High power (around 4mm) eyepiece tests and conclusions. **Round two!

[John]

A number of years ago FLO loaned me a whole set of the Vixen LVW's and a set of the Hyperions to compare them with. That was fun 🙂

My favourite LVW was the 22mm which I owned for a time.

 

[Louis D]

30 minutes ago, John said:

My favourite LVW was the 22mm which I owned for a time.

I've toyed with the idea of picking up one used to compare to my 22mm NT4, 22mm AF70 (Redline), and 20mm Founder Optics Marvel 80 degreee eyepieces to see how it stacks up.  It would have the advantage of being 1.25" while all the rest are 2"-only.

[Mr Spock]

I used to have a 22mm and a 17mm T4. Sold them both to get the LVW. At that stage I already had a 13mm and 8mm.

[Second Time Around]

I had the 22mm Nagler, the 22mm Redline and the 22mm LVW.  All three are compatible with a Dioptrx astigmatism corrector.

I did head to head tests, resulting in my selling the first 2 and keeping the LVW.  I find it sharp and contrasty at f/4.8.  It's also very comfortable.

Another thing I like about the LVW is that it can be used as either a 1.25 or 2 inch eyepiece without an adapter.

The only bad thing is that they're no longer made. Most owners hold on to them and so they're hard to find.

Edited 7 hours ago by Second Time Around

[Grump Martian]

My higher power eyepieces are Explore Scientific 82°,4.7 mm, 6.7 mm & 8.8 mm. Used with a Celestron C6 and 102 mm Starfield refractor. I have been quite happy with them. But your post has encouraged me to perhaps look to trying out other eyepieces to look for an improvement.

[Don Pensack]

The Petzval surface describes the curvature of the focal surface.  It can be flat or curved.  It is a sort of average (not really, but hard to describe) surface between the sagittal and meridional surfaces.

A scope can have a field curvature identical to the Petzval focal surface and result in a flat field scope.  The NP scopes of Tele Vue are so desgned.

The NP101 objective is a long focal length doublet, like f/22,  and there is a field flattener/focal reducing lens doublet in the middle of the scope reducing it to f/5.4.  Normally, f/5.4 would have a strongly curved focal plane, but their design has a flat Petzval surface.