Posts Made By: Jonathan Hoof

I've never seen a Plossl (including TV offerings) that was sharp at the edge at F/6. Even on an Orion 80ED at F/7.5 the edges aren't completely sharp. The one time I've actually seen a Plossl sharp to the edge was on an F/15 7" Mak-Cassegrain at the local astronomy store.

Plossls are very good for the money, but they aren't the best for edge correction. On-axis, they are very good, and even up to about 75% of the field at F/6 they are pretty sharp.

Lets see ... An April first post ... brand new 2" stratus eyepieces that aren't described anywhere on the Orion website ... I'm very suspicious.

Although, I must say, it is unusual to carry on an April Fools joke past April 1. If it is an April Fools, nice photoshop job, IMO.

Great review!

Is there a chance you can repeat your test with the moon? One thing I've noticed for a while is that TV eyepieces tend to do better on Jupiter for comparison tests vs other eyepieces than with other objects (like mars, saturn, and the moon). Since my primary target for observing is the moon (there's just so much detail to gaze at), my eyepieces tend to skew in that direction. Obviously Saturn and Mars will have to wait until they are in a better position in the sky.

I suspect the ordering will change a bit with the Moon as a target. For one thing, lateral color becomes much more of an issue (which is my biggest beef of the Radian vs the B/TMB). Another is the tint (and brightness) of the moon might favor another manufacturer's coatings. A third is that panning around the moon tends to be a bit more sensitive to distortion, however I think all the eyepieces in question are pretty orthoscopic, so this might be a non-issue.

If you live in the San Francisco area, I have TMB Supermonos in the 4-7mm range, which I could "lend" for a test. Contact me if that's the case.