On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 01:15:32 GMT, Lawrence Sayre
wrote:


There are three things I want to know about these new
eyepieces:
1. Are the Plossls any good?
2. Are the Superwides as good as Panoptics?
3. Are the Ultrawides as good as what Meade now has?
-Rich

I just want to know how any 5 element eyepiece series with 60 degree
AFOV can be honestly sold as Plossl's. :-)

When Meade's very first Plossls came out, I thought they were
rudimentary Erfles, owing to the 5-element design. Instead,
the commercial offerings that use this are Masuyama, Takahashi,
Meade (then and now), and Celestron with the Ultima. There are
others as well. Limiting the
FOV to 50 deg. maybe Meade rationalized Plossl was the best term,
particularly since the Plossl had not to much earlier come to
fame thanks to TeleVue and prior to that, Clave. In other words,
Meade sold on an existing demand. When Meade introduced them,
Erfles were "old" sounding and so were orthos thanks to economizing
and propagandizing efforts of the Plossl sellers.
-Rich
-Rich