First Light Nagler T1 7mm

[oceanheadted]

I bought the Nagler T1 7mm eyepiece advertised recently on this forum.

It was advertised as cheap and well used with a comensurately low price. This lead me to two concerns, it's an old eyepiece and it had seen a few miles so how well would it perform? Nonetheless a the price I felt it was worth a punt.

It turned up today and I was pleasantly surprised when I unpacked it that its state was better than the photos had lead me to beleive.

Just before dinner I spotted the moon was peaking through the clouds and couldn't resist having a squint through my new eyepiece.

The nearest eyepiece I have to Nagler quality is a Pentax XF 8.5mm so I used that to compare. There's a slight difference in focal length could that could play either way. The higher magnification might pull out more detail but I often find that a slightly longer focal length is more pleasing because of the increased contrast.

Owing to time constraints the test was done using my C80-ED (600mm f7.5) on an Alt Az mount - almost zero set up time. Condtions were mostly good although some instability was visible and occaisional clouds obscured the view. The moon phase was half moon.

Having lined up the telescope I slotted my new toy into the 2" diagonal (it's a generic one nothing special). After a swift refocus the moon popped out and I had a WOW moment. The eyepiece pulled out loads of detail. It was a pleasure to let the eye wander over the surface of the moon looking at the features. Somehow the Appenines looked higher than I had relised before.

I then noticed the extra field of view which the eyepiece provides, there was plenty of space around the moon before you found the the edge of the field of view. The other thing about the eyepiece is its TARDIS nature. When you look into it the image is seems bigger than the size of the eyepiece. It's quite a strange effect.

The down side of the eypiece is that it doesn't have an eye cup to exclude stray light and the eye releif is a bit short compared to the Pentax (although the Nagler is 1.5mm shorter focal length).

I then put my Pentax into the telescope to compare the images. Although it's a pleasing image, the Nagler seemed to pull out a lot more, so in short the new eyepiece is my new favourite.

Finally I decided to be silly and try barlowing the Nagler with a 2x Tal barlow. This gave me an effective magnification of 171x. The moon almost fitted into view of the eyepiece, but the atmospheric instability meant that the movement of the image was too irritating to live with.

Have good Christmas

Alan

[John]

Nice report Alan - it will work great in your other scopes as well - 7mm is such a useful focal length

It was a Nagler Type 1 7mm that got me hooked - I've now got 6 of the darn things plus an Ethos - expensive addiction so beware !!!

Happy Xmas to you too

John

[mike bacanin]

Hi Alan, glad you like the 7mm Nagler!

Regards

Mike

[oceanheadted]

Just need a 11/13mm now, perhaps 26mm...