Nagler Tele Vue 4.8mm?

I want a planetary widefield for my xt10i. My budget is around 100 dollars, do you think getting an excellent used Nagler TV 4.8mm 82deg, or a new Hyperion 5mm 68 deg or similar is best? The focal is 7mm with the TV and 20mm with the Hyperion, but the TV has 14 deg. wider view. I don't wear glass and don't think I'll mind shoving my face into the ep, but I lack experience. I also plan on using a barlow if conditions allow.

Harry,
It seems like you have a telescope that doesn’t track, so I would try and stay above 65 degrees of AFOV. in my opinion I would stay away from the 4.8 Nagler. The Hyperion is a good choice for the money. I owned one for my 15 Obsession. I sold it for two reasons....Biggest was that it didn't fit in my focuser like I had hoped. I have a Feather Touch and the bottom of the eyepiece wouldn't sit in the focuser right. Secondly it had a touch of false color around the outside of the field. I have recently upgraded to a Pentax 5mm XW.

Jay

Harry,

I haven't had the chance to look through a Hyperion yet (my 24mm is on backorder) but I have owned a 4.8mm Nagler. Eye relief was uncomfortable for me so I replaced it with a 5mm T6. I found that if I removed the rubber eyecup I could get my eye close enough to see the entire field of view. It was a sharp eyepiece.

It's good to have choices and with Astromart you can always buy one, change your mind, then try the other.

Jerry

Attached Image:

The Nagler 4.8 is decent enough, and a bargain in the
Nagler line-up. Eyerelief is main down-side, but
for planets you don't need to see the entire field
anyway.

The Nagler 4.8mm and the Meade UWA 4000 4.7mm are both good ultrawides but both have the same short eye relief, which for me just doesn't work. The lens tends to fog up in the cold easily due to the eye being so close. It gets eyelash oil on the lens all the time and is hard to clean as the lens is smaller.
The Pentax XL 5.2mm and XW 5mm are excellent, but outside your budget.
Perhaps the BO/TMB Planetary EP would be a good choice at $69-99 depending on sales. It is onlly 60° FOV, but with ample eye relief it is enough. I have the 5mm TMB as well as a 5.2mm Pentax XL and TV Radian. I think all three are good but I use the XL most I guess. But I do like them all.
The Hyperion would be OK too, but I have not tried the shorter f/l ones and can not comment on the view.

Harry
I had both the 4.8mm Nagler and 5mm Orion Ultrascopic at the same time and compared them back and forth on a number of occasions. The Orion provided sharper images with round stars right up to the edge of the field. The 4.8 was good and had wider views, but did not match up with those crisp, sharp views. I sold the 4.8.

The 3.8mm and the 5mm Ultrascopics have like built in barlows and provide a very comfortable eye relief.

Keep in mind, this was with a 5" F8 APO refractor on a tracking mount.

Harry Vanderburg said:

I want a planetary widefield for my xt10i. My budget is around 100 dollars, do you think getting an excellent used Nagler TV 4.8mm 82deg, or a new Hyperion 5mm 68 deg or similar is best? The focal is 7mm with the TV and 20mm with the Hyperion, but the TV has 14 deg. wider view. I don't wear glass and don't think I'll mind shoving my face into the ep, but I lack experience. I also plan on using a barlow if conditions allow.

I have a Nagler 4.8mm and I use it as a high power planetary/double star eyepiece in a variety of scopes including a bunch of F/5 and faster Newtonians including a 10 inch F/5 (and a 12.5 inch F/4.06)

I think John Biretta and Floyd pretty much covered it. The eye relief is short but useable and it is otherwise a very competent eyepiece. If you are used to orthos and plossls, there is plenty of eye relief.

The advantage over an Hyperion, Stratus, BO/TMB, Ultima etc is that this is a Nagler and it is well corrected from the center of the field of view to the edge, the entire field of view is nearly the "sweet spot". In many scopes, you can watch a tight double drift past the field stop in focus.

Floyd is right, this eyepiece does tend to collect eyelash oil and fogs up sometimes. But the eye lens is big enough to easily clean and with a bit of care it will not fog up.

So for $100, I think the 4.8mm Nagler is the short focal length high magnification eyepiece for a fast scope.

jon

I owned the 4.8 Nagler. Got it when it 1st came out many moons ago. It did fall into disuse though. Eye relief is really really tight. I later got a 5T6 and liked it much better...more light thruput and sharper IMO. All these opinions based on use in Orion XT10i. I did later sell the T6 though and now use the Hyperion 5mm. Star fields not quite as pretty as the T6 due to smaller afov, but transmission a contrast right up there with the T6. However, specifically for planetary use (and Luna), I found the Hyperion gives slightly more resolute image. So decided to take the small hit on star fields in favor of the better planetary performance which I do more often at this power. btw- I don't use paracorr and find the 5mm corrected excellently over 95% of the fov. Last 5% gets some minor CA.