MMMMM, some very nice eyepiece packages indeed. mine-Meade 34mm Super Wide 5000,Orion Stratus 21mm,Orion Stratus 13mm,Orion shorty plus 2X Barlow,Oh! and the usual-26mm Meade 4000 Possl20mmMeade 4000 Possl15mmMeade 4000 Possl9.7mmMeade 4000 PosslI really like the Meade 5000, just a wonderful eyepiece 68 degree FOV and 60X on my scope, the Orion's are great workhorses, good views and with the Barlow give me 4 useable magnifications at 68 degree FOV, 95X, 150X, 200X, 300X .So for a simple set of 3 main pieces, they serve my needs well, but I do feel the call of the dreaded eyepiece sickness.
I find that the Vixen are an excellent all round eyepiece. I have tested them on different refractors and reflectors and found them to give a very flat and colour free image.
I use them on my 'scope at F11.7 and if anything can show up a bad eyepiece it will be my scope as it is very, very well corrected.
I guess the only way to improve things would be to buy specialist eyepieces for the planets (** Addition here **) otherwise the Vixens are just fine!
Jerry
Addition: Remember, leaving out Earth, there are only 3 planets that warrent expensive planetry (monocentric) eyepieces - for the price of these Registax and a webcam may give better value for money!!
Last edited by 74tuc; 08-06-2007 at 11:03 AM.
Reason: Addition
I had the 8, 13 & 22 mm all I found exceptional eyepieces. So I decided to sell a few other type eyepieces and get the rest of the LVW's 17, 5 & 3.5 mm
Well done Dave, and dont they look great in the case, I am yet to give the pano and the LV's a good run due to weather and other stuff, next weekend looks promising and I will keep you informed.
Regards Greg.
P.S. The ship that my son is on is currently headed for San Diego where they will be until Feb 08, it is only 50 klms south of OPT at Oceanside, perhaps we could send him shopping.
The EPs I use are:
27mm Panoptic - sensational for Eta Carina in the Genesis.
13mm LVW - Dave47tuc, yep this is my favourite and most used too.
7mm XW Pentax - only just got it, so not much use yet, it will be my globular EP.
6mm Clave - for planets with 2x Meade 140 barlow, and maybe a 3x telextender in the future.
The others I hardly use, more for historical collection.
PS: my case only cost me $25 (to make)!
And a full standard set of Celestron 1.25" EP's & filters.
The top 3 are what I use on my C8 & AT80 refractor. The only reason I still have the Celestron set is because I'm using the 1.25" diagonal in my refractor. As soon as I get a 2" diagonal for it the Celestron set will go.
Although I might sell the EP's & keep the case for a couple of replacements.
Here is a pic of my current eyepiece collection.
There has been a couple of new additions since I posted the last pic of my collection.
I have added a Pentax 10mm XW and a TeleVue 24mm Panoptic. Both very nice ep's
I am thinking of replacing my 17mm Hyperion with a 17mm Vixen LVW. The Hyp has some field curvature that I am not totally happy with (I'm fussy). I have tried the 17 LVW and it seems to be better corrected for faster scopes, flat field, good edge performance.
University Optics MK-70 40mm
Andrews/BW Optik 30mm
TV Panoptic 24mm
TV Nagler t4 22mm
KK Widescan III 20mm
TV Nagler t5 16mm
TV Nagler t4 12mm
TV Nagler t6 9mm
Vixen LVW 8mm
TV Radian 6mm
Orion Stratus 5mm
UO Orthoscopic 4mm
Nice equipment guys, I'm sure it's taken you a while to build up these collections and through much looking through all sorts of eps. I'll add my modest collection. The 2 1.25" GSO Plossls (9 and 25mm) came with the dob scope, and I grabbed a cheap 2x long barlow and moon filter.
One question. I did read an article on here about using the lens in your barlow screwed into your ep same as a filter. This should give you 1.5x mag on the ep. However, the lens off my barlow does not screw into my gso plossls. Is this maybe because it is a cheap Andrews barlow? Should a good quality barlow lens screw into my eyepieces? Was thinking of getting the GSO SV42mm 2" ep.
Rob, I haven't played with many eyepieces & barlows, but I notice that my various eyepieces and barlow don't "mix & match" when I try to unscrew lenses and barrels and use them on another. I think you'll find that, apart from the filter thread, all other threads in eyepieces may not be interchangeable? Eric
these give me a mag range of 39x to 454x on the 10" and 28x to 330x on the 4.5" (although the 330x is unusable!)
thinking of getting a 4mm (312x, 625x), 5mm (250x, 500x) TV radians as a high power planet and globular work horses, 7mm TV radian to replace the 7.5mm plossl, a 24mm Panoptic and a proper Barlow lens.
I almost closed out the XWs, but just can't justify the 40XW's cost in mostly light polluted skies with a pretty short FL refractor when I have a perfectly good 40SWAN as a finder EP. Current EPs"
XWs - 3.5, 5, 7, 10, 14, 20, 30
LVWs - 13, 17, 22
Supermonos - 4, 6 (8 and 10 on order)
UWANs - 16, 28
SWAN - 40
some other odds and ends
Bit of an odd mix I've ended up with after lot of buying and selling (all get used):
- eyepieces:
30mm 2" Ultrawide (cheapie from Bintel)
GSO Plossl 32mm, 25mm x 2
Antares Elite Plossl 25mm, 15mm x 2
Pentax XF 12mm, 8.5mm
UO HD ortho 12mm, 9mm
- barlows (yes these ALL get used as well! listed in order of preference)
Japanese 2" 2x (same as Orion Deluxe / old UO 2")
Orion Deluxe 1.25" 2x
Televue 1.8x
GSO 2" 2x
GSO 1.25" shorty 2x
- and this little beauty for barlowing long FL EPs:
Panoptic barlow interface
in response to Rob's question about unscrewing the barlow lens group: Some use same threads as EP filters some dont. What I like about the two GSOs I've got is they use standard threads so the lens can be mated onto EP barrels etc. You'll probably find that big name manufacturers will use non standard threads so people be less inclined to muck around with their gear, e.g. my televue barlow.
Televue Panoptic 24 mm
Vixen LVW 17 mm
Televue Nagler 9mm
Orion Stratus 5mm
GSO 2" 2x Barlow
I am very happy with this little set, although the 5 mm only gets a look in with good seeing. I sometimes contemplate a 13 mm Nagler, but find the 24 mm Panoptic works very well in the 2x Barlow and I'm not sure if I need another EP.
