Hi - I recently tried out a few eyepieces for planetary viewing.
They came out in the folowing order (1st is best)
Celestron Ultima 5mm
Vixen Lanthanum Lv 6mm
Takahashi LE 7.5 (nice ep, too long a f/l)
Bausch and Lomb 6mm symmetrical
Jap Meade 4000 6.4mm
Bausch and Lomb 4mm ortho
The Ultima was crisp, sharp and contrasty, easy to focus and no colour splitting.
The Lanthanum wasn't as sharp, the contrast wasn't as good, but detail was still high. It didn't focus across the whole of the lens.
The B&L 6mm was a suprise, nice and sharp, but short eye relief and a little colour splitting. The contrast was not so great.
I thought the 4000 was a bit of a let down - poor contrast and colour splitting.
The B&L ortho would rely to heavily on really good seeing - the detail was poor although the image scale (at 250x with my 1000mm newt) was pretty good. No colour splitting, but very low detail.
These were all tried using an f5 8" newt at 1000mm f/l.
4 of them were on a try before you buy basis, and one was on loan. I'll be keeping the Ultima, the Lanthanum, the B&L symmetrical.
