Daylight trials seem encouraging, although they were in an f/11 Mak. The eyepiece seems well made and the 60° AFOV is quite noticeable.



The filter thread fits GSO and Baader filters (M28.5 x 0.6). The drawtube is chrome/brass without an undercut. The eyeguard is reminiscent of the standard GSO type, slightly lighter and more flexible than Synta.



Mine came with no eye lens dust cap but was in a plastic bolt case. Although this is often a standard practice with German suppliers such as Omegon and the like. Luckily I have a few spare dustcaps that fitted it. My guess is that it is a modified Erfle or Astroplanokular type design.

 

Well, I think calling it a Plossl is stretching it a bit, it's really a form of modified Plossl like an Erfle or Astroplanokular. Unfortunately conditions haven't been good enough for me to really try it. The 10° extra FOV is noticeable in daylight tests. I was using it in a slow scope. I'll probably first use it with my 90mm Mak on the Moon where it will give me a near perfect 1mm exit pupil. It will give me about 28.5x in my ST80, which could be a useful magnification at 60°.

 

It feels like a very usable eyepiece from what I've seen of it. I got it from Telescope House.

https://www.telescopehouse.com/eyep...-60-plossls/bresser-pl-14mm-60-1-25-inch.html

 

Easy mistake lol. I was originally interested in the 26mm as a bino pair, but the undercuts put me off them.


Eventually I went for a pair of conventional Meade 26mm Plossls, with no undercut.

 

Well, it all depends what you're putting the eyepieces in. Basically there are two types of focuser, adapter or diagonal; those with brass compression rings and those without.



This TeleVue Powermate has a compression ring. When the set screw is tightened the ring grasps the eyepiece and the screw doesn't mark the eyepiece drawtube.



The TeleVue Plossl (above) has an undercut with a flared lower lip. The Kellner to its right is smooth and the Omni Plossl on the extreme right has an aluminium drawtube with a conventional undercut. Because the lower lip of the Omni undercut groove is relatively deep and not flared like the TeleVue it can be problematical extracting from anything with a compression ring as it can get hung up on the ring itself. Shallow undercuts, like with some Vixen EP's (below) don't hang up on compression rings in my experience.


Furthermore, totally flared undercuts (below) can even deform compression rings making it difficult to insert eyepieces into them again.



The flared drawtubes on these Celestron Plossls were originally from Williams Optics eyepieces supplied with my Williams Optics binoviewer.



The binoviewer has compression rings in its dioptres!



Eventually I stopped using flared drawtubes altogether. All of the above pairs were chosen as they either have no undercuts or they were TeleVues.



I converted as many eyepieces as I could to straight drawtubes or at least shallow undercuts.



Especially after I got a couple of eyepieces stuck in this Barlow for over half an hour lol.



You can see how TeleVue have solved this hang-up problem with a flared lower lip on this T5 Nagler. It certainly works. Also, there is some controversy about eyepieces with undercuts not sitting properly in the adapter/focuser and thus altering the light path. This Antares Masuyama clone below has a chrome drawtube with a shallow undercut and causes no problems with compression rings.



All in all, I tend to avoid undercuts on light aluminium drawtubes as these seem to be the most problematical for me. Chrome/brass drawtubes with shallow, wide undercuts are often perfectly fine when inserted or removed from anything with a compression ring.

Of course, there will be no hang-ups with any kind of adapter that only has a set screw and no compression ring. I have some diagonals without compression rings. I actually have eyepieces that have undercuts and are only used with these particular diagonals.

 

You can see the compression rings in the dioptres on my WO bino. There is some debate on how eyepieces with undercuts sit in bino dioptres. Apparently many can cant or shift in the dioptre and change the angle of the light path interfering with the efficiency of the eyepiece. Notwithstanding they can be difficult to take out of the dioptre if they hang up.



And in this Barlow below.





This 17mm Celestron (Synta) Plossl now has a Baader smooth drawtube. The Baader drawtube is aluminium but being smooth it inserts/extracts easily from anything. This Plossl, with its original aluminium drawtube with an undercut, was one of the eyepieces that seriously got stuck in my TV 3x Barlow one night. It doesn't stick in anything now lol.

 

Thanks, you can tell I've been thinking about undercuts for a while can't you lol?

The Edge-On series look competent, although I'm not sure who the OEM is, I'm fairly sure they aren't GSO or Barsta. I am not over keen on the flared drawtube. They seem reminiscent of the TS Optics APM series.





If you want a decent quality 6mm high power eyepiece with orthoscopic type views I'd be more inclined to favour something like the TS Optics Planetary series. These don't Barlow well though as they have a negative Smyth field lens.

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop...-1-25--Eyepiece--58---fully-multi-coated.html



I have a couple of these, and a few Sky-Watcher equivalents that are cheaper but not so well internally flocked and are also not quite so well made.



Below: Sky-Watcher UWA (left) and TSO Planetary (right) displaying the Smyth field lens. I wouldn't use these eyepieces in a scope faster than f/6 though. To calculate the focal ratio of your scope divide the focal length by the aperture size in millimetres. My Sky-Watcher Explorer Newtonian scope is f/6.9 (900/130).



I've not used the Q-70 either, although they look OK.

On my Newtonian I can get a 2mm exit pupil (eyepiece focal length divided by the focal ratio of telescope) with a 14mm Baader Morpheus. An exit pupil of between 2-4mm is preferable for most deep sky objects. Last year, this, and a 19mm TeleVue Panoptic were my main DSO eyepieces for my Newtonian. I had some great views of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae (amongst other things) in the summer with the Morpheus even though I bought it for a different scope.

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop...r-Morpheus-14-mm-76--Wide-Field-Eyepiece.html

Before splashing out any money, it might be worth calculating what the likely magnifications and exit pupils are for any eyepieces. With most DSO's I'd aim at between 2-4mm exit pupil. The nearer you are to 2mm the more detail you will see but the image will be darker. For high power, 0.5 - 1mm will be best in my opinion. Although, as you approach half a millimetre you may start to see the floaters in your own eyes lol.

 

You're welcome. Most telescopes seem to come equipped with a 10mm and 25mm eyepiece. These combined with a 2x Barlow probably cover most observing.

However, you should be aware of the type of scope you are going to buy eyepieces for. A fast (f/5 and below) reflector or refractor may require higher quality eyepieces as you may get aberrations when viewing certain objects.

Slower scopes of f/6 and above can be more forgiving. My 90mm Orion StarMax is f/13.8 and I could probably get a decent image with anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_pupil

If you approach magnifications with exit pupils in mind I would divide eyepieces into three basic categories:

1/ Low power (6-4mm exit pupil). Specifically for sweeping starfields, very faint objects and often used as a secondary finder. Typically these will be around 40mm to 32mm.

2/ Medium power (4-2mm exit pupil). This broadly gives the best range for most Messier Objects in my experience. As you approach 2mm the detail in faint emission nebulae or faint clusters (like the Little Beehive) is more defined but the image will get less bright with increased magnification. Two eyepieces are probably best to cover this range; one near 2mm and the other nearer 4mm. This range is also probably the most effective for the use of ultra high contrast filters.

3/ High power (1-0.5mm exit pupil). I tend to prefer short focal length Plossls or orthoscopics often in conjunction with Barlows for very high (0.5-0.4mm exit pupils) lunar observations. Or eyepieces like TeleVue DeLites and Celestron X-Cel EP's around the 60° FOV mark. The Bresser 60° will give me almost 1mm exactly (14/13.88) on my StarMax.

 

Sounds like you have a big sky in the big country! I live in the country, in fact there are cows and horses not far from me. No rattlers though thankfully, we only have one poisonous indigenous snake. Plenty of owls, badgers, foxes and bats though lol.



This must be your scope. It's focal length isn't far off my Sky-Watcher 130M's 900mm.



If my maths is right the focal ratio of your Orion 9024 is f/10.1. This makes calculating exit pupil sizes a bit easier. As most SCT's are f/10 it's easy to work out exit pupils as you just divide the eyepiece focal length by 10 to get the exit pupil size for them. You could round your f/number to 10 and use the same principle on your scope as a rule of thumb.

There's no obstruction on a refractor to suddenly become visible at low magnification, so a 40mm eyepiece will give you 23x for around a 4mm exit pupil and you could probably get wider than that easily.

The 10mm Orion Sirius Plossl supplied with your scope is pretty decent. I have the same 10 and 25mm Plossls with my 90mm Orion Mak. A good Barlow will turn the 10mm into a 5mm to give you a nice 182x with about a 0.5mm exit pupil. I'm pretty sure the 25mm will also Barlow well, although mine's got an undercut which can limit it somewhat for me.