Which ep to purchase

I'm sure this type of post has appeared 100s of times on this forum. I know everyone has their own bias, personal interest, experience, etc. I have an old coulter 13.1 dob I recently purchased without eps. So I bought the three eps listed at Adamora, the wide angle plossel eps, 9mm, 15mm and 20mm; the buy 2 and get a thrid free deal. Honestly, I'm not happy with any of them. I try to attribute the poor performance to bad seeing conditions, collimation, inexperience, but I believe its the eps. They are hard to focus, seem blurry, and display alot of coma. The 9mm is worthless, again in my opinion. BTW I picked up a $40 no name 32mm plossel and 2x barlow from Telescope World which perform much better, in my opinion. This is not to knock Adoroma, they gave great custormer service. I am satified my mirror is satisfactory and the scope is in collimation.

I want to see the Messier objects, plain and simple, and maybe some other NGC objects. I want to see the dust lanes, hints of spiral arms, individual stars in the globs....the typical stuff with a scope of this size.

I have decided to purchase one quality 1-1/4" ep for Messier viewing. I also want to purchase one filter for nebula viewing. The question is, which ones. And I would like to keep the price under $200 for the ep, but would consider going to $300 if really convinced.

Currently I'm considering a 16mm or so ep, preferable in the 60 to 70 degree FOV range. With a 2x barlow, I can get to 8mm, which seems appropriate for the highest mag I would need. I could be wrong. I know the Tele Vue eps rule the market for top quality, but is there a reasonable choice, am I on track here? Should I just go for a Tele Vue, and if so which one? I don't want to collect eps.

In the vast knowledge base of this forum, what do you think is a good (very good) all around ep and filter system for viewing Messier objects? I need your advice. Thanks

David,

Wide angle in a 1.25" format, you can't really go wrong with a 19mm Panoptic and on Astromart you can get one used in the $185-205 range shipped. In the 16mm range a Nagler 16T5 is really nice but will cost you and they rarely come up used on Astromart. If you need the eye relief look at the Pentax XLs as they afford a generous FOV as well.

Good Luck,
Owen

David,

First, are you sure the telescope is properly collimated?

My advice is to consider the following:

1) 19mm Tele Vue Panoptic and 2.5x Tele Vue Powermate (the best "image amplifier")
2) 18mm Meade SWA (will exhibit astigmatism in your Coulter) and 2.5x Powermate
3) 15mm T V Panoptic (has limited eye relief) and 2x Ultima or Tele Vue Barlow lens
3) 14mm Meade UWA (the best ocular Meade sells) and above Barlows
4) 14mm Pentax SMC XL and above Barlows
5) 14mm T V Radian and above Barlows

There's an 18mm SWA currently on sale on Astromart.

Dave Mitsky

David,
Iam sorry to learn your widefield eyepieces from Adorama aren't working well for you. They are the same as the Orion expanse eyepieces but are sold under the pro-optic label. I have the 6mm version and it works quite well in my 16" Astrosytems truss dob. Other amateurs have rated it highly in excelsis.com where eyepieces and other equipment is evaluated.
The pentax eyepieces,although pricey,are virtually free from distortion and a 14mm unit should work well in your dob unless the optics are not collimated or some other problem exists in your scope. Less expensive eyepieces such as the widefield Russel 19mm may work well but the edges will be soft.(I just purchased and tried a 1.25 version of the Russel 19mm eyepiece in my scope and it works well for a erfle design). The celestron axiom eyepieces in 15mm or 19mm are relatively inexpensive but have good contrast and high light transmission but the edges will exhibit astigmatism in your scope.