Televue 32mm Plossl

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Hi all & happy new year!

Got a bit of Christmas cash burning a hole in my pocket and I'm looking at getting Televue 11mm and 32mm plossls for my 8" f6 dob & 70mm refractor. The 11mm I'm confident in as I've been using a 10mm cheap & nasty plossl for lunar/planetary for the last 12 months but I'm not sure what to expect from the 32mm. I understand that it's a low power eyepiece to be used for DSO's and wider field objects so I am interested to hear from those of you who either have this eyepiece or have had a chance to use one. Still not sure whether I should just go for the Televue 25mm as it seems like a good all-rounder and a step up from the C&N 25mm that came with the scope. Help!

Cheers
Wade

[gbeal]

While seemingly a bit dated now, I mean the Ethos at 100º eats it, but still a very nice eyepiece. Any of them.
Gary

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

One thing to keep in mind when selecting a low powered eyepiece for a telescope is the exit pupil of the eyepiece for the telescope. Just talking about the 8" scope, generally speaking, the lowest magnification you might want to go to is about 3.5x per inch of aperture. That should keep the exit pupil of the eyepiece below 7mm (about the maximum size that your pupil will dilate to when dark adapted).

If the exit pupil of the eyepiece is much larger than 7mm, you will begin to see the dark spot in the middle of the image caused by the obstruction of the secondary mirror (for newts only).

A 32mm plossl on an 8" f/6 dob will give you a magnification of about 38x and an exit pupil of 5.4mm, so it should work out quite well. A 40mm plossl would be about borderline for your telescope.

If you can afford it, you might want to try to get a televue panoptic eyepiece, which has a wider field of view. However, a 27mm panoptic (as an example) has a 2" only barrel so your focuser would have to be a 2" as well.

Best of luck with your spending spree. Buying eyepieces is a lot of fun. I had a set of Lanthanum eyepieces a long time ago which I thought were excellent too (same FOV as a plossl, but longer eye relief). The only reason that I sold them was to start getting my naglers.

Please post back with what you ended up buying Wade.

Dean

[GrahamL]

Hi wade

I'm sure Ive looked through a 32mm before somewhere and found it
fine , On a limited budget your probably on the right track with
getting value for your money . I don't have any experiance with there 11 mm , did notice a while back the parks gold series is quite reasonably priced down under at the moment.
http://www.myastroshop.com.au/products/parks-ep.asp
but aside mostly favourable comments you can track down, I have no idea how its stacks up against televues 11mm.

cheers and good luck with your choice

[ColHut (Colin)]

I use a TV 32 on my 10" f5 dob and 4.5 f8. It is rather nice, and to me at the edge of field in my dob clearly shows the difference between coma in the scope (which can be seen) and spherrical abberation which is non-existent. I really like it

regards

[anj026]

Hi Wade

I have most of the Tele Vue plossls and really like them. They are very high quality and a pleasure to use. The 11 and 32 would be good choices for your scope.

Plossls have eye relief that is directly proportional to the focal length so the 32 mm does have a lot of eye relief and this may take a little getting used to. If you can afford it I would recomend the 24mm Panoptic but it isn't cheap and the 32 plossl has the same actual field of view at a lower magnification and a much lower price.

I haven't tried them myself but I have heard that the GSO plossls are almost as good and a lot cheaper.

[rmcconachy]

G'day Wade,

The TV plossls are nice eyepieces. I have a 32mm TV plossl which I only stopped using regularly when I found a good deal on a wide angle 2" eyepiece that gives an even bigger field of view. The 32mm will give you close to as big a field of view as can be had with a 1.25" barrel eyepiece. For this reason I would pick the 32mm over the 25mm.

I found the eyerelief on shorter focal length plossls and orthos (any brand) to be less than I liked. If you find this to be a problem too, and many people do not, then before buying more expensive eyepieces try using longer focal length plossls in a barlow, e.g., a 20mm plossl in a 2x barlow offers almost the same view as a 10mm plossl but with much more eyerelief.

Happy observing with your new eyepieces!

[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

And...eye relief.....

how far you have to hold your eye from the eyepiece lens...

In general the plossl design has poor eye relief. If you are older...as I am...you need longer eye relief and larger (to a certain extent) exit pupil eyepieces up to around 10 to 15 mm eye relief from eyepieces.

Have a look at the the Televue page on this...but in general the TV 32mm plossl is an excellent cheap eyepiece....my favourite!

Better yet... if you can afford...the TV Naglers!

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Thanks for the informative replies guys, much appreciated!

I've checked out those Naglers and that 82 degree apparent field sounds awesome - maybe a little out of my budget at the moment though - will do some number crunching and see, although by the sound of it I won't be disappointed by the 32mm plossl. The eye relief isn't an issue at the moment and I figure I can sell them down the line at some point if need be.

Thanks again
Wade

[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

I'll just say one thing more....Buy as good as you can.

If you buy good eyepieces you will keep them for life. If you buy poor or compromise too much you'll probably end up buying replacements later.

While I love my TV's because they are a good budget eyepiece & I'll never part with them but I have found the lower FL versions like my 15mm & 11mm a little too short in eye relief for me.

I wish I had purchased shorter FL eyepieces like the Radians or Naglers in lieu. I will...some day.

[richardda1st (Richard)]

Hi Wade,
I'm just fairly new to this.

I have both the 32 & 11mm. The 11mm is great and I use it a lot. The 32mm, I alternate with the standard supply Mead 26mm QX (wide angle 70deg). Almost same AFOV, but the plossl is sharper for most of the view but less mag.

I also had a TV 2x barlow which was very good with the 11mm but not so good with the 32mm, to much beaning (I think it's termed) had to be to precise in eye position.
This gave me 5.5mm, 11mm, 16mm & the 32mm, a good range I thought. But decided to exchange the barlow for a powermate (thanks Bintel). Much better with the 32mm, beaning not so bad. But did not consider that the powermate is 2.5x. So this gives me 4.4mm, 11mm (so far so good) 12.8mm (to close) and (32mm to far). But I like these lenses as at this stage I did not want to spend to much but didn't want to risk buying cheaper duds. I'm sure you can match or get close to the quality with cheaper plossls but it's not easy to do when you're not familiar.

Good luck
Richard

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

The TV plossls in my opinion represent outstanding quality and value for the money. I have several (15, 20, 25, 32) and use them as good "all arounders". As has been noted, eye relief can get tight in some of the shorter focal lengths.

When I began to get more serious in this hobby (having used the GSO plossl eyepieces that came with my 8 inch dobsonsian reflector scope for a while) I splashed out on a Televue 24 mm Panoptic and an 11 mm T6 Nagler.

If budget is an issue feel comfortable going with the Plossls...if you can reach a bit budget wise, I reckon the 24 Pan and any of the T6 Naglers (7,9,11,13) would work pretty well...not to be outdone by the some of the Pentax range...

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Resurrecting this thread because I now have a bit more info.

I'm now looking at a 10mm Radian for planetary viewing. Originally, I wanted to buy an 11mm Tele Vue plossl and a 32mm Tele Vue plossl, one for planetary and one for deep sky. The eye relief on the plossls isn't a problem as such, but I do like the Radian eye relief a lot better.

Realistically, am I likely to notice a significant difference between the plossl and Radian besides the eye relief and FOV? If there is a vast improvement over the plossl, I might go with the 10mm Radian and this Vixen 30mm plossl for wide field (as something to tide me over until I can splash out on a panoptic or Nagler).
http://www.myastroshop.com.au/produc...sp?id=MAS-013F

Sorry for all the q's guys, don't want to waste my hard-earned!

Thanks again for the replies all
Wade

[Dennis79 (Keith)]

nope, FOV and eye relief are the major differences, the view will be the same, it is all about how you see it.

For me, I prefer the wider field of view, so I upgraded my plossls to naglers, I couldn't be happier.

All I need now is a low power nagler to be fully happy... then a bigger scope... then a CCD... then a... much higher paying job to afford everything!!

[areyouabus (Pauly)]

Have a look at the two Pentax eyepieces for sale in the classifieds section. The XF8.5 (selling for $170 delivered) is an especially good eyepiece for viewing planets, has awesome eye relief and 68deg fov means planets wont disappear from view so quickly

[rmcconachy]

G'day Wade,

Regarding the TV Radian 10mm versus TV plossl 11mm, I agree with Keith. The Radian's wider (60 v 50 degrees) apparent field of view and much longer eye relief will be the main differences. Unless your scope has a very long focal length the 10% difference in magnification shouldn't make that much difference.

Regarding Pauly's suggestion of the Pentax XF 8.5mm, I agree that these are very nice eyepieces and small too (very similar in size to a TV 32mm plossl). One tiny correction, the XF has an apparent field of view of 60 degrees, not 68 degrees.

Clear skies whatever you choose.

[erick (Eric)]

I got too much blackout experience with a TV 32mm plossl. I sold it. Perhaps it was just me?

[GrahamL]

If you budget keeps stretching Wade you'll be in nagler territory soon enough .. Like the guys above mention pentaxes 8.5 xf is a great eyepiece , its modest price is a surprise as its quality is on par with some much more expensive offerings.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthrea...2/Main/3450860

[astro744]

Originally Posted by Darth Wader

Realistically, am I likely to notice a significant difference between the plossl and Radian besides the eye relief and FOV?

The edge performance of the Radian is remarkable and you get a full 60 deg. of useful field. Planets stay sharp until they disappear! The 20mm eye relief is very comfortable too.

[ColHut (Colin)]

Originally Posted by erick

I got too much blackout experience with a TV 32mm plossl. I sold it. Perhaps it was just me?

Just not acrobatic enough! - agreed you need to keep your head steady.

regards