Budget zoom eyepiece for Mak

[Olli]

Hi all, 

I have been interested in purchasing a zoom eyepiece for the mak 127. With around the £100 mark or so. I was wondering if you have any recommendations in what I should use ? Thought it may be quite useful when observing planets. Any help would be appreciated.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Olli

[bosun21]

The Svbony 7-21mm zoom is the best in that range of magnification. They are well under the £100 budget you set. For planets the Svbony 3-8mm zoom is a well respected eyepiece but it is slightly over your budget.

Edited October 17, 2023 by bosun21

[John]

I have one of these, as well as the more expensive Baader 8mm-24mm zoom:

Hyperflex 7.2mm-21.5mm Eyepiece | First Light Optics

The Hyperflex 7.2mm-21.5mm has a narrower field of view than the Baader but is a surprisingly (for it's price) sharp eyepiece. 

I've not used one of the SVbony mid-range zooms so I don't know how it compares with those 🤔

[bomberbaz]

Agreed, I had one of these, still have the 9-27 version and it's a great bit of kit and under budget giving up to x210 which is close to the limit for the 127 anyway. 

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ovl-eyepieces/hyperflex-72mm-215mm-eyepiece.html

[Naughty Neal]

SVBony 7.2 - 21.6 are one ebay at the mo for less then £30.

The 3 - 8 zoom I saw on Ali Exp for £122 ex shipping and vat.

[bosun21]

The Svbony 7-21 received an excellent rating in this assessment of many well known eyepieces. Yellow highlight indicates the highest rating.

 

[Mr Spock]

For planets in a Mak you won't so better than the Svbony 7-21 https://astro-talks.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4585&p=94345#p94345 It has a narrow field of view but is very sharp.

[Zermelo]

I'm not sure if Svbony market two different zooms with almost the same range?

The 7.2-21.6mm looks almost identical to the OVL Hyperflex and others (but quite a bit cheaper):

 

But then there also seems to be a 7-21mm that looks different:

[Naughty Neal]

The latter 7 -21mm (sv135 ) in Zermelo's post is the slightly dearer one and the one that is highly praised.

 

The 7.2 - 21.6mm is sv191.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Naughty Neal

[Olli]

Thanks all for the help, it seems like the svbony is a clear favourite and have seen it’s only £50 . I was also looking at the hyperflex but hadn’t looked much into it. Of course the dream would be to own the Hyperion but that is a bit too expensive 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Olli

[Olli]

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

For planets in a Mak you won't so better than the Svbony 7-21 https://astro-talks.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4585&p=94345#p94345 It has a narrow field of view but is very sharp.

Thanks Michael , I’m not too fussed about the field of view as it’s only going to be used for planetary stuff. It seems to be a firm favourite for the price!

[John]

1 hour ago, Olli said:

.....Of course the dream would be to own the Hyperion but that is a bit too expensive 

Apart from the wider field of view, there is probably not a lot of difference in the performance. Especially in an F/11 mak-cassegrain which are not too hard on eyepieces.

I doubt that the Baader zoom will show you anything that the SVbony will not.

[LaurenceT]

I have both the Baader zoom and the Svbony zoom. I only bought the Svbony zoom because it fitted my mobile phone adapter.

Although subjectively the Baader is 'better" I use Svbony now with my Mak127 to get the planets in view before imaging and it's absolutely fine, if it were my only eyepiece I'd be perfectly happy with it.

[Jim L]

Comparing the measured/evaluated aberration spots of the SvBony SV135 7-21 mm zoom and the Baader MkIV 8-24 mm zoom a bit more closely:

The third, fourth, and fifth numeric columns contain the aberration spot sizes of the center, zone, and edge of of eyepiece view in angular minutes through f/4 optics. Smaller spots are better, but Ernest notes that if the aberration spots are less than 10 angular minutes the quality of the image can be evaluated as perfect.

Source: https://astro--talks-ru.translate.goog/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1483&sid=cd0a88f216e605da4c3644bea4fb42f5&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_sch=htt

Edit: I should probably add that aberration spot size is only one of many criteria that should be considered when evaluating eyepieces, and that compromises made by the designer in one area may yield benefits in another, so that as interesting as the comparison between the two zoom eyepieces may be it’s certainly not everything.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Jim L

[Olli]

Thanks everyone for the help, i will look into more reviews about the mentioned eyepieces. Both seem like great options. Slightly off topic but if i were to upgrade the focuser for the Mak would I be able to buy this adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-mak-to-sct-adapter.html and a focuser like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-focusers/astro-essentials-v2-2-dual-speed-crayford-focuser-for-sct-telescopes.html ? As unfortunately the focuser is the only thing I dislike about the scope and just can’t get to grips with it 

[Zermelo]

37 minutes ago, Olli said:

Thanks everyone for the help, i will look into more reviews about the mentioned eyepieces. Both seem like great options. Slightly off topic but if i were to upgrade the focuser for the Mak would I be able to buy this adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-mak-to-sct-adapter.html and a focuser like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-focusers/astro-essentials-v2-2-dual-speed-crayford-focuser-for-sct-telescopes.html ? As unfortunately the focuser is the only thing I dislike about the scope and just can’t get to grips with it 

You might want to start a new thread.

I can't remember if it was a Skymax you were talking about. If so, there will be some vignetting (dimming at the outer edge) if you use some eyepieces, though I've not noticed with mine.

You might be interested in:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/336529-sky-watcher-mak-127-visual-back/#comment-3662339

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/356717-sw-127-mak-ota-with-2-focuser/

 

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Olli said:

Thanks everyone for the help, i will look into more reviews about the mentioned eyepieces. Both seem like great options. Slightly off topic but if i were to upgrade the focuser for the Mak would I be able to buy this adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-mak-to-sct-adapter.html and a focuser like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-focusers/astro-essentials-v2-2-dual-speed-crayford-focuser-for-sct-telescopes.html ? As unfortunately the focuser is the only thing I dislike about the scope and just can’t get to grips with it 

If you have a 127 Mak then these aren’t big enough to accept the external focuser. There’s not enough room to clear the existing focuser knob. Only the 150 and 180mm can be fitted with these.

[Zermelo]

31 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

If you have a 127 Mak then these aren’t big enough to accept the external focuser. There’s not enough room to clear the existing focuser knob. Only the 150 and 180mm can be fitted with these.

Yes, to clarify my previous comment, I fitted a 2" visual back to my Skymax, but not a new focuser.

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

Yes, to clarify my previous comment, I fitted a 2" visual back to my Skymax, but not a new focuser.

I did that with my 127 as well to enable me to use a 2” diagonal to allow the use of wider low power eyepieces.

[bosun21]

2 hours ago, Zermelo said:

I

Edited October 18, 2023 by bosun21
Quoted the wrong person 🙄

[bosun21]

3 hours ago, Olli said:

Thanks everyone for the help, i will look into more reviews about the mentioned eyepieces. Both seem like great options. Slightly off topic but if i were to upgrade the focuser for the Mak would I be able to buy this adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-mak-to-sct-adapter.html and a focuser like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-focusers/astro-essentials-v2-2-dual-speed-crayford-focuser-for-sct-telescopes.html ? As unfortunately the focuser is the only thing I dislike about the scope and just can’t get to grips with it 

As you can’t fit an external focuser you can always fit an electric focuser which allows for vibration free fine focus.

Edited October 18, 2023 by bosun21

[vlaiv]

I recently acquired Svbony 9-27 and had a chance to compare it against Baader Mark III and Mark IV.

Comparison was done in daylight, and while Svbony has narrower field of view - it provided me with better contrast in Svbony. This was in Mak102 and in F/6 80mm triplet.

I did comparison to decide if I'm going to get Baader zoom to be my zoom eyepiece, but I decided not to.

I had a chance to compare Svbony 9-27 on moon against ES82 11mm and 12mm plossl, and I had the impression that it was lagging behind those two by a hair - but it was hard to tell as seeing was changing moment to moment and it might as well be effects of seeing that I was experiencing. In my mind it was ES82 > Plossl 12 (GSO version) > Svbony, but like I said - exceptionally small difference in sharpness - almost imperceptible to regular observer.

[LaurenceT]

49 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

As you can’t fit an external focuser you can always fit an electric focuser which allows for vibration free fine focus.

This is exactly what I have done, fitting the Skywatcher electronic focuser enables almost vibration free observing.

However it's not that easy to fit the focuser but a chap on YouTube called Vasco Ribiero in Portugal has a solution which I bought from him and it works perfectly.

[bosun21]

31 minutes ago, LaurenceT said:

This is exactly what I have done, fitting the Skywatcher electronic focuser enables almost vibration free observing.

However it's not that easy to fit the focuser but a chap on YouTube called Vasco Ribiero in Portugal has a solution which I bought from him and it works perfectly.

I’ve actually bought three of his full kits with the motor and his controller. One for my 127 , another for my Celestron C8 and my latest one for my 150 Maksutov. They all work great.

[Olli]

Thanks all for the help, went with the hyperflex  in the end which arrived a couple of days ago and just got to have a quick session on moon and saturn which were both amazing. Very happy to have a zoom eyepiece !

Edited October 22, 2023 by Olli