ScopeStuff's "Ultra Wide 66 degree eyepiece"

I purchased a 15mm of these. It is for
all practical purposes the same eye
piece that Orion sells for $49.95. But
from Scope Stuff it is only $39 shipped.
Physically it is good looking, has a feel
to it of having been put together well.
The eye piece does have a nice wide
field of view. Not very sharp at the edge
in my 102mm F5 refractor, but it does a
real nice job under the stars. Gives me
33x, and barlows up to 66x quite nicely.
With an apparent field of 66 degrees,
I get a full 2 degree field of view at 33x.
There is just a touch of stray reflections on
bright objects such as Venus, but none
around the object itself. I can't say what
the other focal lengths would be like, but
mine is nicely multi coated and seems to
be a pretty good eye piece. Eye relief is
just a hair short for eye glasses, but OK
otherwise. Great value for the money!
Appears to be the same as the Orion
Expanse series, but under a different
name...

The url is:
http://www.scopestuff.com/index.html

Jerome Bigge
Member, Muskegon Astronomical Society
Author of the "Warlady" & "Wartime" series.
Download at "http://members.tripod.com/~jbigge"

Great value for the money!
Appears to be the same as the Orion
Expanse series, but under a different
name...

THese are sold under a variety of names, besides Orion, Adorama sells them as
well. The more expensive Antares 70 degree widefields are apparently these
same optics but with fancier barrels.

I have the 6mm, 9mm and 15mm. The 15mm is as Jerome says in a F5 scope, pretty
decent but not perfect to the edge. I have a Parks Gold Series 15mm but I
never use it, I much prefer the 66 degree Synta eyepiece.

The 9 mm in the best of the three, others here have also found it impressive.
It has a Barlow/symth lens and it is sharper to the edge than the 15mm.

The 6mm seems to have stray reflection problems, at least that seems to be my
experience as well as several other folks. Bright targets really cause havoc
as the reach the edge of the FOV, stray reflections are quite serious.

I believe they come from the front section which is a barlow/symth lens of some
sort but quite small. When this section is removed and replaced with the one
from the 9mm, there are no stray reflections, or at least they are greatly
reduced.

One interesting aspect of these eyepieces is that they are modular, three
sections that can be mixed as one pleases.

One take the 15mm, remove the optics from the barrel and use it with the
barlow/smyth from the 9mm. Or one can use the 9mm without the barlow/smyth by
doing the reverse.

I have played around a bit doing this and some of the combinations seem quite
pleasing, though I did not give them a serious workout because I did not want
to forget which went where. A serious trial would require marking all the
pieces so one could be sure to get them all together properly.

Bottomline: I think these are the best budget eyepieces available. They
provide Plossl like performance with a 66 degree Field of view. My eyepiece
collection is rather basic, prior to purchasing the Synta Widefields I relied
on a combination of Plossls, Ultima types and UO orthos. I briefly owned 16mm
and 24 mm UO Konigs but I found the Syntas to be superior.

After I purchased these, I sold the UO orthos, the Ultimas and Plossls just sit
and I use these 66 degree widefields plus a 24mm TV and 32mm TV Widefields.

With a Paracorr, these eyepieces perform nicely even in my 12.5 inch F4.1 DOB.
The other night I was viewing the various pinpoint clusters, M35-M38, M46-47,
M93, the 37 (NGC2169), the scope was cooled collimated and the air moderately
stable.

The views were nice and sharp and I was impressed.

For someone starting on a budget, an 8 inch DOB or EQ mounted scope, a set of
these, a decent barlow and one is fixed for a while. I would be nice if there
were a widefield 32 mm eyepiece for under $100 that provided performance
similar to my oldie but good TV 32mm Widefield, all the inexpensive 2 inch
eyepieces I have tried are not so hot.

Best wishes, clear skies

jon isaacs

(Jon Isaacs) wrote in message ...
Great value for the money!
Appears to be the same as the Orion
Expanse series, but under a different
name...

For someone starting on a budget, an 8 inch DOB or EQ mounted scope, a set of
these, a decent barlow and one is fixed for a while. I would be nice if there
were a widefield 32 mm eyepiece for under $100 that provided performance
similar to my oldie but good TV 32mm Widefield, all the inexpensive 2 inch
eyepieces I have tried are not so hot.

Best wishes, clear skies

jon isaacs

Just wondering if you have tried the 1rpd 30mm (80° AFOV) at $95 from
Astrobuffet? It performs nicely in a 22" f/5 with no paracorr.
Clear skies,
Shneor Sherman

Just wondering if you have tried the 1rpd 30mm (80° AFOV) at $95 from
Astrobuffet? It performs nicely in a 22" f/5 with no paracorr.
Clear skies,
Shneor Sherman

I have tried the brother 30mm 80 degree FOV BW-Optik in a variety of scopes
ranging from F4.1 to F8.3, both refractors and reflectors.

My experiences seem to agree with other reviews I have seen, reasonably sharp
in the center, quickly degrading towards the edge.

Jon

I got the 6mm and the 9mm from Scopestuff and could be more pleased
with the VFM, there is some stray light with the 6mm as another poster
has said, but for $40 they are a cracking buy

GAZ

On 11 Mar 2004 11:32:23 GMT, (Jon Isaacs) wrote:

Hi Jon,

It would be nice if there
were a widefield 32 mm eyepiece for under $100 that provided performance
similar to my oldie but good TV 32mm Widefield, all the inexpensive 2 inch

eBay seller owl1 (Tom Roginski) is supposed to be getting in a new 2"
GSO 30mm 70° super wide with FMC coatings soon probably for $50 base
selling price. Oops, I forgot you don't use eBay

Pete

PS- He does have a website and tollfree number though g

It would be nice if there
were a widefield 32 mm eyepiece for under $100 that provided performance
similar to my oldie but good TV 32mm Widefield, all the inexpensive 2 inch

eBay seller owl1 (Tom Roginski) is supposed to be getting in a new 2"
GSO 30mm 70° super wide with FMC coatings soon probably for $50 base
selling price. Oops, I forgot you don't use eBay

There are several widefield 2 inch eyepieces in the under $100 range, I have
looked through a few of them.

Unfortunately the ones I have looked through have not offered edge sharpness
comparable to that old 32mm TV Widefield. I call that eyepiece "a Poormans
Panotic."
In a Pronto, the TV Widefield is essentially sharp to the edge, in an F5
Newtonian not quite as good but the edge is never distracting, even when there
are bright stars right near the edge. I find it even usable at F4.06.

But, one can always hope that this new eyepiece will be comparable.

jon