the best eyepieces

[peternb63]

i purchased a skymax 127 recently. i have seen jupiter & a slightly eclipsed venus, & the moon was great. i got a 7-21mm zoom eyepiece but when i try to use it on jupiter it gets blurred. the eye piece was quite cheap, so am guessing that could be a factor. can anyone recommend the best eyepieces, so i can get the most from my mak? thanks

[oldfruit]

Hi and welcome to SGL. Do you have any sort of budget in mind and what sort of things do you want to observe?

[russ]

It may not all be the 7-21, it could be partly the seeing. Jupiter has not been holding up well to high power this year. For me the sweet spot has been around 120-150x. Sometimes lower. And your 7-21 is giving 214x at the high power end. The cheap zooms also get very soft towards the high power end of their range.

But i agree, replacing the 7-21 is good idea. There are some good value eyepieces around at the moment, such as the TMB Planetary clones and the Paradigm. As well as secondhand Orthos and Plossls. Unless of course your budget is generous.

[Capricorn]

The problem of "The best eyepiece" is that you are talking of something for which one eyepiece would cost more then the scope.

Excepting the cost, which is a little higher then you may need to go to, the now almost "standard" reply of TV plossl's should be good on the Mak.

They range from 8mm to 32mm, good range in between and good quality.

They seem to come in at the £75 mark, whereas you can get others, TMB planetaries clones, for around £50 area. :icon_scratch:

However slowly building up a few TV plossl's is a pretty safe route with the scope you have. I have 4 and a 102 Mak. (Will say that I have 20+ other eyepieces :eek: - I love eyepieces )

[sixela]

"Best", to replace a zoom? Shudder...new 2" diagonal, Starlight Instruments adapter Leica ASPH zoom,...do you mind if it costs four times as much as the scope?

As others have said "best" if you don't constrain the problem will give you many answers. For one person it's a complete set of Zeiss Abbe Ortho II plus matching Zeiss barlow, for someone else it's a bucketloads of Ethos (or even Nikon NAW HW eyepieces), for someone else it's a bucketload of Pentax XW or Nikon NAV Sw eyepieces, for some it's a Leica, Nikon or Swarowski spotting scope zoom with some fancy adapters to fit it on your scope,...and all of these are very expensive.

So constrain the budget first, and tell us what eye relief you expect, whether you're interested in the absolute best on-axis performance, wide field eyepieces, etc.