Monocentrics

Markus( and others)
The discontinued line of TMB Monocentric eyepieces seems very popular. There is none on anyones shelves. Why discontinue a popular line? Is there someplace to acquire some? Thanks.

According to several posts by Markus, sales are too slow to justify another production run without a significant increase in price. They've been on sale for a year or more to clear out the existing inventory, and earlier this month there were still about 200 left in stock so you should be able to find what you want.

Try http://tinyurl.com/7epxl

Mr. Back posted elsewhere that it he thought they had saturated this small niche market. The monocentric makes significant compromises to eke out the very last bit of contrast, as do other specialized planetary eyepieces like the Zeiss Abbe orthos, and it takes a planetary diehard to accept relatively large compromises (small fov, tight eye relief, strong field curvature) for a small gain in sharpness and contrast. His two new eyepiece designs have a much wider fov and more comfortable eye relief, and should appeal to a wider spread of observers/purchasers.

If thats the case, I'd order them from Markus while you can.

If they are not being produced still, then I wonder why Markus told me that more 4mm were arriving around now, and more 16mm arriving sometime in January.