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OK, I've just caught up with this article on Cloudy Nights. Uncle Rod gives a useful and accessible discussion of eyepiece choice leading to his conclusion that having an Ethos, if one can spend that kind of money, is a good idea.
I ain't got that kind of money, yet! But it's a useful article for all those "What eyepiece should I buy now" threads we get here.
However, I have to tell you that we were looking at NGC 253 last Saturday night in very good sky conditions. It was all a rush of scopes, imaging, looking after a visitor, so though it was first light in my 35mm Panoptic, I wasn't getting time to properly test, appreciate, compare to other eyepieces - another night when I'm alone. However, I knew our visitor had a 13mm Ethos in his bag and invited him to pop it into the focusser of the 12". First look - Wow!, look at that. Galaxy from edge to edge of field - Beautiful! Then I focussed sharply - Double Wow! The detail in NGC 253! It sort of looked like I was looking at the Milky Way naked eye - horizon to horizon!
Yes, I had glanced through a 13mm Ethos before and could not capture the entire FOV in one view, having to move my head around in a circle to see the edge of field. Same last Saturday night, but as Rod suggests in his article, the 100 deg AFOV is just one of the characteristics of the eyepiece and it might not be the one that is #1 for you.
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