Rick,

The Celestron 12.5mm Micro-Guide eyepiece is very nice.

I was all set to purchase the Meade last year at Astrofest until a friend
said 'what about this one?' and pointed to the Celestron version sitting on
the vendor's table a few feet down the row. One look through it (daytime)
sold me on it.

Most important, it was much easier on the eye (much better eye relief).
With the Meade I really had to jam my eye into the unit to get the whole
range of scales visible. With the Celestron - you just look into it. It
has a rotating section on the top for scale focus, and a fairly compact
cordless batter stem sticking out of the side. The markings are very
similar to the markings and scales on the Meade. I got the cordless unit,
but by skipping the small bushing that comes with the unit, I can also light
it up off of my LX200 with the corded LED from my Orion 12mm Illuminated
reticle eyepiece.

It was a few bucks more ($150 vs $100) but for me, the ease of use and
quality of the unit was worth it. Nice instruction book also for
calibrating scale distances and measuring double star positions and angles.
I think (someone correct me) that it is an Abbe style Orthoscopic eyepiece
with a FOV in the 50 degree range and gives me about 100 power (200-300
barlowed)in my 8" Lx200 f6.3.

Anthony J. Kroes
Green Bay, WI

> -----Original Message-----
> Foster, Rick
> Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 10:01 AM
> Subject: [M]: Astrometric Eye Pieces
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am looking for an reticule eye piece that has the ability to measure
> angles and distance, plus be used for alignment. Meade has one, the 12mm
> MA Astrometric. I have a 9mm MA and do not particularly like the quality,
> it seems to be quite a bit away from the 26mm Plossl that came with the
> scope. Of course the 9mm MA did come with a rather cheap Meade starter
> scope.
>
>
> Are there recommendations for other brands? If you have the Meade
> Astrometric, how does the quality compare to a Plossl? How much
> eye relief?
> What is the field of view ? I am not sure which to ask for the apparent or
> actual? The 26mm I think has a 52 degree field of view, I also
> think it is
> "apparent" and if actual depends on the scopes focal length?
>
> One other thing is it just me or do others prefer using a eye piece with a
> larger FOV (26mm) and a barlow instead of trying to look through
> the little
> dot of a glass provided by the smaller field of view (9mm) eye piece?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Rick in Tucson
>

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