Well it's been a long time comming but the first look through an eyepiece has finally and absolutely blown my mind!
It's happened once before but it was a telescope that did it (5" Fluorite Tak).
It all started this morning when I got a phone call from a well known Panoptic advocate on the mornington peninsla (Ha! You know who you are...), congratulating me on my 35mm Panoptic purchase. He told that it was the best wide field EP in the world, better than a XXXXX and a XXXXX. And added that I should never sell it. I thought, umm... I had actually better look through this eyepiece because now I feel like I am missing out on something.
Well, it's still not dark yet, but the moon is up, the sky is a deep blue and the are plenty of green trees all around in the distance. So I set up my LXD75 mount and put the ZS80 in it's pride of place on top. I first focused on the moon in the 22mm Panoptic; nice but the sky was still a bit bright for it. I targeted my favorite tree in the distance. I am still amazed by this setup for daytime viewing, the ZS80 has no CA at this magification and the scope and EP combination are as sharp as I've seen in daylight.
I was a bit worried about how the 35mm Panoptic would go during the day. In my scope the exit pupil would be 5.8mm, which is great at night but during the day my pupil size is a lot smaller than that.
Anyway, in true Aussie spirit "She'll be right mate" I chucked (read: placed gently) the 35mm it in the 2" diagonal...
FAR OUT!!!!!! The 5 degree field of view was stunning. So bright and sharp! The real suprise was I had great difficulty finding the field stop without shifting my head around quite large distances. I'm sure it was partly due to my small pupil size but suprising none the less. The leaves of trees stayed perfectly in shape as they disappeared behind the field stop. Now that I think about it, I couldn't see any field curvature, but I didn't look for it either. Man it was good. Way good.
I don't own any other big name wide field eyepieces to compare it to, so I don't really know if it is THE best. But I honestly couldn't give a ..... I am sooo glad I decided to buy it now.
