recent club meeting it held it's own against some much more expensive competition. This stopped me lusting after buying some exotic 82 degree or hundred degree monster. Ok, that last sentence is a complete lie, but it's enabled me to keep my money in my pocket a bit longer without feeling I'm hugely missing out!!

Number 3 would then be my binoviewers (not strictly "an" eyepeice)- which are the William Optics version that came with 20mm SWAN eyepieces. I have to barlow it up (it came with 1.6 and 2x barlows that drop nicely into the focuser) to reach focus, but it gives me fantastic planetary and lunar images, and bright apparently 3d views of clusters. 

Here's my eyepiece case:

IMG_20211114_122521176.thumb.jpg.f7f762bc4a3fb4a5ca834f2bdcb616f0.jpg

The ones that didn't make it are:

Celestron LX 7mm - It's very tight between this one and the bino viewers- it's a good bit better than the zoom at 8mm.

Nirvana 4mm - This gives epic lunar views when the seeing is good. But at 412x in my dob the conditions to support this are pretty rare.

Stella Lyra RPL 40mm - RPL stands for Really Perfect Lens, which means the marketing people have got hold of it. I guess "Pretty Good Lens" isn't as snappy. The 30mm has a wider apparent FOV and is a nicer view, but for low magnification on faint targets it's really good. It also doesn't have the annoying undercut of the Aero!

 

 

 

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Been quite cloudy here of late so my 3 most unused eyepieces at the moment are with my 130mm / f9 refractor

Brandon 48mm  (finder)

Morpheus  17.5mm   (open star clusters)

Brandon 8mm, with barlow,  (Jupiter)

Just based on what I've been looking at recently.

John

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5 hours ago, JeremyS said:

That’s interesting about the amount of usage your Leica Zoom gets Stu. Do you have a 1.25-inch adapter or a 2-inch? Or perhaps both? 

Yes Jeremy, I use it quite a lot. On axis it is as good as anything, very sharp and with a 60 to 80 degree afov it is broadly comparable with a bunch of Delos or XWs. I don’t think the edge correction is as good but it’s so flexible that I really enjoy using it. Eye positioning is very easy too.

I have a two inch adaptor permanently fitted to it which has a T2 thread in the bottoms. So, I can add a 1.25” adaptor to this if needed, though I rarely do as all my diagonals will take 2” eyepieces. I sometimes add the element from my AP Barcon to increase the mag a bit too.

I know some don’t get on with this zoom for some reason, but I find it excellent quality and a great way to minimise the number of eyepieces needed.

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51 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

I have been lethargic since my booster strange other people would say that I had astrazenecea. My back and hip are playing up quite significantly even though its clear out I won't be going out don't want to make things worse. 

Sorry to hear that Paul..I had AZ for my first 2 jabs and was quite ill after the first one- but not until 24 hours after the jab, and was then ill for 24 hours. The 2nd jab was better.

They told us that Pfizer is in short supply, and they are avoiding AZ due to clot scares in younger people, hence the use of Moderna:glasses12:..

Best stay in tonight just to be safe?

Get well soon Paul.

Dave

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29 minutes ago, Stu said:

Yes Jeremy, I use it quite a lot. On axis it is as good as anything, very sharp and with a 60 to 80 degree afov it is broadly comparable with a bunch of Delos or XWs. I don’t think the edge correction is as good but it’s so flexible that I really enjoy using it. Eye positioning is very easy too.

I have a two inch adaptor permanently fitted to it which has a T2 thread in the bottoms. So, I can add a 1.25” adaptor to this if needed, though I rarely do as all my diagonals will take 2” eyepieces. I sometimes add the element from my AP Barcon to increase the mag a bit too.

I know some don’t get on with this zoom for some reason, but I find it excellent quality and a great way to minimise the number of eyepieces needed.

I had a Leica Vario 7.3mm - 22mm zoom a few years back and couldn't fault it (it had IIRC a 38-60 deg range).

The best built zoom I ever owned was the Pentax XL 8-24mm, just a wonderfully solid unit and optically excellent too..very close to XWs apart from the smaller fov vs the 70deg of the XWs.

Dave

pentax-smc-8-24mm-xl-zoom-eyepiece-lrg.jpg.26d927cf5042c80b845fc632666081e4.jpg

5a65e0fbc0b10_PentaxSMCXLZoom.jpg.6d6993f4b36e3e25201f2a69ec4968dc.jpg

Edited by F15Rules
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OK, I'll bite.

I range from 61x (5.2mm exit pupil) to 493x (0.6mm exit pupil):

 

My 3 most-used:

14mm (130x), 11mm (166x) and 9mm (203x), all medium powers.

 

Honorable mentions (used very often):

17.5mm (104x) a low power, and 7mm (261x) a high power in the 12.5".

 

Less frequently used but do get some focuser time:

22mm (83x), 8mm (228x) and 6mm (304x).  The 6mm is my most used planet eyepiece, but I don't look at planets much (those little balls of light pollution).

 

Least used except under special circumstances:

30mm (61x), 12.5mm (146x), 4.7mm (388x), 3.7mm (493x)

Some of the eyepieces I consider redundant, but how do you part with an eyepiece you really like, even if it isn't used that much?

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2 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Sorry to hear that Paul..I had AZ for my first 2 jabs and was quite ill after the first one- but not until 24 hours after the jab, and was then ill for 24 hours. The 2nd jab was better.

They told us that Pfizer is in short supply, and they are avoiding AZ due to clot scares in younger people, hence the use of Moderna:glasses12:..

Best stay in tonight just to be safe?

Get well soon Paul.

Dave

Well at 56 I'm not so young so hopefully no clot scares for me. 😁

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7 hours ago, F15Rules said:

That's a lovely upgrade set you have there..I've owned the ES24mm 68 deg (can you believe I got one some years ago in a Bresser Germany online sale, brand new, for £59!!😱).

It was a fine eyepiece, and only gave way to a remarkable 22mm Vixen LVW.

And I thought I got a bargain at £100 from Aliexpress. As a new in the hobby, less than 1 year,  I am finding that it is never ending process with eyepieces. I love my new wider FOV eyepieces but I wonder what a 100 degrees might be? It is only money after all 🤣.

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