Eyepiece Minefield

[Tink_Archived]

I have spent the last few days trying to sus out various eye pieces

what a minefield it is !!

my 130slt came with a 9 & 25mm ep's and I have a cheap nasty 4mm from the previous scope which is poor quality

I would like to get some better quality ep's than i have at the moment and anticipate spending around the £80 per lense tops

So far I have had these recommended

Celestron Omni , X-cel and Ultima ranges, Meade series 4000 & 5000 Baader Hyperion and Televue !!! ( Televue waaaaaaay out of my price range)

The Omni are in the bottom of my price range per lense while the Baader come just over top end of what i would like to pay but would be happy to purchase good quality 2nd if available or save a little longer

I have also seen mentioned the Celestron Ultima 8-24 Zoom and also Baader Zoom but see from reading on here that some arent too impressed with the now current Mk3 !! While the Celestron Zoom would be in budget, the Baader Zoom would be double my budget but would be happy to save as it is in effect lots of lenses and I'm guessing a lot better quality than the Celestron zoom.

I do like the idea of a zoom to save on constantly swapping ep's and combining something like the Celestron Ultima 8-24 with an Ultima barlow 2x (if possible) would probably give me all the options I need

The Baader Hyperion can switch from 1.25 to 2" so I guess this could be a benefit if ( or when ) I upgrade my scope in the future to something larger as would give more scope options without having to replace lenses. I appreciate that the more expensive lenses may be a bit of overkill for my current scope but could possibly compliment future purchases.

Any thoughts comments or suggestions appreciated

[John]

I think the Baader Hyperions are excellent eyepieces for what they cost and they are flexible as well with things like the low cost fine tuning rings enabling the same eyepiece to deliver a variety of focal lengths. If you can find used ones they are well within your budget.

They would work pretty well with future scopes you might own as well.

[great_bear]

Be careful - it can turn from a minefield into an obsession.

One thing I will say though - although it's true that as the price goes up you get smaller and smaller increments in visual quality, one thing that's overlooked is that there's more to eyepieces than just sharpness.

If you like the moon, then low lateral-colour is important - as is control of flaring and scatter. If you like open clusters then edge-sharpness is important. If you wear glasses whilst observing then eye-relief is important. If you don't wear glasses, too much eye relief is really annoying, and so on...

For what it's worth, with your particular scope, it's not worth spending too much money on short focal-length planetary eyepieces, but money spent on low-magnification (24mm) eyepieces may be money well-spent - especially as such eyepieces are useful in all scopes, whereas one tends to fine-tune the selection of focal lengths of planetary eyepieces for a specific telescope.

When I first read the above advice on this forum, it seemed the wrong way around to me - but now I see the wisdom in it.

By the way - Tele Vue isn't out of your league - their Plossls are good and within your budget, although (as with all Plossls) eye relief gets tight under 15mm focal length.

[Doc]

My second set of eyepieces were the Baader Hyperions, for the money you can't go wrong. In slower scopes they are excellent, I found in faster scopes I saw alot of defects appear towards the outer edges.