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Field Stop Specifications

Started by Herbert Kraus, 11/23/2004 04:51PM
Posted 11/23/2004 04:51PM Opening Post
Could someone direct me to a website where I can obtain the comparative specifications, particularly including the field stop diameters, of the eyepieces offered by various commercial manufacturers (Meade, Celestron, University, etc., etc.)? These data are readily available for TeleVue eyepieces, but so far as I can tell the others will only disclose the focal length, size of the barrel and apparent field of view.

NexStar 8i SCT, Orion 80ED APO refractor, Orion 120 mm EQ refractor, 3.5-inch Questar
Posted 11/23/2004 05:37PM #1
There are some measurements scattered here and there. I've never seen anything comprehensive. For example, there are some field stop measurements in this article:

http://www.cloudynights.com/eyepieces2/seven.htm

Note that to get a measurement when the focal plane is "internal" (e.g. behind a built-in Barlow or some such), you really can't make use of a direct physical measurement without taking the power of the field group(s) into account. A reasonable way of making an approximation is to measure the true field of view in a telescope of known focal length, F, by drift testing. The approximate field stop diameter for use with other scopes (not much point in using it with the scope that you already have a direct TFoV measurement for) is

field_stop = TFoV * F / 57.3 .

The point is that any time you can run across a situation where somebody has given you a directly measured TFoV and the focal length of their scope, you can compute a decent approximation of field stop diameter. When all else fails, you might use

field_stop = 0.95 * eyepiece_fl * AFoV / 57.3

The 0.95 here is arbitrary, but if you don't put something less than one there, you'll just be computing a fictitious field stop diameter that, when used to calculate TFoV, will be equivalent to TFoV = AFoV/mag, and we should all know that that formula usually over-estimates the TFoV (since pincushion distortion is more common than barrel distortion).
Posted 11/24/2004 12:42AM #2
Jim Cantrell referred me to this man "Thierry Lombry's Eyepiece Spreadsheet". Do a look up on the web for him and they're all (well almost) all there grin
Posted 11/26/2004 03:07AM | Edited 11/26/2004 03:11AM #3
My thanks to all of you who have responded to my original inquiry about where to obtain field stop diameters of the various makes of commercially available eyepieces. Apparently such information is not readily available, except for data based on the formula that divides the APOV by the magnification power of the eyepiece in question when used in a particular telescope. Unfortunately, I need something more precise than the rough approximation of TFOV yielded by this formula.
I tried a Google search which furnished me two sites that were helpful to some extent:
http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/eyepiece_specs.htm contains data for many eyepieces. However,field stop diameters are given only for eyepieces made by Clave, Edmund Scientific/RKE, and TeleVue (which still seems to be the only manufacturer from which this information is readily obtainable anyway).
http://www.petersonengineering.com/spreadsheets/Eyepieces-for-14_inch_SCT.htm does have measured field stop diameters for substantially all of the eyepieces it lists, including Meade and Celestron models, although its list seems somewhat more limited and may be somewhat out of date.

NexStar 8i SCT, Orion 80ED APO refractor, Orion 120 mm EQ refractor, 3.5-inch Questar