My eyepieces circa 1985

[John]

I've been rummaging around in my old photo collection and came across this one of my 1st eyepiece collection. It dates from around the mid-1980's so may bring back some memories for those of a certain age

Back then my budget and the 2 eyepieces that came supplied with my scope dictated that I was stuck with the .965" fitting so I scraped around for months trying to find decent, affordable eyepieces in that small fitting. I was pretty proud if this lot - until I discovered 1.25" of course

There are 3 Vixen's in there, the 20mm kellner and the 7mm and 5mm orthos. The one marked AH40 is a Japanese Achromatic Huygenian which had a AFoV of around 35 degrees - so like looking down a drinking straw !. The 3 plossl's (25mm, 12.5mm and 9mm) are quite interesting - plossls are hard to find in the .965" fitting so when these 3 turned up advertised in Astronomy Now (no WWW back then !) I jumped and got the 3 for £50 I seem to recall. It turned out that they were identical to the ones that Unitron marketed to go with their famous refractors - they would be worth quite a lot today but I let them go for too little in part-exchange for my 1st 1.25" eyepieces once I had worked out that my FoV was always going to be so limited in the smaller fitting

[Doc]

Nice set back in the day...

How eyepieces have changed 25 years

[lunator]

John

nice collection of eyepieces

We always let things go to cheaply.....

Cheers

Ian

[Kef9]

I love it!

Amazing to see how things have changed.

[Rossco72]

Would be interested to see those next to a panoptic 41mm or Ethos 21mm, bet they would look tiny............

[Astro_Baby]

Heres a pic of some .965s from a similar period along with a Skywatcher Panaview in 38mm (big fat thing at back left), an ES 1400 (tall eyepiece back right), Celestron 25mm Plossl in 1.25 (front left). The smaller .965 fittings are 25mm Ramsden (rear left), 18mm Kelner (rear right), Kelner 12.5mm (front left) and a Symmetrical (Plossl) 25mm front right.

The .965 eyepieces are as supplied with a Unitron scope circa 1970s.

All of the EPs in that pic were out of my range in 1977 - the 2" ones would have been off the scale in terms of price even if they had been around and even the quality .965s would have been pretty pricey. In part my purchase of the Unitron was just so I could have the scope I could never have afforded back then.

[John]

Interesting pic AB - those Unitron supplied kellners look very similar to the plossls in my photo which confirms my view that the plossls were Unitron as well - not that I could convince the staff at Broadhurst Clarkson and Fuller of that in the late 80's when I was trying to negotiate a fair P/X value for some 1.25" eyepieces

Mind you, by then Unitron was way out of fashion - I bet you could have picked up one of their lovely 4" refractors for next to nothing back then

Funny how fashions change - I'm thinking of the surge of interest in long focal length refractors thats going on now.

[Astro_Baby]

LOL - well you know what this stuff is like to trade in. I know what you mean though. Unitron prices are now going up as is lots of this old kit - how I wish I had kept some of my old photographic kit (and my drum kits come to that) or had the forsight to buy up stuff when it was going out of fashion - ah well.

Amazing what we can have now though isn't it ? To hear modern astro buffs talk (and I include myself in that) you'd think that unless you can have a 14" wunda scope (14" nah mate - wont see anything with that you need 20" at least - did I say 20" well a 32" would be better etc etc) and a 100' FOV eyepiece in every possible focal length you'd be forgiven for thinking its not worth bothering with and yet back a few years you'd be lucky if you could afford a 4.5" reflector or 60mm refractor. When I got a wind up RA motor (with chimes too to tell you when it was about to run out) I thought I was up there with NASA - space age stuff that wind up motor

I know somehere around I have a pic of me in my hippy clothes with my baby reflector but I cant find it - if it ever shows I'll post it.

[philj]

Some nice eyepieces there John, the circle V Vixens were pretty good in their day. I have a set of Towa Circle T and some swift (which are reputed to be Takahashi before they were known as Takahashi that is) They still work well but I prefer the modern 1 1/4 and 2" eyepieces anyday.

How about these? This is a set of RAS from the early 1900s. They look nice but are fiddly to fit and its like looking through a pin hole with the higher mags. Optics arent too great either.

Phil

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Grin! had the symm 9 and the ortho 5. Also had an ortho 25 which was a real cracker!