Eyepieces
I
primarily use the Meade 56mm Plossl eyepiece for single eye viewing on the
AP scope. It
provides an excellent, two-thirds view of the solar disk. Prominences
stand out well and surface detail is vivid. One of the older Meade 56's I
owned
would not fit into any focusers or diagonals I use. I had to have a friend
machine off the chrome plating. It now works fine. I bought a new one from
OPT that worked fine however.
My
Naglers and Panoptics will display a good image of the sun but require a
much more precise head placement to avoid blackout. The Meade is much more
forgiving. The TV 55mm is comparable to the Meade (either works file).
The
Meade gives a 1.5mm exit pupil. This is very good considering your eyes,
during a bright sunny day, are probably already at 3mm.
For binoviewing, I've used pairs of TeleVue 32 Plossls, 24 Panoptics and 16 Nagler T6.
Denkmeier's new 20mm eyepieces did exceptionally well at the 2004 Black
Forest Star Party.
Simulated
Field of View
Meade 56mm Series 4000 Super Plossl
50 degrees apparent Field of View, 1.5mm exit pupil (!)
7-layer multi-coatings and edge-blackened optics
TeleVue 8 to 24 Zoom Eyepiece
I've found the TeleVue 8 - 24 zoom
eyepiece works very well with the Coronado filters. It
allows you to size the disk of the sun to your liking. Contrast is best at
24mm but, the disk size and detail are at their smallest. At 8mm the disk
size fills the entire field of view and requires you to look around to see
everything. I set it mostly between 12 and 16mm. Here you can see the
entire disk comfortably and still get good contrast. There is quite a bit
of reflection with this eyepiece but not any more than with other non-CEMAX
Plossls. It cost around $150 on Astromart.
Simulated
Field of View
