[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Originally Posted by robgreaves

Use a decent Nagler or Panoptic and you will then enjoy the best views possible, knowing that now your telescope optics are the limiting factor, not the eyepiece

I don't rate the Panoptics anywhere near the top of the eyepiece tree these days. IMO they are a dated design and newer materials are available. That's why a couple of focal lengths have recently been dropped from production. I am prepared to bet money that a couple more of the Panoptics will be dropped in the not too distant future. Some of the newer eyepiece designs like Pentax XW's, Denkmeier's and Vixen LVW's are superior to the Panoptic line in many respects, including eye relief, comfort, contrast, light throughput, cooler colour tone and lack of rectilinear (pincushion) distortion.

Televue through and through here in the eyepiece dept. You can't buy better.

In focal lengths under 10mm you can certainly buy better, or at least as good. I have a case full of Naglers, Pentax XW's and an ETHOS as they do different things at different focal lengths. In focal lengths of 10mm or less, the Pentax XW's are superior to the type 6 Naglers in many respects. The 30mm Pentax XW is also superior to the 31mm Nagler in many respects. The Pentax XW's offer a cooler more neutral colour tone, better eye relief and comfort, better contrast and without any doubt, go deeper on threshhold targets. Notwithstanding that, I choose the 31mm Nagler over the 30mm Pentax XW because at this focal length my objective is to maximise the TFOV, not contrast and throughput. In the shorter focal lengths I choose the XW's where contrast and throughput are more important to me. I currently have a 7mm Pentax XW and a 7mm Nagler T6 on hand and while the Nagler offers a larger TFOV the 7mm Pentax XW beats it in many other respects. In most cases these differences are pretty marginal and it takes an experienced observer with a good scope and good conditions to pick a difference.

To say you "can't buy better than Televue" is a pretty blinkered approach. Zeiss, Leitz (Leica), Nikon, Pentax, TMB and Astrophysics all produce some outstanding eyepieces. Some suited to specific observing tasks. Televue certainly make excellent products and in "some" cases they are the best. But, they aren't the only choice at the top end and it often comes down to what aspects of eyepiece performance are most important to each individual observer. eg. As a planetary eyepiece a Televue Plossl is not as good as a Zeiss Abbe orthoscopic, at anything. It's also about 1/6th of the price.

Cheers,
John B