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Alright, so I got the scope uncovered tonight and tested both EP's. There was a lot of wind and transparency was not the best. Added to this the seeing was very average for this time of year. Jupiter was located at about 45 degrees from the Western Horizon and would steadily move to setting. I had to work quickly but I got enough time on the 6.7 to get a real impression. Anyway enough of that for now.
Now as expected the panoptic was an absolute delight. I checked out the lagoon and Omega Centauri. Stars were nice and tight all the way to the edge of field. The whole image was very crisp with no flares. The contrast was very good and gives a better view than the 32mm plossel that I have. Given the speed of my scope at f10, this EP works really well to give a reasonably bright image of the nebula clouds without any filters. However when viewing Omega I could clearly resolve stars down to the core. I was extremely impressed by this. Everywhere I looked the stars were sharp and resolved. This was a very good buy, I will not regret buying this one. This gets a 9/10 overall.
For the Meade I wanted to test it against my 9mm Nagler. Not a particularly great comparision EP, but one that would give me some results I could trust. The 9mm has proven itself to be a fantastic performer on planets and that is why I bought the 6.7; for planetary viewing. Surprisingly, the 6.7 handled quite well against the Nagler. First off the 82 degrees of view is simply stunning. The image was bigger of coarse in the 6.7 and with seeing at about 5/10 for Jupiter a surprising amount of detail was visible. I could clearly make out the EQ belts and the Southern and Northern Polar Belts. I could just make out some detail in the EQ band. The contrast was a little better in the Nagler and the image was not as bright in the 6.7 (that could be really good when the planet is at opposition, not too much glare). There was some small amount of curvature in the FOV but not enough to really be distracting. With Jupiter in the Middle of the FOV I could just see at the very edge the fourth moon. That moon was in sharp focus and with no degree of flaring at all. The image was much better than anything a plossel could possibly muster, and I have to say that at nearly half the price this EP is pretty damn good. I am glad that I selected the Meade and look forward to years of service from it. I would need to spend more nights comparing but am confident that it will perform well despite its very small shortcomings. It gets a 8/10 overall and worth the purchase.
BTW I plan on doing a couple of reviews of these EP's but need more time viewing to give a totally fair review of both pieces.
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