Stellarvue EUW 28.0

Almost as wide of field as 72-degree 40mm Swan's or other leading brands, at the mid-range price, AND with better clarity. Heavy-ish but not nearly as heavy or outright bulky as the more expensive Celestron Luminos 31mm (82-degree). EVERY astronomer needs at least one! I have 4 and use them with great results on, dobs, newtonians, refractors and SCTs.

Received the EP promptly from SV and well packaged. I only have had 1 opportunity to test this EP with my Edge800HD for about 2 hours. First impression is WOW! I ran through the open clusters in Auriga testing clarity, transmission and edge of field sharpness where in all categories the 28s performance was exceptional. The last very edge 5% had soft stars but you have to look hard to see it. When looking in center of FOV it is non-existent. A quick look at Jupiter showed razor sharp image i when moving to edge of FOV a slight change in color occurs which is normal IMO for a wide AFOV object even in EPs costing 3x more. The moon was 3/4 full and once again the EP showed razor sharp terminator mountain peaks and gray/white markings in exceptional detail. The edge of field 2-3% presented a yellow/orange ring also common in the Wide angle EPs on bright objects. This design of EP by any manufacturer is not going to win any prizes for planetary/moon excellence but it will still put up very good views. This Sv EP to the best of my knowledge is exactly like the Astrotech 28 UWA but perhaps more refined in execution. I believe the ER is 18mm so could possibly be used with glasses. Bottom line. In my Edge800HD F10 I have found possibly the best DSO finder EP regardless of price. I have not used it yet in my 14 F4.6 dob I am awaiting delivery on but I am optimistic with a Paracorr 2 it will work quite well if not exceptionally!

I tested the 28 mm last night for half an hour or so from my Bortle 8 sky. I tried it on Orion's belt, M42/M43 and Collinder 69 (cluster around Lambda Orionis). I have a 70 mm F/6 StellarVue ED, so 420 mm focal length and this particular eyepiece gave me a very wide 5.5 degrees field at 15x. Stars were pinpoint across most of the field, only the outer 5% or so showed some coma. Orion belt fits well in the visual field, all of its stars were pinpoint dots, Mintaka companion (mag 6.8 at 48") was clearly separated even at 15x. I could split 3 of the Trapezium components (even at this low magnification) and M42 nebula showed some interesting structure, which was just an amorphous blob on my 15x70 binoculars (note that we're talking the same magnification and aperture). Collinder 69 cluster was beautiful, I couldn't split Rigel (would need 60x at least) but it was pure blue-white dot, same for Betelgeuse as an orange point. None of them had any sparks or color halos around which speaks well of the optics behind the eyepiece and the scope itself. Great purchase indeed !