[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Originally Posted by morls

Hi John, these sound good! What is a brand name to look out for?

Thanks
Stephen

Hi Stephen,

Basically most of these came out of 1 small optical shop in Japan under many different brand names. They were essentially the same eyepieces with only minor variations in spec from brand to brand

The University Optics HD orthos are discontinued as University Optics has closed down but still plenty around 2nd hand

https://astromart.com/classifieds/as...nd-12mm-orthos

These are $US 80 each

https://astromart.com/classifieds/as...d-ortho-314994

This one is $70

These were sold by University Optics in the USA and by Kokusai Kohki in Japan.

These were very similar to the Baader Genuine Orthoscopics which were also discontinued.


These have been replaced by these which are under the Kokusai Kohki label

https://agenaastro.com/kokusai-kohki...ce-12-5mm.html

These are $US100 each. I can only assume that with improvements in coating and glass technology over time, these will be slight improvements on the UO HD orthos, which themselves were slight improvements over the original UO Volcano Top orthos.

While I have 3 Pelican cases full of premium widefields including Nagler T4's and T5's, Televue ETHOS, Delos, Radians, Panoptics and Pentax XW's; I also have a full set of University Optics HD orthos (4mm,5mm,6mm,7mm,9mm,12.5mm, 18mm and 25mm) which I won't ever sell. I have had these for about 17 or 18 years and prior to that had a set of UO Volcano Top orthos for many years. I don't use them all that often these days, as they don't do anything my Pentax XW's can't do, with less eye relief and a smaller FOV. However I still give them a run from time to time on the moon and planets.

Cheers
John B