Eyepiece Recommendations

[Lismore Bloke]

I'm thinking of getting a couple of new eyepieces
to replace some of my old orthoscopics. Sizes 12, 18, 26.
Telescope is 10 inch f5.6 newt.

Any suggestions in standard inch and a quarter size??

The GSO ones are cheap enough but are they any better
than the 15 year old Celestrons I am using now?

[renormalised]

Get Ploosls....much better than the orthos. Geez, brands.... there's a plethora of them and you can take your pick from cheap and nasty-ish to wonderfully brilliant and expensive. Vixen eyepieces are good quality eyepieces. So are Meade eyepieces and the Televue Ploosls. Bintel eyepieces are like the GSO's...cheap. It all depends on how much you're willing to spend on each eyepiece and how many you want to get. You maybe better off buying an eyepiece/filter kit. You'll get them cheaper that way than buying them separately.

[g__day]

I love the Vixen LVW range - great value and performance until you are ready for Naglers!

[renormalised]

"Hand Grenades"!!!!:eyepop::P:D

[Lismore Bloke]

Thanks for the advice guys. The old orthos are a bit annoying with their internal reflections and ghosts. The Naglers are a bit of a handful. I have an early Televue 2 inch 32mm wide field, that's enough of a hand grenade, throws the tube balance off. Hardly use it because I couldn't be bothered rebalancing it each time.

[koputai]

The T6 Naglers series are very small and light compared to the grenades, and there is a 13mm which is in your range. This is a fantastic eyepiece.

Cheers,
Jason.

[rmcpb]

Have a look at the Televue plossls. Great quality at an affordable price if you are not into wide FOV eyepieces. Otherwise have a look at the Burgess Planetary series with their 60 degree AFOV and good eyerelief.

[tnott]

If you are happy with a narrow field then Plossls will be fine. At a short F ratio cheap wide fields will be yuck at the edges.

If you like wide fields then in 1 &1/4 a 24 panoptic (68deg) and the T6 Naglers (82 deg) are beautiful eyepieces. These won't be fuzzy at the edges like cheaper wide fields.

[GrahamL]

have a look when we meet up mate :)... rob ,glen, and I .. have a fair
few chunks of glass to look through to make a comparison .

[HCR32]

My suggestion to you is narrow it down to, "what do I enjoy doing the most. Deep Sky or Planetary?"

Your scope is an f5.6 so naturally it has a wide field of view. I find that Vixens just dont cut it compared to Televue.

In saying that, Televue is the way to go. The type of eyepiece for you would be the Radian. I feel that with a short focal length the Naglers would saturate you focus in the eyepiece with to much fov. The up side to the radian is that they are cheaper. For future if you upgrade to a longer focal lenght then Naglers would be the good all rounder.

[Lismore Bloke]

My main interest is in finding deep sky objects, but I still enjoy looking at planets too. My location here limits me to the brightest deep sky objects. That's the main reason I ordered the GSO 12 inch dob. Just arrived and still in its boxes. It will hopefully enable me to take it to darker locations than suburbia. I am holding off on eyepieces until I can meet some of the local IIS members for an observing session, and compare their various chunks of coke bottle. This is what they have advised and I think it's pretty sensible advice.

My current eyepieces are old Celestron Plossls and Orthos, I mainly use the 26 Plossl and 18 Ortho. I was originally thinking of a 22-24mm Televue and a good barlow, as a starting point. I don't need a vast range and Televues are an expensive choice. I really need to be sure i have picked the right one.

The Radians are advertised on the Bintel site as a planetary EP and don't go longer than 18mm. Time will tell, just as well I can't afford Televues at present after buying the GSO scope.

[madtuna]

I love the crisp wide views through my 31 Nagler, the only draw back is it needs its own mount....the damn thing is the size of a pineapple!

[Lismore Bloke]

I know what you mean. I have a Televue 2 inch 32mm wide field, the predecessor to the Panoptic range.

Had it for years, but it's so damn heavy I hardly use it, even though it is
really much better than my other old EP's.

It really limits you to using the heavy units otherwise you are constantly trying to rebalance the tube every time you switch over to the smaller 1 1/4 ones.