Eyepiece Suggestions

[pbyrne]

Hi there.

I am on the look out for two eyepieces for my 12" f/4.9 dob with a focal length of 1500mm.

I am looking for EPs in the higher magnification bracket, 7-9mm and at the lower magnification, 30-32mm to fill in the gaps in my collection as I have 12.5, 18, 20 & 25mm EPs.

The 30-32mm EP is going to be more of a finder EP and I am thinking of the Skywatcher Aero after John's excellent review. For the higher mag. EP I am thinking along the lines of the Pentax XF 8.5mm, mostly for the wider field of view.

I am a spectacle wearer so eye relief is important and I don't want anything over a seventy degree field of view, I'm not into "spacewalk" views.

I have approx. £250 to spend.

Any, and all, advice will be greatly appreciated.

Paul

[Doc]

You don't mention if your focuser takes 2" eyepieces. So if I persume it doesn't then how about the Televue plossl range. Extremely well made and excellent eyepieces.

8mm for £69.99

32mm for £83.00

TeleVue Plossl Eyepieces

[kniclander]

assuming it's a skywatcher 12" dob it does come with a 2" adaptor.

[pbyrne]

Yes the scope can accept 2" eyepieces, it's actually an Orion 12" Intelliscope.

[pbyrne]

The Televue 32mm Plossl could be a runner, but the eye relief on the 8mm is too tight for my tastes.

[Ben Ritchie]

The 8mm TV Plossl has been described as "half eyepiece, half contact lens" - very tight eye relief! Although it's nothing to do with TeleVue as such, with Plossls the eye relief scales with focal length (factor of 2/3, I think) so all short-focal length Plossls suffer from this. Also a bit more field of view is nice at that focal length to avoid too much "nudge ... nudge ... nudge" with the Dob. The 32mm TV Plossl is really nice though, that (and the 20mm) are favourites of mine.

Think the 8mm Hyperion is fine at f/5 and good value for a wider-field eyepiece. Easy to buy and sell used too. Saying that, the XF is a great eyepiece so you won't go wrong there.

[John]

The Televue 32mm Plossl could be a runner, but the eye relief on the 8mm is too tight for my tastes.

I think the 32mm TV plossl has an eye relief of 22mm. 8mm sounds more like the eye relif of the 11mm plossl.

John

[lunator]

Hi Paul

I would check out the Vixen Lanthanum range.

They are designe for good eye relief.

Cheers

Ian