Orion Stratus Wide-Field 17mm

4.0 Thoughts on the 17mm Stratus

Excellent price/performance ratio, comfort, and ease of use.

Build quality (although still quite good) and heavy weight.

The 17mm Stratus was one of my first widefield purchases after coming back to astronomy and I was worried at taking the risk since I got it as soon as they first came out. I soon found out that there was little cause for worry. This is an excellent eyepiece for the price, with good edge correction even at f5 and a very nice, wide view. I think the biggest strength of this eyepiece is its comfort. Even people who have never looked through a telescope before have no problems with the Stratus. It has an excellent 20mm of eye relief, doesn't black out easy, and has a soft rubber eyeshield that nicely cradles your face and blocks extraneous light. Overall build quality is good, although it was easy to see that it didn't quite match up to the my Vixen LVWs, Pentaxes, or Naglers. But then again, it only costs about a half to a quarter of their price while achieving 80-90% of the performance!