ATM eyepiece recommendations

["Bell, Andrew" <AMB2@pge.com>]

	Eyepiece questions come up pretty often.  I'll go ahead and describe
the EP collection that I use.  I'm pretty happy with it.  Once I wrote down
this list, I realized that I really didn't go that far over budget on them,
at least not on the ones that I actually use!

2-inch eyepieces:

	32mm UO Erfle [cost me a bit less than $100 off of Astromart]
	19mm Gary Russell Konig [around $80 direct from Gary]
	13mm Gary Russell Konig [around $65 direct from Gary]

1.25 inch eyepieces:

	20mm UO Erfle [cost when new in 1974 was around $30][!]
	12mm Meade "Research Grade" Erfle [around $80 on Astromart]
	8mm UO Widescan [around $100 on Astromart]
	4.7mm Meade UWA [around $100 on Astromart]

That's it, seven eyepieces when all told.  All of them have at least a
65-degree AFOV, and a couple of them are even better than that.  (I have two
or three UO orthos that I bought first, but find that I don't use them very
often.  Orthos are often recommended for higher magnifications, but they
don't usually go much wider than a 45-degree apparent field - which is not
much fun at high magnifications if you don't have a drive on your scope.)

	I made a point of setting up my eyepieces at focal length ratios of
roughly 1.5:1.0 as I work my way towards higher magnifications.  It seems to
me like a good tradeoff between too few and too many.  I like having the
overlap in range between my 2-inch and 1.25-inch eyepieces.  If I know that
I'm probably not going to want to go any "shorter" than 13mm for a
particular object, I don't need to swap in an adapter to change
magnifications.  I have my eyes open for an 8mm-24mm zoom.  I have used them
at star parties a couple of times, and they seem especially nice to have
handy for globulars and galaxies - it means that you don't need to take your
eyes away from them while swapping eyepieces to find just the right
magnification.

-- Andrew Bell  
 
------------------------
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:43:18 -0400
From: lifedata@vol.com
Subject: ATM Looking for recommendation from serious maker/users.

I've asked this before, but worded the question too loosely.

I want a general purpose scope to be used for planetary as well as deep
sky, etc., and maybe a half dozen eyepieces with an apparent field of
view in the general category of 50 degrees, + or - a couple degrees.  I
want extreme sharpness, edge to edge or very nearly so.  And I'd like to
pay as much less than $150 as possible.
.............
In a nutshell, general purpose eyepieces just expensive to get into an
obviously superior quality.