Meade Ultra Wide Angle 24mm 2-Inch Eyepiece

by Meade

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8 x 11.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00092H5TI
• Item model number: 07662
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 17, 2003

Product Description

The right eyepiece can make or break any telescope. After all, why squint through a tiny pinhole when you can linger at a dramatic window on the universe and examine every detail? Meade Series 5000 eyepieces offer revolutionary new advances in resolution, image correction and eye relief at irresistible prices. You simply won’t believe how a premium eyepiece improves your view, no matter what scope you own. See pinpoint resolution edge-to-edge with luxuriously long eye relief. If you think our Series 5000 eyepieces look good on the outside, wait until you see the heavens through one. Our top-of-the-line Ultra Wide Angle eyepieces deliver an astounding 82° apparent field of view. For uncompromising views that make any telescope better, order a set today. You have to see the universe through one to believe it.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So So, April 1, 2009

By 

Fred Rayworth (Las Vegas, NV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meade Ultra Wide Angle 24mm 2-Inch Eyepiece (Electronics)

This is one big honkin' eyepiece. It must weigh 2 lbs or more. Good thing I already had extra weights on my 16" LightBridge or it would have dropped the front end like a lead sinker.

I'm not a big fan of the 82mm wide angle eyepieces, especially the Naglers, mainly because they usually have so many elements, they suck the light right out of the image. Some of the newer type 5 (I think) Naglers have only 6 elements in them, so there may be promise there, but I digress.

I'm a hard-core deep sky observer, and one thing I've learned over the years is that the more surfaces the light has to either bounce off of, or go through, the dimmer the image. This eyepiece is apparently a case in point. Though I am not sure how many elements it actually has, the end result is less than satisfying in the field.

I borrowed this eyepiece from a friend (I'd also tried their 30mm version last year, and it was worse) and tried to forget my already jaded view of this series. Unfortunately, when it came to performance, my doubts were confirmed.

The first thing I noticed was that it had a very wide flat field, which many observers desire. I really am not that concerned with the edge, especially since my main eyepieces right now are the Orion Q-70's. This eyepiece has a larger and flatter field. I'll give it that.

When it came to actually looking at something, this is where the eyepiece fails miserably. I did this test on Markarian's Chain, the 9 galaxies in the group including M-84 and M-86 in Virgo. I've seen this group before, but never noted all 9 galaxies. This time, I did. With my Orion Q-70 26mm, I was able to see all 9 galaxies in the field, given that the edge stars were like comets. The galaxies at the edge of the field were all there, if slightly distorted. The most challenging galaxy was this little 13th magnitude one that is in the middle of the group and is the one I'd missed before. That night, it was plainly evident because I knew it was there. It was, by far, the faintest object I saw all night, given the mediocre skies.

Then, I popped in this expensive counterweight. The first thing I noticed was that the galaxy group fit better into the field, and the ones at the edges were less distorted. However, that 13th magnitude galaxy in the middle of the group was not only gone, but the other galaxies showed less fuzz and brightness. I live for those faint fuzzies, and this eyepiece, despite an impressive wide and flat field, failed the test. The background was kind of orange too, which is what I'd noticed on that 30mm version I'd tried last year. I have no idea where this orange comes from. It is very subtle, but instead of the background being just a tad too gray instead of black, with this eyepiece, the background was kind of gray-orange.

To get that wide, flat field, the sacrifice is that you have to add more and more elements, thicker glass, or different index glass. Whatever the case, it doesn't perform for me as well as the cheap $100 Q-70's.

If you want an eyepiece to show off to newbies or people that don't know any better, this is the eyepiece for you. If you are into open and globular clusters, this may be the ticket. However, if you are a hard-core observer that is into faint nebulae and galaxies, this one is going to disappoint.