C-14 Eyepieces, Etc.

I have an old Orange Tube I bought new 1977. It has the original giant diagonal. I have been thinking about 3 eyepieces...a 31Nagler, a 21 ethos, or a 20 Explore Scientific 100. I have a few questions...I have not had an issue with field curvature with eyepieces I have...if I go to any of these will I have problems with field curvature for visual?...will a f/6.3 reducer/corrector work with the old giant diagonal and would it help flatten things out with the above eyepieces? Would the Lumicon giant guider reducer lens be a better bet and does it flatten the field too? I have a 32 mm erfle but I would like higher power with a larger field.
Would it be worth it to get a 21 ethos over a 20 ES 100 for this scope?
Your opinions would be greatly appreciaed...
Twenty Questions..

charles geiger said:

I have an old Orange Tube I bought new 1977....

Charles,

I too have one of the older orange tube C14's, very sharp optics. I can only comment on the Nagler 31 which is one of my favorite ep's with this scope. I do a lot of manual sweeping and star hopping, and I do not recall any obvious visual distortions with this setup. Others may be more clinical.

I am also thinking about the 20 ES 100 and hope others will comment.

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Hi Charles,

I had a C-14 orange tube with great optics but went for an HD version mainly for imaging purposes. All 3 of your eyepieces should work very well with it. If you are in the market, the new Celestron Axiom series are also outstanding. I had a Lumicon GEG which worked well with it at f/7, both visually and for imaging. Problem was, most 2-inch diagonals have too long a light path to reach focus. The only exception was an old ultra-short diagonal and 32 mm Plossl from University Optics, but it did show some field curvature with the GEG. Check out OPTEC for other reducer correctors that might work better for you.

Klaus