televue?

[Manok101]

I've been thinking of getting a televue eyepiece for some time now, after hearing about people talking about them. and was wondering what kind of televue should i get? out of the eyepieces i currently have i use my 17mm celestron plossl the most for observing, and was wondering if the view was that much better to getting another eyepiece of the same size?

[tuc]

I once made the mistake of looking through a 22mm Nagler: I had to buy one shortly after that.

When investing in higher-end eyepieces I really thinik it`s wise to first have a look through as many as you can (at star parties,etc.).

Eyepieces are subjective; for example, I would choose the 22mm Nagler over the 17mm, whereas my friend prefers the 17mm (in the same telescope). The point is, someone else`s recommendation might not be the best one to your eyes.

If your 17mm plossl is the one you use the most, then you should be very happy with an upgrade of the same focal length. The images will be brighter and more contrasty.

To really appreciate upgraded eyepieces, observe from a darker site. Their potential is wasted on light-polluted skies. So if you routinely observe in the muck, save your money.

[Manok101]

thanks for the advice.

[sixela]

The images will be brighter and more contrasty.

Many times, if you go from a cheaper simple design to an expensive wide field design, the images will not be "brighter and more contrasty" at all if what you have already is a half-decent Plössl (an eyepiece people would have given an arm and a leg for when I started observing).

On another thread, someone just spent a lot of money on a 7mm T6 Nagler only to find out that there was little difference...

TeleVue has several eyepiece ranges, all for different purposes. Just buying one in the hope it will be "brighter and more contrasty" without figuring out what exactly you're looking for is a recipe for disappointment.

Want the same thing you have now, but indeed a tad better as far as scatter, lack of glare and transmission is concerned? Televue Plössl. Or not a TeleVue at all - you might decide to get a good ortho instead (not from TeleVue, though).

Want more eye relief, and slightly more field of view? Then a Radian is for you.

Want to replace that 25mm Plössl with something that shows you more sky but keeps the magnification in the pleasant range? Then a 24mm Panoptic or even 16mm T5 Nagler is the ticket.

Want Nagler 80° AFOV views but you're wearing glasses? Then the T4 Naglers are the ticket.

Want 80° AFOV even for the smaller focal lengths, and want something with more eye relief on the short side as well, but you don't need the eye relief of the Radian because you're not wearing glasses? Then the T6 Nagler might be something.

But if you don't appreciate the unique selling point of each of these at all and just expect the views to magically differ from those through your Chinese Plössl, there's no point in buying them, really; except perhaps the TeleVue Plössl (whose selling point is indeed "the same but slightly better", but the differences are subtle).

By the way, some of the sellking points are just as valid in light polluted skies. A 24mm Panoptic shows a much wider field than a 25mm Plössl whether it's at home in the orange sky or somewhere else. A Nagler will let you frame the same piece of sky at home in the muck at higher magnification and thus with a blacker sky (you tend to observe with slighly more magnification in light polluted skies). Of course any eyepiece and scope shines in dark skies.

[Earl]

I personally would go for the plossl range, then if you want to upgrade to the bigger boys later you will get good return on the plossls if you sell them on.

[John]

I personally would go for the plossl range, then if you want to upgrade to the bigger boys later you will get good return on the plossls if you sell them on.

Thats where I started with Tele Vue eyepieces ......... turned into a slippery slope though as tuc warns

[Dai150PL]

I made the mistake of getting the TV 25mm Plossl, to upgrade the unbranded plossls I already had about two months ago. After weeks of rain finally managed a night out with it, the result, I am now waiting for the 11mm to arrive to complete my set. I love them. I am an addict be warned. Once you start..... Now new telescope and a couple of the big ones. :D:D

[Bigwings]

What scope is it for? Sorry if I missed it

[umadog]

I have a 12" F4.9 Dob and a selection of TV eyepieces:

I use the 19 mm (my first TV EP) and 27 mm Panoptics low power work and Radians (10, 6, 5) for higher power planetary work. The 5 mm has hardly been used so far but some day I hope to get steady enough skies for it. The Panoptics are nice because you get a pleasantly wide field but don't need to move your head around to see it all. The 27 mm is 2" and this definitely makes for a more immersive experience compared to the 1.25" 19 mm, even though both have the same apparent FOV. I also have a 7mm Nagler which rocks on globular clusters and planetary nebulae.

You don't say what scope you want them for, etc. One thing you could do is go for a wider aFOV eyepiece which will give a similar true field to your 17 mm. This will darken the sky background, give you a larger view, and may, depending on what you choose, show more sky (larger true FOV). To make up some numbers:

Your 17 mm Plossl will have a 50 degree aFOV. If the scope has a 1500 mm focal length then your true field is 50/(1500/17)=0.57 degrees and gives you 88x.

A 12mm Nagler will give you 0.66 degrees of true field and 125x

A 14mm Radian will give you 0.56 degrees of true field and 107x

The Radian has much longer eye relief and some feel a more contrasty image. The Nagler has a much wider apparent field but tighter eye relief. It's also more expensive. Both will look noticeably nicer than your current EP but are optimised for different jobs. You need to decide what sort of objects you look at most and tailor your choices accordingly. Do you want to see more sky around the objects or do you just want a wider apparent field?

Don't sweat it, though. These are all lovely eyepieces and you more or less can't go wrong so long as you read up on the properties of each design and know what to expect as regards eye relief and aFOV. Once you buy one you'll probably want another and will have a better idea of what to go for once you've tried one. Even better--go to your local club and try out loads at once!

[dmahon]

I suspect that I'm a little bit spolt - despite me buying my scope for imaging, I've never had anything other than TeleVue to look through (until I got a 12mm illuminated Plossl, but I only use that for setting up my scope). I've had:

35mm Panoptic

22mm Nagler

9mm Nagler

8mm Radian

6mm Radian

3-6mm Nagler zoom

The Panoptic wasn't really that useful for me, given the scope I have, and I didn't really click with the Radians for some reason, but the Naglers are excellent. I haven't dared try the Ethos yet.

Other than the zoom EP, I bought all my EPs second hand from here or astro buy/sell. Of those that I have sold, I have recouped all my money. This is a good way to get hold of TeleVue EPs - if you later decide to change, you only loose out on the postage (think of it as a hire charge).

If you like the 17mm Plossl, try a similar Nagler, it comes in 17mm (or even get an 11, 12 or 16mm version - which will give you at least as big a FOV as your Plossl). The 17mm Nagler is a 2" EP, but the others are 1.25".

[pvaz]

If you can try some at star parties then do so. They won't magicly change the views but they will be nicer. I asked my wife and some friends compare my TV EPs against some plossl and they can't see much of a difference. Some even complain it's harder to look through a nagler as you need to place your eye correctly, but they don't have much interest for astronomy other then the occasional peek through my telescope.

That said, I love mine and just ordered another TV EP recently. I can certainly notice the difference and improvement, but those improvements are mainly in view comfort and various small details that provide a better quality view. Are they worth 10 to 20x more money? If you are really into astronomy and observe frequently then yes, I believe it is. However don't expect the views to be 20x better.

In other words, a decent scope and the basic extras (telrad, sky atlas, red light torch) should come 1st.

[Manok101]

I need to research the differences in eyepiece type. I currently use plossls and love them, and have never tried another type of eyepiece. I've got a full set of celestron EPs which are good enough for my purposes. I just break out my telescope for a few minutes, or hours of general observing for fun, no real science done by me. edit: its just a little XT4.5, I hope to get an XT10G sometime in the future.

[umadog]

Save your money for the XT10. That'll make more difference than eyepieces.

[ollypenrice]

Sixela's overview is authoritative and accurate. I love TV EPs and have half a dozen from the various widefield ranges. Second hand Radians (of which I have two) go for a hundred pounds.

However, in a modest scope and for casual observing (nothing wrong with that) I think the improvement would be slight.

Olly

[JamesC]

Expensive eyepieces tend to give you a wider field of view and/or more eye relief and, in fast scopes, a sharper field of view (slow scopes aren't as fussy). Plossls work well in both fast and slow scopes the only thing is the field of view is relatively narrow and the eye relief can be tight in the shorter focal lengths. I agree that you would be best upgrading your scope before thinking about fancier eyepieces.

Edit: a good planetary eyepiece is difficult to resist in any scope!

[Moonshane]

+1 for Sixela's reply. I love my TVs (see signature) and will not be buying anything else for my 'main' eyepieces (by this is mean (in my scopes) wide field (35mm), mid range (22mm), workhorse (13mm) general high mag (10mm) lunar and special nights of seeing (6-3 zoom in my opinion this is one of the best EPs ever produced by TV I love it)).

Recently I have 'discovered' plossls and orthoscopics and although my sad obsessive personality (only slightly) means I prefer all my EPs to look like a 'set' and be black and green I have expanded to another brand, the Baader Genuine Ortho to supplement my collection on the higher power / planetary range. Luckily these are also black and green

I finally get to my point which is that I have directly compared my 13mm Ethos with my 12.5mm Baader and also my 11mm Televue plossl and the only difference between these £40-70 eyepieces and the £400+ eyepiece is the field of view and the tighter eye relief. If anything the Baader is slightly sharper and reveals more detail especially on Jupiter than the Ethos. At one point I was considering buying a 10mm Ethos as my main planetary eyepiece but they come up used so scarcely I would have bought new. This would have been maybe £430. I managed to get

a 12.5mm, 9mm and 7mm ortho, a 11mm and 15mm TV plossl and an 8mm and 10mm Radian (seven good to excellent quality eyepieces!) for about the same money (some used and some new). My choice gave me much more opportunity to match seeing with my eyepieces and I have not regretted it one bit.

Another point was that I recently compared a cheap plastic 20mm Kellner in a standard (metal not plastic) skywatcher barlow and the view in my f11 scope was a little worse than my 10mm Radian but not grossly bad. The difference is a lot more obvious in my 5.3 dob.

My advice would be to get your bigger scope first. Then choose you most used eyepiece with that new scope and buy an appropriate TV eyepiece to replace that but compare them side by side. As you can use your current plossls then eye relief should not be an issue and I can confirm that orthoscopics have slightly better ER than plossls at the same focal length of EP. If you can do this with someone else's EP first then even better. This will allow you to consider if it's worth doing and you will then also get the TV 'bug' out of your system which you seem to need to do

[acey]

Get a 32mm plossl and see if you like it. You probably will.

For years I did all my observing with TV plossls 32mm, 20mm and 8mm (in an 8" f6 dob). The 8mm was my first proper planetary eyepiece and an amazing step-up from the 9mm Sirius plossl that came with my scope, showing colours beautifully. But DSOs could be a challenge.

Now with my 12" f4.9 I still use the 32mm but have replaced the 8mm with a TMB Planetary 6mm which is just as contrasty for DSOs but has a wider field, making it easier to track objects. For a while I used an 11mm TV Plossl with the 12" and enjoyed that very much, but I now use a Baader 8-24mm zoom to cover the whole mid-range between the 32mm and 6mm eyepieces. Wide-field is of no interest to me except to keep things more easily in view at very high power (my only ultra-wide is a 4mm Nirvana). So with the 12", as with the 8", I do pretty much all my observing with 3 eyepieces.

I've never been disappointed with TeleVue - but nor have I been disappointed with the others.