CHOOSING THE RIGHT EYEPIECE

I'm trying to figure out which EP is best for my situation. I have an 8" Newtonian f/6. Dark sky conditions are good here but not great.(about 20 miles from a big city) The Plossl EP's I use now don't seem to have enough contrast, making the sky look gray not black.
I've been looking at Radian and Pentax EP's because of the long eye relief. (I wear glasses) But I also am wondering if a 2" EP is worth the extra $$.

Schuyler,

No eyepiece-telescope combo will make the sky look truly jet black, just darker and darker shades of grey with increasing quality. Of course this is just my experience.

BTW, I agree with everything Kalyan says except I generally prefer Pentax XL's at all focal lengths! Besides the Pentax's, for comparison I have about 75 other eyepieces of various name brand manufacturers. Clear skies and good luck with your next set.....eyepieces are a lot of fun and come in a full range of advantages and disadvantages.

Ralph Junius

Until recently I had an 8" f/6 dob. Pentax's were great in that scope. Others that worked well were Meade 24.5 SWA, Nagler 9 T1, Nagler 16 T2. I tried the lower Plossl's and a Nagler 7 T1 and found eye relief to be too tight. In my opinion, once you try EP's with wider FOV's like Pentax's, Nagler's, etc. you won't go back to tiny FOV ep's like plossl's and orthos (at least in hand driven scopes).

Eddie

I know this will go against what a lot of people will say... but I use my Televue Clickstop Zoom eyepiece and hardly ever grab my other ones anymore. To my eyes, the difference in contrast for MY location isn't much different between my TV 12mm Radian, or the 12mm setting on the zoom. So now, I set up, grab one eyepiece, and sit down to relax. If I know I'll be doing deepsky stuff more, I grab my 32mm Meade SP. Also, in my SCT, the 8mm setting on the Zoom is as high as (useful) I can really go, and the 24 is a decent medium power. Good luck!