New astro-toys + ED-2 9.5mm @ F8 review added

[asimov]

Hi all.

Received this gear in the post today.

Binos: 15X70 77M AT 1000m Fully broadband multicoated BAK4 prism.

Very nice coatings on the objectives & eyepieces. Dark green in colour. During the day, they throw up nice bright terrestrial images with very little colour fringing. I used them briefly just after sundown for about 2 hrs before the clouds blew in. The nearly half moon was pretty nice to look at indeed. I could see 3 moons of jupiter with the dark planetary bands on jupiter resolved.

Scanning the milkyway was great! I could clearly make out the lagoon nebula & the Swan. Omega centauri was pretty spectacular.

Slightly out of collimation, so I'll have to learn up on that. Overall, I'd say their definitely worth the bucks. I'm quite pleased with them.

ED-2 1.25" 9.5mm eyepiece: Build quality is not bad. Coatings look ok, Dark green in colour.

Tested in F8 achro refractor: Magnification = 126X. Eye relief was pretty good, would like a fraction more though. A bit of kidney beaning going on but overall, not too bad once you learn where to keep your eye. FOV was wide enough for me.

Objects viewed: Jupiter: Good contrast, dark bands easily resolved, GRS easily seen. No ghosting or flaring. On axis nice & sharp. kept it's sharness till 90% off axis.

Omega centauri: Pretty good view, considering the moon.

Swan nebula: An excellent view of this! Can't wait for a moon less night. Oh...It did really well on the moon also. Overall I'd say performance was pretty damn good considering the cost! I'm keeping it. The big test will be in the F5 later.

Baader UHC-S.....I've been longing to try this out! :D I can't give you a comparison to a lumicon or any others. My first narrow-band filter.

All I can say is, it works...& works GREAT! Tested on lagoon nebula @ 50X: Plenty of 'extended nebulosity' (hope I've got that term right?) Put it this way, I saw a lot more of the nebula than without it! ;) Turns stars a slight greeny colour. I didn't see much advantage using it on the triffid though. A general slow scan of the milky way turned up a lot of stuff I've either never seen, or taken notice of before. On the swan nebula it did great. Brighter than usual, with heaps more nebula clouds seen. I'm very impressed! :D :thumbsup:

The other item in the pic is my drive motor/controller for the 12.5" newt kindly built by AOE in Sydney. The EP/filter binos from AOE as well.

I'll do up decent reviews on all items & submit later. :D

[ballaratdragons]

John,

The knockies sound impressive. No need for a scope now! The Baader sounds like the best buy. Good report mate.

How much was the Baader Filter?

[asimov]

G'day Ken. Yeah, pretty impressed with the whole lot really. The EP is no nagler...but hey! at 80 bucks, what can one expect? I like it. :D Quoted price on the neb filter was under $115....So I'm not too sure as yet. :confused: I'm going to use that filter a LOT me thinks! :thumbsup:

[davidpretorius]

can't wait to see them at snake valley along with your good self!!!! (hint hint)

[Starkler]

John are the binos the same as these ?
http://www.aoe.com.au/aoe70hp.html

Ive been thinking of getting some for a while now.

[ving]

sounds great john :)
I'll keep an eye out on your review of the filter and EP... they both sound interesting to me :)

[davidpretorius]

hey A mate, what magnification roughly for the binos?

[ving]

15x?

:poke:

[fringe_dweller]

LOL 115 clams for a nice bit of gear - how sweet is this era? welcome to the big binoculars club mate!! they sound very nice
Kearn

[asimov]

Starkler: Yep, same as. A word of warning though...BE QUICK! AOE are close to being out of stock & having trouble with the next shipment getting here within 8 weeks.

[asimov]

ED-2 9.5mm eyepiece review

Tested using F8 achromatic refractor =126X



On-Axis sharpness: I found this to be good to excellent on Jupiter & stars.

Off-Axis Sharpness: Off-Axis it performed quite well. Good clean sharp focus. Slight anstigmatism on stars visible at the last 90-95% AFOV.

Contrast: Fairly dark back-ground on DSOs. Jupiters dark regions & the GRS more readily visible than some of my more up-market EPs. Did a respectable job in the contrast department.

Field flatness: Focusing on an object On-Axis & letting it drift to the edge of the field, I found a little de-focusing was apparent. Better than some of my other EPs. I found this to be not bad.

Ligh Transmission: I found this to be ok. I could Probably compare this to a Vixen LV for light transmission.

Chromatic Aberrations: As this test was conducted in an F8 achromatic refractor, I am not in a good position to judge in this area. Suffice to say it was no worse than any other eyepice I own. Using the aperture mask on jupiter, very little chromatic aberration was visible.

Eye Relief & comfort: I found the eye relief to be sufficient for me. IE: I did not have to roll the eye-cup back. If I had to guess, I would say it was between 10-15mm. If you wear glasses this EP may not be suitable, although rolling the cap back may be successful. This eyepiece does have a slight kidney bean problem. But I would say it was not overly annoying. Takes all of 30 seconds to learn where to position your eye for optimal results.

Ghosting: Nil.

Scatter: Better than most of my up-market EPs on Jupiter.

Field Stop Condition: I saw no 'ring of colour' around the field stop.

I also positioned the half moon just out of the FOV. The light grey colour in the FOV was evenly illuminated. I saw no long bright spikes of light spearing across the FOV as I see in some of my EPs.

Build Quality: Looks ok to me, Although at a quick glance you can tell it's not a $300 EP. The only thing that lets it down slightly is the cheap chrome job done on The barrel. It has a safety under-cut. It fits in the focuser slightly loose, with a deflection of approx .75mm when doing up the retaining screw. The 'blackening' job done on it is not up to standard. IE: The inner barrel thread where a filter might screw on is not black enough.

It looks to me to have the built-in barlow system. Somewhat similar to the LV in design. With the LVs you can take the barlow off.....With the ED-2....Just don't do it! You'll have elements flying all over the place if your not extremely careful. Not recommended.

Summing up: The ED-2 kept up with some of my better eyepieces which incidentally, I paid 3X as much for on some of them. Not bad for $80 AUD.

Having NOT tested this EP in a fast F5 system as yet, I can only say this EP is quite ok in my F8 telescope. Weather permitting, I will conduct the same tests in my F5 newt soon.

[davidpretorius]

thanks asimov for review??? hmmmm what to replace my series 500 with????

[asimov]

Don't be too hasty Dave. They may not be as functional in a F5.

[davidpretorius]

no worries, i won't do anything until i have seen all the eyepiece i can lay my hand on and in my f5 at snake valley.

to the noobie, how can they (eyepieces) change when going from f8 to f5 or the other way

[asimov]

To put it in laymans terms....It's the chip eating seagulls. If you see any sign of them in a EP @ F8, it's pretty well a guarantee to see them worse in the same EP at F5.

I'm sure someone else can explain this better than me?

[davidpretorius]

what do seagulls look like? the ones in eyepieces i mean before you get that glint in your eye and give me a serve!!

[asimov]

Basically stars that have little wings on them in the outer part of the FOV 'Off axis coma'

BTW Dave! Hope you like this pic...Took me a long time to find it! :D :rofl:

[asimov]

http://www.opticalmechanics.com/about_coma.htm

[davidpretorius]

yup, i have seen them, thanks for link, seriously, any chance of snake valley?

[asimov]

Where is Snake valley, & when is it on? I went looking for dates/locations etc but can't find anything. :doh:

[davidpretorius]

now i am unsure if you are joking or not, but will post this anyway
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=2590

snake valley is west of ballarat where ken lives i assume. end of october 28th ish thru to the 1st november. i am coming over on the boat to learn about collimation and look thru other guys scopes and review eyepieces. not sure where in sa you are, but if any of you guys from sa can make the trip for a 3 or 4 days, it would be great.

[asimov]

Sorry there's no review for a F5 scope if this is what you mean?

[davidpretorius]

no i mean in general, thanks for reviewing the ed eyepiece, it was a great report and i know what to look for in an eyepiece along with mike's notes

[davidpretorius]

by the way, is this roughly how you collimate the scope? i have the secondary pretty much spot on, but the primary needs some tweakin!

http://legault.club.fr/collim.html

[asimov]

BTW Ving. After thinking about it, I'm not sure how to do a 'review' on that neb filter. I can't compare it to another brand not having used one before. I can't even really elaborate on what I've already said about it in my first post. All I know is it does seem to make looking at some DSOs better, so I guess it is doing something? I guess I'll tell you later if I think it was worth the dosh to make a few DSOs better to look at? I look at it this way: better to pay just over 100 bucks than pay twice the amount for a filter that does a similar job. :D

If it makes the orion nebula look any more spectacular than what it already is, I'll count it as that money well spent!! :D :thumbsup:

[asimov]

Yes, that's one article I have as well. No doubt it will help you to collimate.

[RAJAH235]

David, Didn't you get this other link some time ago?
http://skyandtelescope.com/printable/howto/scopes/article_790.asp
Someone was asking about collimation again, so I posted it again.
We definitely need a sub forum on collimation, Mike, with ALL the available links broken down for Reflectors, Refractors & SCT's.......
Will save a lot of time... etc....
:D L.

[asimov]

Yes L. I've been hinting at this for quite some time!

[asimov]

Most newbies are totally over-come with the amount of mind-boggling articles & opinions on how to collimate. It took me years to weed through the bull & highly technical info out there, only to find out collimation is essentially easy to do.:doh:
We definately could do with a sub-forum in this department!:D

[netwolf]

asimov, can you give more details on the motor/controller you have perked my intrest.
I have recently been offered a great deal on a NGC-max DSC plus encoders. However i would like to add tracking motors to my 10" dob.

[asimov]

Being basically brain-dead in the electronics department, I can tell you only this: The stepper is from a really old electronic typewriter. A step-syn 6V 1.2A 1.8 deg/step by sanyo denki.

The controller was built using this curcuit in the pic. Thanks to Laurie for supplying the curcuit diagram.

Not sure if it will be suitable yet, the motor takes rather big steps. But we'll see what happens after I fit it.

[RAJAH235]

Netwolf, See new thread re; Stepper motors for complete article. ......:D L.

[janoskiss]

Davo, If money's tight (or even if it's not) get a set of GS Ploessls (9, 15 & 25mm) + 1.25" barlow for under $170 from Andrews or maybe AOE. If later you decided to upgrade, I'd bet you could honestly resell the lot second hand for 80+% new price.

[iceman]

I borrowed a 14mm version of that ED series of EP from Andrews for a review, about 3-4 months ago. It (the review) is still sitting on my disk at home here (in random thoughts/observations). I should compile it properly and post it up.

In general, my review wasn't as praising as yours. Could have something to do with mine being @ f/5. I compared it to my 15mm GSO plossl, and I concluded that my plossl represented better value (at the time, the ED was being priced at $129 or something).

I'll hunt it down and try and get it on the site.

John, when you get time to do the review in your f/5 you can write them both up in the one document with pictures if you like, and i'll post it up on the site.

Thanks

[asimov]

Thanks Mike. Yes, I remember you telling me awhile back when I asked about the EDs that they were...a bit crappy. I wonder if theres a difference between the ED you borrowed to the ED-2 that I have? I wonder if mines a "later model":confuse3: ....Probably the same I'd say..I have been told the long FL ED-2 (including the 14mm) have considerable kidney beaning & blackouts. The 9.5mm & shorter are supposed to be ok in this respect.

BTW it's not time stopping me doing the F5 review, it's the rotten weather! Rain has set in for about a week.:doh: :doh: :doh:

[ving]

not to worry, you just get that weather clear so we can see what the ed2 is like at f5 :)
thanks for the info so far tho :)

[dhumpie]

Hey John,

I actaully have a 5mm version of this but mine is a Celestron X-Cel ED2. The ep is surprisingly sharp in my f/5 scopes ( I have three :) Very little if any edge distortion. And like you I think contrast is also very good in the ep. But on bright objects there is a slight off axis flare but it does not really affect the views. I say it is a very good buy for the price although I am now trying to get my hands on some Orion Stratus ep's :)

Darren

[asimov]

Well I received my TV plossl 20mm today, & got to test it in between showers with the refractor, only because It's quicker to pull down & get it out of the rain if necessary.

First impression out of the box was it's a fine looking EP. Nice build quality & the best element coatings I've ever seen on any EP. A lovely deep green.

A quick look at jupiter revealed A very nice view. Not enough magnification to see much detail obviously, but none the less a nice view! Seeing the pesky moon is out, I can't do a decent evaluation on any DSOs Naturally. Had a quick glance at omega centauri. Not a good view. (moon:mad2: )

I don't think this is a far comparison test (or is it??) But I pitted the TV barlowed, against the ED-2 Giving me close to identical magnification.

I need opinions on weather or not this would by a fair "shoot-out" before giving the results...:confused:


BTW I reviewed the ED-2 again tonite, thinking perhaps I may have 'favored' the EP in my original documented review above because it was a 'new toy'.

After careful consideration, I'm sticking with my original review....It's pretty well the facts as I saw them. Definitely a keeper for the F8 if not for the F5.

[asimov]

Hi Darren. I have not seen any flare in the 9.5mm :confused: What about kidney beaning, any sign of that in the 5mm? It's also VERY interesting you say their ok @ F5! :D

[gaa_ian]

There is a link on Iceinspace home page ...

[dhumpie]

Hey John,

I have not had much problems with kidneybeaning at all but maybe that's because I wear my glasses at the ep. As for the sharpness to the edges I have had very good sharp to the edge views in all my f/5 scopes including the Orion Expanse clones 6 and 9mm SWA's as well. I think the thing about these ep's is that they all have built in barlows in them and that is why they are sharp. The other two in the Expanse series, the 15 and 20mm show considerable field curvature at the edges (but between the two the 15mm is much sharper and only shows curvature maybe 10% or less from the edges).

Anyway,
Darren

[asimov]

I guess this answers the question of if there any good in a F5.....Yes ving, apparently so! :D

[asimov]

Ok. I tested the ED-2 9.5mm out tonight in the F5...I'll do up a review @ F8 & F5 soon & send it to Mike. For now though, I can safely say it did very good in MY F5 reflector. Coma present at the outside 5% FOV. I'm happy with it.:thumbsup:

The Baader UHC-S filter is a ripper, & awefully glad I bought it. You'd be hard pressed to pry this filter outa my hot lil' hands! :P