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Bob, I'm pleased to hear that your teething issues have been resolved and you can finally get some proper time at the eyepiece! As far as your eyepieces go, yes the exit pupil for someone your age is probably not going to elicit maximum illumination value from a 28-31mm eyepiece. Same for me, but my 31mm Nagler with an exit pupil somewhere north of 7.8mm (maybe closer to 7mm with the GSO coma corrector) spends an awful lot of time in my Stargate for the expansive views it produces. Am I losing photons? Undoubtedly. Do I give a rat's? Not one. You mention having a bit of a mess around the periphery of your views - have you got a coma corrector? I found even the really good eyepieces suffer at f3.94 without a coma corrector. And while a 21mm Ethos is on a lot of people's Christmas list, the price is pretty daunting. I bought a 20mm 100° APM eyepiece a few years ago on the advice of Don from Eyepieces Etc, and it's a cracker. Don advised that it's similar/the same as the Stellarvue Optimus, but quite a bit cheaper (and about 70% cheaper than the Ethos). I also note that there is a range called "Skyrover" available on Aliexpress which look identical to the APM model and if you can get free shipping and one of the current discounts, you could pick one up for less than $350 including GST.
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