2 mini eyepiece reviews: 15mm Pan & 6.7mm s4K UWA

I got the 15mm Panoptics to replace some 15mm TV Plossls. I adore the Plossls, but on my heavily Barlow'ed solar rig (3.4X) the outside 5% of the field is severely vignetted.

TV lists their eye-reliefs as being the same (10mm). I don't buy it -- the Pans have less. Not much less, and with the Barlow throwing the exit pupil out a bit it's tolerable. But less than the Plossls.

The Pans don't vignette. Nice sharp field stop. And the fieldstop is farther out there, showing much more of the solar disk.

But there's also an annoying part: the eyelens or field lens of the Panoptics must be much closer to the focal plane -- dust on them is much more noticable than on the Plossls.

Seeing wasn't good enough to tell if the Plossls are sharper. So far the vignetted fieldstop of the Plossls bugs me more than having to clean the Pans. But the verdict won't really be in until I see how often I have to clean them....

I also picked up a Meade series 4000 6.7mm UWA over the summer for the big gun (16" Mak-Cass). That's about 600X, which I can only use once or twice a year, so I couldn't really justify a Nagler T6. I also have an 8.8mm UWA, so I thought I'd give its little brother a try and see how it stacked up. (The 8.8 has marginal eye-relief for me, so if the design is scaled it's unlikely to work out. But the only way to know is to try it.)

Anyway, the other night we had Pickering 9 skies and the 6.7 finally made its way out of the case. What a shocker! This is a great little eyepiece. Much more comfortable than I remember my 11mm T6 being. A huge, expansive field, needless to say. It wasn't sharp-sharp, but nothing would be at 600X under Pickering 9 skies. Since I never see Pickering 10 at my location, whether or not it's capable of sharp-sharp views is moot (for me).

It certainly pulled its own weight though: the central star of M57 was about 20% in averted vision with the 6.7mm at 600X, and about 10% in the 8.8mm at 450X. The Turtle Nebula's ears/feet/whatever were also that bit more noticable at 600X than at 450X. And those are exactly the types of thing I bought it for.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

An interesting review there Jeyjey.
I have the 9mm T6 and the 14mm UWA series 4000, and the 14mm has ALOT more eyerelief, now I know the 14mm would have better eyerelief anyway but it is very seriously better so it was interesting to see the comparison you made. The series 4000 UWAs get good reviews across the web.
BTW, would this not be better placed in the "product review" forum.

Dave --

Indeed it would -- had I even known that forum existed. Does anybody scroll down that far?

-- Jeff.

*Moved to the Product Reviews forum*