Celestron Luminos 31mm mini review

[Stu1smartcookie]

Having purchased the above EP I am giving my thoughts after its first light. I have no bias towards Celestron or to its products and as it’s bought with my own money I feel justified in my views ( no pun intended) Firstly the EP comes well packaged and very well presented . It’s a good start  , secondly this EP is big .. no , it’s huge . My scope and in particular the Baader click lock held the diagonal and the EP very well although I can well imagine that smaller scopes will suffer with the weight . It puzzles me why there is so much difference in size of certain EPs . 
So let’s get in with the pluses and the minuses . The construction and build quality are first class , it really feels premium and has a very useful twist up eye cup , which we will get to soon . 
The Luminos was attached to my Celestron  8SE , giving me a magnification of around 60x.. I tried to use the EP without twisting up the eye cup as it felt natural but in effect it wasn’t great , in fact I found  it a bit of a faff to get the right viewing height , in the end , for me , twisting the eye cup until it was fully extended worked and didn’t produce any blackout . I viewed a number of DSOs and all showed fairly sharp views with decent contrast . However I have had similar views with much cheaper EPs in the past , so I would say it’s ok . I live under bottle 4 skies and last night it was quite dewey ( hello autumn) so this factor may have had an influence on the EP . 
Using the 8SE the stars were fairly sharp over most of the view but I can imagine a coma corrector would be necessary for faster Newtonian scopes . It was a strange experience looking through an EP with such a wide field of view , 82 degrees I believe . Maybe I have a sweet spot of around 70 degrees as previously I have used a Baader Aspheric 36mm which seemed to give a sharper view . Through the Luminos it seemed there was almost too much going on . That is probably  not  the fault of the EP of course . 
Onto the planets  , Jupiter and Saturn whilst quite low were pleasingly sharp although I would say the EP is quite low power for planetary . Even so , Jupiter gave  up its usual main banding which was very sharp , I was quite pleased. I could not see the Cassini division in Saturn’s rings . More power and maybe a bit better seeing needed as Saturn was just above a nearby roof .
Overall it’s a bit of a mixed bag , and some additional viewing tonight will be needed . If I’m honest I have had as good views from EPs from the likes of SVBony and better viewing experiences from using Baader EPs … the EP looks the part and feels premium but if the viewing cannot satisfy the user then everything else is wasted . I have since watched a YouTube review from BD Observatory and I concur with most of what he said . But I don’t think it’s fair to judge the EP over just one night … time will tell if it’s a keeper . 
To sum up 

Brilliant build quality 

premium feel 

good sharp views , but a coma corrector needed for newts 

Maybe a bit to wide angle  for my taste

and certainly very very heavy , so good balancing needed . 
Blackouts present when the eyecup was at its lowest ( annoyingly ) 
 

[Knighty2112]

Good review. Always wondered about these EP’s from Celestron. 👍🏻

[sorrimen]

Great review. Not enjoying wider angles certainly helps your wallet 😆 Have you considered decloaking to cut down the weight? 

[Astro_Dad]

Useful to have a first hand review of one of these as not seen too many - thanks. I’m expecting a rather more “economical” 2” 26mm through the post any day now - nice to have the option of wider angle low power - for me 26mm on my Dob will give about the max exit pupil I’d want but we’ll see when I get to test it! 

[badhex]

Nice review, thanks Stu. Hopefully it fares a bit better with repeated viewings! 

[Peter Drew]

I have a 19mm and 7mm Luminos eyepiece.  They work well enough in a 16" SCT and a 20" F3.5 Dob with a Parrcorr.  Certainly heavy!

Wide angle eyepieces, particularly 2" fit versions need to have large bodies to house the large lenses to give the wide field of view.   🙂