Posts Made By: Chris Beckett

10mm 82* - One thing I noticed right away was that it didn't have as much eye relief, 13mm as the origonal 10mm 70*. In side by side comparisions I didn't find it had a significantly larger field, if I kept my glasses on the fields were identical in both 10mm's and I had to take my glasses off to gain any field size in the new model. On the up side, the rack-in issue was definitly fixed as my new 10mm required about 1/4" more out-focus then the older version. The new version is also much smaller and easily handled both in and out of the scope and resembles my 32mm Tele Vue Plossl in size and weight. The coatings are the best feature of the new line, we found the contrast and sharpness well worth the extra $20CDN $169 for the old 70* $189 for the new 82*. Mars showed more detail and there was noticable less light scatter with the new ocular.

5-8mm Zoom- If I thought the origonal 10mm was tall I would be shocked at the zoom. When zoomed out it is about 9-inches! But it is light and well balanced and performed well at 86x on my 80mm f5 even on a tripod. There is a lot of online chatt about the FOV 80-89* or 78.5* depending on who reviews it and the formula applied for field size, but neither the eyepiece nor box give an indication of the field. In comparison with the 10mm it appeared to have nearly an identical field with the 10mm 82* at 41X and the zoom zomed out to 7.9mm for 51X. When zoomed in to 4.7mm on a wanning crescent moon early on Oct. 20th/03 I could make out the entire disk with lots of black velvet sky around it. This eyepiece is SHARP and CONTRASTY right to the edge. I put Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter each at the edge several times and let them drift across the field and I couldn't detect any edge distortion. Additionally I noticed that eye placement isn't as critical with the zoom as with the other Speers, it seems to have a large sweet spot and more eye relief then the 10mm 82*. I could also see more detail in the M42 complex with the zoom, it showed fainter stars in the nebula as well as fainter stars near the moon and planets. Once the slide bolt is installed you can zoom while at the eyepiece and then refocus, you don't need to remove the eyepiece from a diagonal or focuser to change the FL. There was even less light scatter then the 10mm 82* and outside light sources didn't effect it as much either.

I'm eager to try the new 14mm 82* and plan to order one in the near future as I've heard they perform much like the origonal 10mm 70*. I can't find anything on the new 18mm 82*.

-Chris

Looks like the website is now up and running. I recieved their new catalogue a few weeks ago and have been trying the URL every once in a while but it was under construction, today you get their new online presence

http://www.antaresoptical.com/

I've owned a Megrez II 80 ED Apo since mid Oct. I've looked through a friends' Sky90 a few times, TV Pronto, Stellarvue 102 SD, and the Orion ED80 many times as well as other refractors. The build quality of the Megrez IMO seems better then the rest. It's solid, rotatable focuser and sliding dew shield make it a compact dream travel scope. Color correction is on par with the Orion, but it star tests much better with nice rings in and out of focus and good collimation though the cell is not adjustable. Nice wide fields with my WS 30mm 84* and excellent color free on planets, though things seem to get mushy past about 175X.

Take a look at the Williams Yahoo Group, there are lots of pics there.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/William-Optics/?yguid=124728972

-Chris

I've been playing around with my Megrez II ED on the Microstar using an old pair of tube rings. The tripod I'm mounting on is a used Manfrotto 3011 which I picked up for $99 cdn.

I've played with several other alt/az mounts, the tele-vue telepod and Wimberly Gimbal mount topped my list when I first began looking for this type of mount. There is one problem which seemed to persist with these mounts and several others I researched, they all have trouble getting to the zenith without hitting the tripod or mount. I am happy to report that the Microstar passes this test and currently my scope is pointed straight up at the ceiling. I had to raise the center column 4-inches to clear the handle, but this places the eyepiece at such a height that I can use my WO rotatable focuser to manipulate the scope so that I can observe anywhere in the sky without having to hunch down.

I can't wait to get my new rings and finder, not to mention clear sky

-Chris

Greg-

I'm in Canada so things may differ slightly on the US market.

Something I can ad to this thread is that Pentax Eyepieces do indeed go on sale, it is their unofficial policy to sale eyepieces which are in warehouse or in stock at retailers at the very end of Fall and very end of Spring.

Last year I was looking at buying a 3.5XW from a local camera store which deals in Pentax but not telescope stuff. I'd given them lots of business over the years so they made a few calls to find out what they could get. Unfortunatly their price was going to be high as they don't carry any of the spotting/telesope gear but they did find out that Pentax oculars would be going on sale in the near future and that I should watch retailers. Sure enough, one month later, late Nov. they were reduced, $429 cdn to $389cdn so I picked one up. Then last month I recieved an e-mail from another retailer, Kendrick Astro Instruments, that they were putting their stock Pentax oculars on sale and I picked up the 20mm XW for $340cdn down from $459 cdn

For those in Canada I recommend signing up to Kendricks mailing list, they've only mailed me once in three months and with really good deals on things.

-Chris

I tend to do a lot of scanning, esp. on the summer MilkyWay and really don't care for the Panoptic performance.

When comparing the distortion in my 20mm XW to the Panoptic I referred to them as "Jello Like Views" in the Pans and was laughed at by many a replier.

-Chris

www.islandeyepiece.com sells them for $69 cdn includeing the 25mm.

On sci astro a report on the 14mm mentioned edge softness in a 12" f5 but the 14mm has only 4 elements while the others are rumored to use a barlow in the optical train which would significantly improve performance.

from www.scopestuff.com


These wide angle eyepieces surpass even the Ultrawides with a 70º apparent field of view, 13-17mm eye relief and large diameter eye lenses. Great for binoviewers. Rubber eyeguard folds back for use with eyeglasses. Barrels are threaded for standard 1.25" filters and have a lock screw safety recess. Multicoated optics, blackened barrels. Assembled in Canada.

#EW75 - 5.8mm 1.25" W70 Series Eyepiece - 6 Elements
#EW78 - 8.6mm 1.25" W70 Series Eyepiece - 5 elements
#EW74 - 14mm 1.25" W70 Series Eyepiece - 4 elements
#EW79 - 19mm 1.25" W70 Series Eyepiece - 5 elements

-Chris

PS the 25mm would be max field in a 1.25 focuser, so there is little use in making a 32mm for this line.

Will you take a first hand comparison to the Meade 8.8 UWA & 14mm Pentax XL instead?

I own the 10mm Speers Waler 82*, the 14mm 82* and the new 5-8 zoom and my friend has the old 10 & old 14. I loved the old 10mm, unfortunatly the new 82* doesn't have it's 16mm of eyerelief, only 12mm in the 82*, the OLD 14mm is NOT recommended, way to soft at edge, stars in center are out of focus when edge is in focus. The new 82* series have far better coatings and are only about as tall as a 32mm TV Plossl, see link below for pics.

I havn't had the chance to compare the Speers Wide Angles directly to Naglers yet but I have compared them to the Meade 8.8 UWA and the Pentax XL 14. Many other observers in the club have Naglers and have looked through the Speers, all were impressed at what you get for the money. IMO they are the best deal on economy wide fields and perform well on scopes as fast as f4.5.

I've compared the zoom with the 8.8 UWA and it really holds it's own and seems to have a hair better eye relief. The 10mm is nearly as good as the zoom and the 14mm just behind the 10mm. The 14mm wasn't as good as the Pentax XL 14mm, it is softer on edge but only in the additional 17 degrees of AFOV and really it's not that soft and has about 13mm eyerelief so much less then the XL. The 14mm requires a bit of in-focus as does the zoom but all reached focus on 3 different 8-inch dobs, my 80-mm f5 rft and the clubs 17.5 f4.5.

I have looked through many of the Naglers, and the Speers are no type 6, though as I mentioned no trials have been done yet. But they are very good and far exceed my Tele Vue Plossls and most other wide field designs like the Widescan III's of which I have the 30mm.

For more see the PDF below, I wrote up a quick first impression of the oculars for our club newsletter.

http://halifax.rasc.ca/nn/nn3405.pdf

I'd love to hear someones impression of the 18mm Speers 82*.

-Chris

Walter-

I have two pairs of glasses, a rimless pair for work etc. which have terrible achromatic abberation....I highly recommend anything but rimless glasses for observing unless they are made from something other then high density poly-carb. My other pair is a black thick rimmed glass pair with the most expensive coating the manufacturer offers. Although I wear them on some occasions when not observing I mostly purchased them with observing in mind and they work fantastic. I don't wear them on rainy/snowy/dusty days so I rarely take a cleaning cloth too them and this helps preserve their coatings. Glass definitly has better light throughput then any of my past plastic lenses. I found with contacts my astigmatism wasn't corrected well enough even with a touric? lens, not to mention the lens didn't breath enough for my comfort at the eyepiece.
Make sure that if you decide to purchase a second pair with astronomy in mind you get a larger lens to cover your naked eye field. I always hated my last pair which cut off the bottom 20% of my vision.

-Chris

Regarding astigmatism; at Low powers where your exit pupil is in the 5-7mm zone you will notice your optical defficiency more then at higher powers/ smaller exit pupils. For example, on a f4.5 scope with my 30mm 84* = exit pupil of 6.6mm I must use my glasses or the field gets bad as you move off center. Yeah that's a fast dob, but the astigmatism in the eye is usually much worse. When I use my 14mm for a 3.1mm exit pupil glasses are an option and I usually reomove them, no point in wasting any light

For more on exit pupils and effects on the eye please read pages 45-48 of the Observers Handbook from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

-Chris