Celestron 8-24mm zoom

[ThunderStorm]

Got a 10inch dob, not sure if this zoom eye piece(1.25in) good or not?

[MortonH]

Zooms have a fairly narrow field of view and can be quite variable in quality. If this is the cheaper Celestron one it is probably "okay" but not great. Depends what your expectations are.

I have the Orion zoom 7.2mm-21.5mm and it's better than I expected. See http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=120682

What other eyepieces do you have already?

[dannat]

usually they are OK at the higher powers, you might want a better high power eyepiece with more fov

the celestron i had wasn't great, but not terrible either -the 6.5-19mm celestron i had was better (i wouldn't pay retail for it -the seven zoom is cheap & most likely from the same group of chinese manufacturers

[ThunderStorm]

I have 1.25inch 10mm, 25mm and 30mm plossi.

[Renato1]

I doubt that zoom would be used anywhere near as much as those three eyepieces. If you do use it, it'll be mainly as an 8mm eyepiece, so why not just buy an 8mm eyepiece?

It's a fun novelty item, with occasional uses where it is handy (e.g when travelling light with my small refractor). And certainly, if you have several telescopes and were wondering what say a 12mm or 17mm eyepiece image would be like in them, it'll give you a good idea before you go and buy that eyepiece.
Cheers,
Renato

[speach]

I have a celestron zoom, wouldn't say that it's the best eyepiece, but it's adequate. The contrast is quite poor, but the great advantage of it that you can 'zoom' then put in a better eyepiece whan you get to the mag you need .