[Renato1 (Renato)]

Over 20 years ago, I bought a Meade Series 4000 6.7mm UltraWide Angle eyepiece, thinking it would complement my 9mm Type 1 Nagler in my 14.5" dob. I didn't like it. And as it had no place in my SCT line-up, I hardly used it since.

Several years ago, I bought from here a Meade Series 5000 6.7mm UltraWide Angle eyepiece hoping it would be better than my earlier one. I got it, then my back went, and had an operation, and didn't do any viewing for over two years - and I forgot I owned it.

Anyhow, I found the series 5000 eyepiece the other day, and decided I should actually use it for the first time, and compare it to the series 4000 one.

I did so in my little 80mm f/6.25 ED refractor, looking at various bright DSOs.

Sharpness-wise, there wasn't much difference between the two, perhaps giving the slightest edge to the series 4000 one.

But in usage there was a big difference.

Both have an 82 degree field of view, but with the series 4000 eyepiece you can't see a fair chunk of it. It has very narrow eye-relief and one has to look around inside the eyepiece to see all of the field.

The series 5000 eyepiece has greater eye-relief, and one can see a lot more of the 82 degree field than in the series 4000 one - though one still couldn't see it all from edge to edge. I had to move my eye around the eyepiece to see the edge - but in doing so, the image on the opposite side would dim out. I noticed that for the fullest image, my eye had to be dead centre, and any deviation led to dimming out on one side or the other. This is in sharp contrast to the series 4000 eyepiece where I never had any dimming out of the image.

So, I finally figured out why I didn't like the series 4000 eyepiece in my dob, namely that it didn't behave like my 9mm Nagler. If I ever use my dob again (it is darn heavy for me to lift now, and not suffer for it) I think the series 5000 Meade may be an excellent complement to the Nagler.

Anyhow, this is probably old news to many here, but I thought it might be of interest to youngsters knowing what we had to put up with in UWAs 25 years ago.
Regards,
Renato