Posts Made By: David Moody

As I understand it, that filter wheel has only two slots and the Yellow (? I believe that is what is there) is permanently fixed into the wheel. This is what the person at Apogee told me over the phone a few months ago.

David

Dennis,

Excellent image! Thanks.

David

Dennis,

That was an excellent shot of M78 in any case. M78 is a difficult target being primarily a reflection nebula (a lot of light around the blue region of the spectrum) with many subtle details in and around the dark lanes. You did a good job of capturing it. If you had not made good shots to begin with, you would have never been able to recover the histogram as you had.

I have just started using Russell Croman’s MaximDL plug-in tools (especially the Sigma Combine tool) and have found them especially helpful with subjects having subtle details in the fringe ranges of the histogram (I have been having a lot of fun working on M101 in this fashion). I don’t know if you are using MaximDL, but if you are and haven’t tried these out, you might want to, if just to experiment.

Great job!

David

Chris,

Very excellent shot! I like your composition of this shot. I could see this comet with my unaided eyes. I saw where Clay Sherrod estimated its magnitude to be about 4.2, which seemed about right.

I think if I did this again, I would have used my 100mm lens instead of the 50mm. I am going to try and shoot it before TSP next week.

David

I like the DewBuster Controller the best.
David

Mike,

This really stemmed from a single first impressions post (that wasn't a one liner, by the way) I made and a remark from it snowballed and probably overwhelmed the much more important point, and that was:

1) The 6.7 UWA seems to be a decent eyepiece that performs to expectations.

There probably isn't any mystery left, but isn't that the point of many of these discussions, to dispel the mystery? Granted, the way we do it sometimes is REALLY tedious and annoying. Quite frankly, I was surprised at the repeated reaction I got from one person, and I certainly responded, but that happens sometimes. I am sorry for how this inconvenienced your reading, because I generally enjoy your posts and respect your opinion on optical matters.

Additionaly, though some of the one liners by all of us may be tedious, this is still somewhat interesting to a lot of folks because these are new products (the Meade 5K eyepieces) that folks are very interested in knowing about, simply because there aren't that many out in folks' hands, yet.

Also, there is one other thing to add here that I forgot to mention in my original post about the 6.7 UWA and the 20mm Plossl, which is what started all of the diatribes:

- I noticed that all of these 5000 series eyepieces use a thin lubricant (like a light grease) on the upper (black) barrel to smooth the action of the helical eyeguard adjustment. This lubricant is exposed to the air and fingers when the eyeguard is up and is something you may want to be careful with. It is one thing to accidently poke your finger into the eyepiece glass. It is another to do it with a thin layer of grease on your fingertips. This is a design flaw. How badly you might view it depends upon how often you grab the eyepiece by the upper barrel with the eyeguard up.

This was just a first impression review and certainly not complete. But the main reason I tried this in an f/6 scope as opposed to my f/9 refractor or my f/10 SCT was that I knew that if there were some problems with edge of field issues, they would be more apparent. The 6.7mm UWA held up in a very admirable fashion in the regard with an 82 degree field. The 20mm Plossl, with its 60 degree field, did not. There was a very noticeable astigmatism distortion and general softness around the side that seemed to leave only the middle, say 30-40 degree field, useful. But to say it is useful also means saying that one would have to live with the distraction of the distortion around it.

Alex Meleney said:
People with fast scopes will probably be unhappy with the series 5000 UWAs, but they may work well at a more economical price for people with faster scopes. I suspect Meade designed them for use with their relatively fast SCT line of scopes.

I am very sorry to hear about your bad experience with the 14mm 5000 UWA. I have a series 4000 14mm UWA and it is, like your comparison indicated, a very good eyepiece.

I think some of the 5000 UWA's are working quite well with fast scopes. My 6.7mm 5000 UWA is excellent on my 17.5" f/5 dob. It is sharp to the edge. I have read similar reports on the 8.8mm UWA as well.

The real criticism here is the horrible inconsistency of the 5000 line in general. This may be due to either design variances, QC, or both. I also have a 32mm 5000 Plossl which works quite well, but the 20mm version is terrible.

I hope you get your money back. I think it is pathetic that Meade is putting products out in this manner.

David M.

I enjoy all of my Naglers. They each bring some excellent values to the eye. However, I would have to give a strong nod to the 26mmT5 Nagler as the best lower power eyepiece I have and I certainly won't part with it(I love my T4's by the way and won't part with those, either).

It is one of those eyepieces that doesn't always get a great deal of attention, but folks who have them generally seem to like them a lot. It is my primary finder eyepiece

David Moody

Floyd,

I have come to the same consensus with my 5K 32mm PL. It is just another Plossl-like eyepiece and it doesn't like scopes faster than f/7 or so. It works okay in my 10" SCT and 5" f/8 refractor, but so do a lot of other eyepieces for the same price or less. In my faster focal ratio scopes, it starts breaking down noticeably at the edges. Since I spend most of my time these days on my 17.5" f/5 Dob, the eyepiece just doesn't get used.

I was a bit miffed at Meade's original marketing of these eyepieces for faster scopes. However, I haven't seen that in their current ad copy (they have reserved the SWA's and UWA's for faster scopes in their current advertisements). So perhaps they reconsidered the appropriateness of this eyepiece for their f/4 SN's as well.

The things I like about this eyepiece that make it stand out a bit from others of this ilk are the eyecup (sans grease) and the lighter weight for a 2" form factor.

It will probably collect dust in one of my secondary cases for a few years. And that is too bad, because I really believe that Meade had an opportunity with this line of eyepiece.
Best Regards,
David Moody

The 17T4 is parfocal (or so close it doesn't matter) to the 26mm T5. It is a nice step up in mag right between the 12 and 26. It was Uncle Al who pointed that out to me, though, at the time, I had the 17T4 and was looking to get the 26T5. That comment ended up sealing the deal.

They are all excellent eyepieces in any case and I enjoy them all regularly.

David Moody