What would you do if you had to give up all but five of your eyepieces?

[Mr Spock]

I'm never going to find out of course even though I have way too many. But it is a thought. What if you did limit yourself to just five eyepieces? Across different scopes it may be difficult, but not impossible.

I'd keep:
30mm UFF
22mm LVW
13mm Nirvana
7mm Nirvana
4mm Nirvana

Overall I think for me that would be the best compromise, if not the best eyepieces. There are eyepieces I would miss - which is why I have a large collection 

n.b. Barlows etc not allowed for this exercise 

[Roy Challen]

Well, I only have 6 eyepieces and one of them,  a Meade plossl, is rarely used so that would have to go. Job done 😄

[City9Town0]

I'd have to go out and buy four!

[Don Pensack]

Let's see:

17.5mm Baader Morpheus

11mm TeleVue Apollo

9mm Baader Morpheus

7mm APM XWA

6mm TeleVue Ethos

But there are others I'd miss.  5 is a harsh number when covering a 60-500x range, but I could live with 8.

[Swoop1]

get a smaller case?

 

😉

[laudropb]

Tele vue 25 mm plossl and 3, 5, 9 and 15 delites.

Edited July 29, 2023 by laudropb

[bosun21]

I would narrow mine down to 

30mm UFF  

 17.5mm Morpheus  

 12.5mm “.  “

  9mm.    “.   “

  6.5mm.  “.    “

 I take it that barlows etc aren’t being counted.

[Sunshine]

I would end up with just the five I have now 😂

3.5mm XW

5mm XW

9mm Morpheus

14mm XW

21mm Hyperion

[Elp]

Already gone through this exercise, don't see the point of having a lot of them, when observing you only tend to use one or two depending on what you're looking at. I did however keep my 12mm Xcel LX for a specific purpose, because it generally outperforms all the rest for HA viewing.

A more difficult question to answer would be, if you could only have one scope... (Which has likely been asked many times before).

Edited July 29, 2023 by Elp

[John]

Are zooms allowed ?

 

[Xilman]

Buy two more to bring my total up to five.

[Louis D]

My typical go-to A-team favorites would be as follows:

40mm Meade 5000 SWA decloaked

17mm ES-92

12mm ES-92

10mm Delos or 9mm Morpheus (hard to pick between them)

5.2mm Pentax XL

3.5mm Pentax XW

While I really like my 30mm APM UFF, it just doesn't have the wow factor of the SWA for some reason.  Perhaps because it gives up too much (~10mm) in field stop size to the SWA. 🤷‍♂️

[John]

2 hours ago, John said:

Are zooms allowed ?

 

Assuming they are not:

Ethos 21, 13, 8, 6 and 4.7mm 

 

[DirkSteele]

I actually have a photo on my website for the five I would  keep (well almost, sub out the 4.5mm Delos for the 10mm). And as per @John I might be cheating a bit with a zoom but it is an eyepiece. Otherwise I would keep in the 4.5mm and add the 10mm with removal of the zoom.

[Clarkey]

I have 7 scopes and 3 eyepieces - am I getting things the wrong way round??😂

[Mandy D]

5 hours ago, City9Town0 said:

I'd have to go out and buy four!

I'd have to go out and buy three!

[Stu]

If no zooms allowed:

31mm Nagler

24mm Panoptic

12.5mm Docter

7mm XW

3.5mm XW

 

If zooms allowed:

31mm Nagler

24mm Panoptic

12.5mm Docter

8.9mm to 17.8mm Leica Zoom

3mm to 6mm Nagler Zoom

 

Hmmmm, what to do about binoviewing?

2x25mm Zeiss Orthos

24mm Panoptic

8.9mm to 17.8mm Leica Zoom

3mm to 6mm Nagler Zoom

 

Tricky, I don’t like this game 🤣🤣

 

[scarp15]

"Difficult but not impossible"; well maybe.

Not exactly consistent but,

31mm Nagler

21mm Ethos

10mm Delos

6mm Ethos

4mm DeLite

 

[Don Pensack]

4 hours ago, Elp said:

Already gone through this exercise, don't see the point of having a lot of them, when observing you only tend to use one or two depending on what you're looking at. I did however keep my 12mm Xcel LX for a specific purpose, because it generally outperforms all the rest for HA viewing.

A more difficult question to answer would be, if you could only have one scope... (Which has likely been asked many times before).

I constantly monitor that when I am in the field.  My last time out, I used 8 of 13.  The time before that, I used 11 of 13.  The time before that, I used 12 of 13.

I typically will look at objects from 10" wide to 1.3° wide, which requires vastly different magnifications (60-500x) and eyepieces (30-3.7mm)

It's hard to have only a few.  I could see having 9, but I'd be hard pressed to decide which eyepiece to unload.  I'm looking at 2 right now (4.7mm and 4.8mm), one of which can go.

But I need to spend some time with both to decide which, and the nights are so short, now.

[Spile]

Does that mean I need to buy three more eyepieces?

[RT65CB-SWL]

Take five! 🤔

I would keep these…

• TeleVue Nagler 13mm [type 1 & type 6]
• TeleVue Radian 6mm & 8mm
• Svbony 6mm UWA [red-line & gold-line]
• [AstroBoot] 1.25”/18mm UWA
• SkyWatcher 2”/28mm LET|LER

 

If zoom e/p’s are allowed, then I am keeping these too…

• TeleVue Nagler 3-6mm
• Svbony SV215 3-8mm
• unknown [AstroBoot] 7-21mm

Edited August 1, 2023 by RT65CB-SWL

[VNA]

Hello, first 2 inches barrel: -36, -32, and -25mm

then 1,25 inch barrel: -22, -16mm

PLUS a 3X Barlow 

[Albir phil]

No problem I only have five to start with 

[bomberbaz]

3 zooms and 2 fixed length eyepieces, jobs sorted

[MalcolmM]

I'm an outlier here; XWs and Naglers being second best for me.

I'd keep my 3 TOEs for high power. 28mm Tak Erfle for low power wide field (wide field! I can hear you all laughing 🙂) and 18mm Tak Abbe for something in-between.

Mmmmm common sense says drop the 2.5 TOE and choose a Tak 12.5 Abbe instead.

This is difficult!

On a plus, with the money I'd get from selling the others, I'd buy a bigger Tak. TSA-120 or TOA-130. Now there's another thread 🙂 Which of those two would be better and why? Rhetorical question, don't want to divert the thread!

Malcolm