Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

I'm not curently using a paracorr but my recollection is that it requires additional in-focus travel.
Perhaps others who are currently using it can chime in...

I see Alpine has sold out on their current supply of baader 24mm hyperion eyepieces with more reportedly available at the end of October. So somebody out there must have one they can report on, especially if it's used on a fast scope and/or compared to a 24mm panoptic. Anybody?...

I'd recommend a pentax 10.5mm XL or 10mm XW eyepiece. I use the XL most frequently in my 16" f4.5 dob and the higher power will increase the contrast a bit by darkening the ambient skyglow while bringing out the discernible details in the DSO's. I think the shorter focal length naglers would do a good job as well, for similar reasons.
I also would want to know what scope you plan on using.

I'd go for the pan because of its wider field but either one would be a good choice. I think the 20mm of eye relief on the radian is overkill, unless you wear glasses.

Here's my follow-up review on my recently acquired 26mm 2" Orion Q70 clone. I started observing with it at 9:00pm Friday night and ended the session at 2:00am when my wife came out of our house and said, "GET IN HERE NOW!" I said, "OK'!
In other words, I spent quite a bit of time using the eyepiece. For those that didn't read my initial post covering some of the more prominent reviews on this particular ocular, here's the link,
http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=562625&poll_id=&news_id=&page=3
In essence, the previous comments I've read on this eyepiece can be summarized as follows:
1. No aberrations noted at all at F-5!
2. Seagulls at 75-80% out from the center at F-5 or faster.
So, who's right? Answer: Both are correct. Here's why: this eyepiece does not suffer from astigmatism at the edges (or any other detectable aberration except pincushion distortion similar to a panoptic) but it does have curvature of the field. Basically, the image at the center of the eyepiece in my 16" F4.5 dob appeared sharp but the outer third of the eyepiece displayed seagulls which could be focused sharply while the the stars at the center of the field would be defocused. I could place Aldebaren at the edge of the field of view and focus the image so the star would appear as a point which I had hoped to see but didn't expect to see. Conversely, the image of the star appeared as a seagull at the edge of my meade 26mm 1.25" five element super plossl although the balance of the 52 degree AFOV didn't demonstrate any problems with field curvature and/or flatness of the field. It should be recognized that the type of scope utilized influences the degree of field curvature so this needs to be factored in but I was generally impressed with what I saw in this eyepiece.
Here's what I did view in front of my home in moderately light polluted (milky way still visible) conditions:
1. Double cluster: impressive even with field curvature/flatness issues. The cluster was fully engulfed in the immersive field of view.
2. M82 and M82: Both easily seen in the field of view with room to spare! Spiral structure in M81 easy with a 2" GSO barlow (more on this later).
3. M42: Good despite the light dome, very good with an orion ultrablock, awesome with the ultrablock and barlow. Six stars in trapezium resolved with eyepiece and barlow combo.
4. Pleiades: Merope nebula visible with 0111 filter.
5. M76: Little dumbell, with the operative word being "little" in this eyepiece.
6. NGC 1023: a bright spiral in Perseus, easy despite the low power widefield view.
7. NGC 1514: a bright planetary in Taurus, easy and well defined.
8. NGC 2371-2: Planetary nebula, a smaller, fainter version of m76, located in Gemini. Faint, but well-defined.
9. NGC 2394, Eskimo planetary nebula in Gemini, also an easy and well-defined object, despite low power.
10. NGC 2158 and M35 in Gemini, easy, well defined clusters, despite wide separation of objects.
11. NGC 2403 in Camelopardus, a relatively bright galaxy, with some spiral structure evident.
12. NGC 1501, also in Camelopardus, a bright planetary that resembles the Eskimo nebula, small in this ocular but readily visualized.
13. The bear's paw, with the NGC number eluding me at the moment, represents one of the fainter objects I could see under my light polluted conditions, but still identifiable which, to me, indicated relatively high light throughput for this ocular.
So, here's the questions I've had answered to my satisfaction:
1. Does this ocular deliver panoptic performance? Nope, not unless you barlow it in which case the 2" GSO barlow (a sweet unit, just ask Donald Pensack) works exceedingly well with this ocular. The eye relief in this eyepiece doesn't change with the barlow combination (some eyepieces change dramatically and annoyingly)and the field flattens out with panoptic-like performance.
2. Was the edge performance, even at F4.5, respectable? Yes, as long as you realize you'll need to refocus (a lot) to sharpen the edge while the central areas defocus.
3. Was the lack of field flatness and curvature a problem on most objects, including open clusters? Nope, not for me.
4. Would YOU be pleased with this ocular? That depends, and I'll put it this way: if you expect to see panoptic performance at a fast f ratio the minute you put it in your focuser, forget it, you're in for a disappointment. If you're willing to work with this ocular and exploit its strengths (by taking advantage of its widefield) and modify its weaknesses (such as by using a barlow), you'll generally be pleased with it but, as always, your mileage may vary.

Can one of you guys give me a straight answer on the 6mm model being sold by Teton? Does it have flair issues like the original model or do you think that one went out with the garage sale of other vendors in the past?

I've been after Floyd to test out the 6mm Teton planetary eyepiece but he's been too busy playing with his pixels and the weather at Pinos and in my town has been too windy/cloudy to do it myself but tonight it's a different story. I've got my 6" antares F6.5 refractor cooling outside and I'll report on the 6mm Teton eyepiece up against a UO 6mm ortho and an expanse 6mm widefield ocular. The expanse already suffers from a spike of light emanating from bright objects but will the Teton 6mm do the same?
Stay tuned...

Here are my impressions of the Teton 4 & 6mm planetary eyepieces which are evidently TMB clones.
First, they're quite good with high contrast/resolution. The eyepiece box states the AFOV is 58 degrees and that seems to be about right with eye relief at approximately 16mm or so, making them comfortable to use while manual tracking in a dob.
During my observations last night at Pinos, I tracked Mars and Saturn for quite awhile in my 16" f4.5 truss dob. I was impressed with the off-axis resolution of both eyepieces. I observed a small pimple of a cap on Mars and I let the image drift to the extreme edge of both eyepieces without any noticeable breakdown or blurring of the cap. I observed Saturn's rings at the extreme edge with cassini's division appearing essentially the same as in the on-axis view, again without any blurring or breakdown of the image. I noted one surprise on Saturn. I initially observed it with my 26mm Q70 clone and a 2X GSO barlow which I had used to view many DSO objects throughout the evening with excellent results but the latter combination didn't provide enough magnification to disclose a moon very close to the globe of Saturn. I was able to detect what appeared to be a moon of Saturn very close to the globe with the 6mm eyepiece and then when I switched to the 4mm, it really became quite obvious that is was, in fact a moon, although I'm not sure which one it was. I am fairly certain it wasn't a background star as it had the typical point-like appearance of a moon in orbit around the planet but I hadn't seen one so close to the globe in my previous observations of Saturn.
I did notice a bit of scatter with the 6mm and there was some internal reflections visible with a bright object just outside the field of view but I don't consider these to be serious drawbacks. To put it in perspective, my 5mm TAL LE has far more internal reflections from a bright object placed just outside the field of view while my early version of the 6mm expanse eyepiece shoots off a spike of light on bright objects such as Jupiter and it's essentially useless on the moon due to internal reflections.
I'm very satisfied with the performance of these oculars and they've met and/or exceeded my expectations. They're not perfect but they do a heck of a job at a very favorable price point.

I have a vintage 23mm 1.25" Axiom eyepiece and it's not capable of handling a fast light cone, despite advertising claims to the contrary. It demonstrates a lot of astigmatism at the edges so it won't be helped by a paracorr, and there's some curvature of the field as well. It has typical ultima-eyepiece sharpness on axis which is quite good but it's just not up to the needs of a fast f-ratio scope.
I'd expect the 2" models and the newer ones to be similar unless the latter has been totally redesigned.

We were back for another one on Friday evening at the LAAS site located in Lockwood valley near Mt Pinos. Although hampered by high clouds from time to time, the seeing was excellent and we pumped up the power on Linton Rohr's 14.5" starmaster to 600+ on Saturn. As Floyd Blue played with his pixels, Linton and I proceeded with our comparo of five 5mm eyepieces: Tak LE, Pentax 5.2 XL, Burgess, Nagler and a Radian.
Since Saturn was well placed for observation, we looked carefully for subtle differences in contrast and definition of the ring divisions.
First, my picks in order of preference:
1. Pentax 5.2mm Xl: best contrast, best definition.
2. Tak and Burgess planetary eyepieces: tie in both categories
3. Radian: similar to Tak and Burgess, very close in both categories and difficult to call it less than the above which it may not be.
4. Nagler: image appeared to be too warm for my tastes.
Linton was a bit more unequivocal in his picks and he didn't mince words. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind whatsoever. This was his one and only final word on the matter:
1. All were tied!
With Floyd still on the laptop, the veracity of our testing procedures was evidenced by Floyd's dog, named "puddles", who lived up to his name by lifting his right leg and leaving a suitable puddle right on my dob!
The clouds finally cleared about 1:00am and we had decent conditions with a dark sky reading at 21.45 at 2:00am.
Saturday evening was clear throughout the night with splendid views of m51 and a myriad of other galaxies. I'm looking forward to the CCD images of m51 and m13 that Floyd will post in a day or so...