Tele Vue Eyepieces: What’s Your Opinion?
At Tele Vue, we never stop striving to bring you the finest in eyepiece performance. If we can make improvements, we will, as evidenced by our eyepiece evolution.
Sometimes improvements are: subtle, sometimes they call for a replacement of an entire eyepiece series, and sometimes it’s a whole new eyepiece series. Ideas come from everywhere, including you, our valued customers. Every day we speak with so many amateur astronomers regarding eyepiece selection and it always boils down to their preferences. While it’s pretty easy to develop a consensus of preferable aspects and features, we thought it would be fun to give our blog readers a chance to weigh in on what’s important to you.
DeLite eyepieces (first two above) have 62° apparent field with 20mm eye-relief, unique sliding, locking eyeguard, and are Dioptrx-ready.
Ethos eyepieces (third in line) have 100° apparent field and the SX models have 110° apparent field. All have 15mm eye-relief and are Dioptrx ready.
Tele Vue Plössl eyepieces (last on right) have 50° apparent field (40mm has 43° apparent field) with high-index glasses to reduce astigmatism and lateral color at the field’s edge.
If you care to, please take this brief 9 question opinion survey about eyepiece features. Click an answer choice to move to the next question. You can use the mouse scroll or back arrow to also move through the questions.
Meet the Tele Vue Eyepieces!
With Tele Vue’s wide range of focal lengths and designs, you’re sure to find the right eyepieces for your scope and target object.
Note on Eyepiece Inspection
Tele Vue is the only eyepiece manufacturer that puts every eyepiece through cosmetic and performance tests prior to shipment to its dealers. We are also the only manufacturer that services its eyepieces should it become necessary. Eyepiece inspection begins with the cosmetic appearance of the lenses and metalwork. Uniformity of anodizing, chrome plating, and paint applications on the barrels is assessed. The eyepiece is then checked for any naked-eye visible coating or glass defects. The next step is the optical evaluation. Each eyepiece is placed in our patented 5″ f/4 flat-field Multi-Purpose Telescope (MPT) test refractor. The variable iris on the MPT is used to inspect for internal cleanliness at f/16 and for any optical abnormalities at f/4. Only after the inspector is satisfied that the product meets our cosmetic and optical standards is the eyepiece packaged for shipping.
Space Walk Eyepieces
For observing with undriven scopes, particularly at higher magnifications, we highly recommend wide apparent field of view eyepieces such as 82° Nagler and 100° Ethos / 110° Ethos-SX due to the larger true fields they deliver over narrower apparent field eyepieces of the same focal length. Their extreme field sharpness allows you to place a celestial object at one edge of the field and let it drift across to the other before having to reposition your scope! While this is a particular advantage at higher magnifications, at low power the larger apparent field eyepieces provide the advantage of producing a darker sky background, allowing fainter stars to be seen, than narrower apparent field eyepieces that produce the same true field. This is due to the greater magnification and corresponding smaller exit pupil size. (The Majesty Factor) which makes this eyepiece class ideal for galaxy hunting!
Long Eye Relief
If you’re more comfortable with long eye relief while lingering at the eyepiece (especially for eyeglass wearers), the 31mm Nagler and 22mm Nagler have a generous 19mm of eye relief and provide wide true-field views of the heavens. Great eye relief at a more economical price is found in the long focal length members of the 68° Panoptic series (27mm, 35mm, and 41mm Panoptic). Our Tele Vue Plössls have long eye relief in the longer focal lengths (25mm, 32mm, 40mm and 55mm Plössl). Our widest field eyepieces, the Ethos and Ethos SX, have a comfortable 15mm of eye relief in all focal lengths and may be usable for some eyeglass wearers.
Both our 72° Delos or 62° DeLite eyepiece series are the eyeglass champs with a generous 20 mm of eye relief in all focal lengths. In addition to producing razor-sharp images in even the fastest telescopes. For those who don’t wear glasses, both series feature adjustable height, locking eye-guards to keep surrounding light from degrading the naturally high contrast these eyepieces produce.
Widest Possible True Field
The Tele Vue 32mm & 40mm Plössls and 24mm Panoptic eyepieces allow you to experience the largest true field in 1¼” visual backs and the 55mm Plössl and 41mm Panoptic do the same for 2″ focusers. The 31mm Nagler and 21mm Ethos eyepieces can be used to view at higher powers in 2″ visual backs, yielding darker sky backgrounds, but with only slightly smaller true fields of view than the 2″ Plössl or Panoptic eyepieces mentioned above.
Planetary Zoom
No need to keep swapping eyepieces to find the highest usable power and missing those fleeting moments of steady air! Our Tele Vue
More Info
- Visit our Eyepiece Calculator (mobile site) to find how Tele Vue eyepieces will perform in your scope.
- Read Why Choose Tele Vue Eyepieces (mobile site) for more on what makes Tele Vue eyepieces special.
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Everything I have form Televue has always exceeded my expectations. Customer service has always been exceptional. Talking to Al was a treat.
Always enjoy reading the TV Blog.
This particular issue was helpful, as the topic was EP’s.
Clear Sky’s to all
Once I got my first Televue eyepiece, I was hooked. I now have 3 Naglers, 2 Panoptics, 4 Delos’, and 7 DeLites, with scopes ranging from 3.5″ to 8″. Finally got to meet Al and David at NEAF 2023. The knowledge these gentlemen have regarding optics and eyepieces is a treasure. We traveled from California, and it was so worth the trip. Just got our tickets for NEAF 2024. See you there!
At the Sumit County Astronomy Club, the Ethos 100-degree field of view are a favorite. On the NP-101 telescope, the p mm is a sweet spot. On our 11″ scopes the 13mm Ethos makes them work great. Northeast Ohio is not know for great skies. Viewing planets or deep space these eyepieces are always first choice. The club also has a few Nagler type 5 that are enjoyable to use.
I have Televue type Nagler 6, Plossl, Delos,Panoptic and DeLite eyepieces. They all yield such beautiful images of the natural world and my favorite planets. Breathtaking with my TV 85
I purchased my first Tele Vue eyepiece, the original 9mm Nagler, in 1987. After using it for one night I knew that when money became available, the next purchase would be another Nagler. And so it has been for the last 37 years. I currently have twenty-one Tele Vue eyepieces, of six different designs. They have traveled with me and whichever telescope(s) I’ve had at the time, across the southeast US (and recently across the pond as well).
I don’t currently own any Tele Vue eyepieces but hope to acquire some this year. Everything I’ve read and seen indicates they are at the top of the class for eyepieces. I was recently gifted a C11 by my sons and am now in the process of building a collection of quality eyepieces to use with it. Tele Vue is at the top of my wish list.
Thanks
I will comment more when I have used one.
I have used the 32mm Wide Field Nagler and the 12mm Type 2 Nailer since 1993 and have enjoyed them immensely. We have hosted some public nights in our neighborhood and these two eyepieces consistently draw many positive comments from viewers. I’m now taking a look at the Ethos line to see what might be a good fit for my 4 inch refractor that replaced my homemade Dobsonian. Nagler eyepieces have no peers in my opinion.
The most important thing about Tele Vue’s Ethos and Delos line is the optical quality particularly low astigmatism at the edge of the field which is an enabler that lets me happily use an F/4 22″ newtonian (Obsession UC). The shorter telescope length is the only way to easily fit that aperture into my life. I’d encourage Tele Vue to maintain their high quality even if prices have to increase. It’s a long term investment, and I think of it as a yearly cost spread out over the lifetime of the telescope.
I have a TV60, a TV85 and an NP127 and love all 3. I have the 9mm Nagler the 20mm and 40mm PLOSSL and the 3-6 zoom and love them all. Here in the Dominican Republic we have some of the best skies anywhere and year round observing in shorts and a T shirt. Jupiter is awesome these days and directly overhead. The e and f stars in the trapezium are crystal clear in the 127 as is Sirius b on many days.
I particularly like the 31 mm type 5 Nagler eyepiece for three reasons:
1) I have mild astigmatism and this distorted the star points in the longer focal length eyepieces. The shorter focal length of the 31 mm lets me enjoy a wide field eyepiece with sharp stars again. If my astigmatism worsens at some point, I can resort to using a Dioptrix and Tele Vue is the only company I am aware of that offers this kind of optical aid.
2) The 82º field is just a bit more immersive for me than the 68º Panoptic apparent fields of view.
3) Star clusters have more “pop” in the 31 mm compared to longer focal length wide field eyepieces, because the extra magnification darkens the sky background to enhance the contrast and this in turn deepens the magnitude reach of my telescope and visibly enriches them.
I have just got back into astronomy after about 40yrs i am now retired and have come across your line of televue products. I have purchased yourTelevue-85 ,your 2″Everbrite Dielectric ,and your Nagler and Ethos Eyepieces ‘and they are the best i have ever looked through i was wondering if you would ever consider coming out with a 2” Prism Diagonal. I think that would a great complement to your line of products.I don’t know were else you could go with your line of eyepieces you have accomplished just about all i think can be Physically and mathematically done with with a piece of optical Glass Your products are the best!
I have to admit a similar process to some of the above. I always wondered why anyone should pay so much for an eyepiece. I had quite a collection of eyepieces from good, and not so good manufacturers and I thought the good ones were actually quite good. But I was still curious, so I took the plunge and bought an 8mm Ethos second hand in London. I just have to say that when I first used it I just got one of those “ah ha” moments. After that the collection grew. So now I have all the Ethos range, some more than one, nearly all the current Naglar range plus some Panoptics. And a few Plossls. The thing is, I use all of them one way or another. Put simply, they are a joy to use.