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Orion's ED-2 9.5mm review

Started by ecdon, 06/23/2002 04:29AM
Posted 06/23/2002 04:29AM Opening Post
The 9.5mm ED-2 arrived via Fedx this afternoon, so tonight, under an almost full moon, I decided to give it a quick test drive. The first thing I noticed about this eyepice is the rose color of the exit pupil, but it did not seem to bother me once I started looking through it. It feels well built in your hand, comes with 2 very secure end caps and a nice bolt case. The first test of the eyepice was on the moon. Right off the bat, I had to battle the kidney bean effect, which is a little worse than what you see in the 35 panoptic. Once you get used to where your eye positioning should be (the eye cup is very comfortable), the kidney beaning is less noticable. BAck to the moon. Even though the SCT wasn't quite at ambiant temp., the veiw of the moon was pretty clean and crisp. It did, however, have have some false color on the edge of the moon (a blue hue). I tried to test it on Vega, but the SCT just wasn't cool enough, so I went to both M13 and M92. Very nice. The stars seemed to be pinpoint (as best I could tell) all the way to the edges and the contrast seemed quite good. Lastly, I went to M57. Even with the moon up and from light polluted skies, I stood out against a pretty dark background. So, bottom line is, this eyepiece received a thumbs up! Price with shipping and tax, around $84 dollars. I guess I will have to wait for Saturn and Jupitor to show back up to give it the ultimate test.
Don Spencer
member SDAA
www.sdaa.org

Don Spencer
http://members.cox.net/ecdon/astrophotography.html
Posted 06/24/2002 04:41PM #1
Thanks for the review, Don. These eyepieces do indeed sound like they are worth their price and then some. While I normally use Pentaxes and Panoptics, I did just order a pair of the 12.3mm Epics for use in a Bino Vue I have coming. I just couldn't resist the low price for what sounded like a very promising eyepiece with the long eye relief and the decent fov. BTW, was the eye relief the 20mm as described by Orion?

I will try to post an initial impression report myself...once we get past the rain that is forecast for at least the next week!

Doug
Midway, FL