Great video! I have used both lines in my 12.5 f4.8 scope. The ES is the best bang for the buck, and the Luminos is not far behind, but they clearly shows aberrations. That said, people who say the “ring of fire” is awful are literal purists who want perfection to the edge of field. To my eye, the Luminos 10mm and 31mm are the best. And let’s be real: you are still getting 82° field of view. Most people like myself only care about the central field and don’t care about the extreme edge.
I'll add a few comments here for your readers enlightenment. First, your 9.25 is considered a very slow F 10 scope and is very forgiving of any optical defects in your eyepiece line up. The reason that the Luminos EP's catch a lot of flack is their poor performance in faster F 6 and even faster F 5 scopes. Faster focal ratio scopes are very unforgiving of any optical weaknesses of a given EP line. The Explore Scientific and Nagler's are wildly popular because they perform well even in fast scopes. Most scopes here in the U.S. are Newtonian reflectors, F 5-6. Hope that helps some.
What those on sites like Cloudy Nights don't realise is that not everyone can afford TV eyepieces. The site is full of people who have no concept of the value of money. One recent thread on there drew in criticism from other members because some members started to talk about their boating hobby in an eyepiece thread, trying to make out that because boating is expensive that TV eyepieces are cheap justify their criticism cheaper options. The is the equivalent of some rich person criticising the food poor people buy because its not all steak and expensive bottles of wine and that they should just starve until they can afford such expensive options. Some people on that site would probably sit outside of soup kitchens and mock those people who depend on them if they could get away with it. Here in the UK its possible buy all 3 1.25 inch Luminos eyepieces for around £300, for a single Delos, its £349 for one. So, those comparisons are ridiculously illogical. Explore Scientific would be a slightly fairer comparison but even then, with recent price increases, you can buy 3 Luminos for 2 of those. Another option would be the Nirvana 82 degree. Xcel-lx 25mm is a wonderful eyepiece, not as wide as my Explore Scientific 24/68 but much more comfortable and not much less true field of view and a lot cheaper, works just as good in my F6 and 3 F5 telescopes. Curious as to where you got the data that most people in the USA have F5-6 telescopes from. For years here in the UK they made the claim that the most sold telescope was an 8inch dob, rarely hear those claims now because it turned out those claims were based on the few telescope sellers and not all telescope sellers, fiddling statistics to get the result they wanted. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence knew that the most sold were 70mm refractors from the likes of Celestron that ship them out of Amazon/eBay in numbers that most telescope sellers dream of.
@@allnamesaretaken Hi from the U.S. 🙂 U.S. market is a bit different from U.K. Most small refractors sold here in U.S have bad reputation for poor quality and worse yet, have been fettered with near useless 1.25 inch focusers. U.K. May be better, hard to imagine being any worse 🥴. While expensive small refractors are available and are fine instruments. They're not best sellers. Count your blessings in the U.K. market.
Excellent video. My experience is also limited but by far the luminos IMO is the best value for money. I've had the televue and still preferred luminos eyepiece.
The original axiom lx version had the same optics as explore scientific since joc made them for meade (series5000 uwa) and celestron (ax lx) before es existed. After several years of es being a budget option, joc decided to exclusively make es, raise prices to posture as a premium brand and celestron and meade had to go to different suppliers. The new meade 5.5uwa is absolutely excellent right on par with a nagler, but the larger luminos focal lengths do have issues. The meade 4 , 7 , 16 , 28mm ultrawides are the same as wo uwan and are really good I used to have the 23mm axiom lx and it was amazing. Es is a bit overpriced. I now have the orion versions of the 28uwa and 20xwa and they are better performers than the es82 30mm and es100 20mm
Mainly the price since I'm just starting to dabble with visual astronomy. I think the Naglers typically go for around $250-$275 used. I've seen a few of the earlier version Naglers (I think) going for around $150.
Televue holds value, sometimes you can get a screaming deal on older type 1 and 2 naglers for as low as $100, but they are not available in long focal lengths over 13mm for type 1 and 20mm for type2, but 20mm type 2 naglers hold their value, and some like the 11mm type 1 are rare and expensive. I have owned at least one of each type of naglers over the years, my first 4 premium eyepieces when I was starting out with an 8"f4 Hardin (gso), which made me quickly realize the need for such eyepieces, were the 8.8mm meade 84deg ultra wide (old smoothie), 16mm nagler2 and 7mm and 4.8mm nagler1. This was about 20 years ago and I got them on astromart used of course. When compared with type 5 and 6 naglers, the newer ones have improved contrast for sure, and comfort in the shorter focal lengths since the type 6 has more eye relief. My favorite nagler was the 31mm, and when all my stuff was stolen, I got the orion 28mm (wo uwan), which is the closest thing since the others even the es did not quite match the nagler. I first discovered that when a friend and coworker got the 28 uwan back in the day around 2006 and others in our observing group had 31 naglers and we got to compare them in my f4 and his f5. When I finally had a chance at a cheap used 31 nagler (one of the benefits of working at a telescope store), I jumped at it, and it was heaven for wide field in my televue 101. I had to put everything in storage later and the tweaker got it all and insurance wouldn't pay a dime.
I have several of the hard cases from Harbor Freight. I can't see how Pelican cases could be much better. Personally I would have kept the ES 11mm but I don't have the two to compare with each other.
Luminos line is great, and best EP's are the 2 inch 19, 23 and 31mm. Tele Vue Delos is AMAZING anything from 17.3 and higher-especially when doing planetary visual viewing. Try a 10mm Delos and you will see the difference. Luminos has great eye relief and their twist-up rubber eye cup is great, as is Delos relief and eye cup system.
Yes, I'm very happy with the Luminos line, especially for the price! I would like to try some televue ep's one day though. I'll keep an eye out for a used one on Cloudy Nights.
@@deepskyutah5257 I have the entire 72deg Delos line and they are great-especially for planetary viewing. Lowest mag is 17.3 , though, so if you want a good 82deg Ep with great eye relief then the Type 4 17 and 22mm are nice... I like the Luminos 31, 23 and 19 2 inch EP's a lot. GREAT value!
Good stuff, I get my ES eyepieces from Aliexpress. Just ordered a 30mm 82 degree eyepiece for 220 bucks or so. I reckon that's pretty good when the Nagler's go for almost a thousand
@@Mike_Curtis I suppose that's a possibility. I've never actually had a "successful" transaction on Aliexpress. I tried ordering 2 filters last year. Both took 90+ days for delivery. Sellers kept trying to string me along. I had to file claims with my bank for both of them. I guess I did end up keeping one of them, and it appears to be legit.
@@deepskyutah5257 seems like more hassle and risk than it's worth. If course, this is coming from the perspective of someone in the US like yourself. Options are more limited to those in other countries, so Ali is probably a reasonable option in those cases.
@@Mike_Curtis You can check out store reviews on Ali, plus ES is a Chinese brand. It's not wish.com. It matters for me because I'm a student on a budget. A saving of $200 is meaningful enough to me to buy straight from the manufacturer in China. Ive bought most of my gear from aliexpress with no issues to date. Maybe because Australia is closer to China? I also never go with the default ahipping
My Explore Scientific 82 degree 14mm is my absolute favorite lens. I have a 10" Dobsonian this is a great lens with a wide field of view 🔭
Great video! I have used both lines in my 12.5 f4.8 scope. The ES is the best bang for the buck, and the Luminos is not far behind, but they clearly shows aberrations. That said, people who say the “ring of fire” is awful are literal purists who want perfection to the edge of field.
To my eye, the Luminos 10mm and 31mm are the best. And let’s be real: you are still getting 82° field of view. Most people like myself only care about the central field and don’t care about the extreme edge.
I'll add a few comments here for your readers enlightenment. First, your 9.25 is considered a very slow F 10 scope and is very forgiving of any optical defects in your eyepiece line up. The reason that the Luminos EP's catch a lot of flack is their poor performance in faster F 6 and even faster F 5 scopes. Faster focal ratio scopes are very unforgiving of any optical weaknesses of a given EP line. The Explore Scientific and Nagler's are wildly popular because they perform well even in fast scopes. Most scopes here in the U.S. are Newtonian reflectors, F 5-6. Hope that helps some.
Best input!
What those on sites like Cloudy Nights don't realise is that not everyone can afford TV eyepieces. The site is full of people who have no concept of the value of money. One recent thread on there drew in criticism from other members because some members started to talk about their boating hobby in an eyepiece thread, trying to make out that because boating is expensive that TV eyepieces are cheap justify their criticism cheaper options. The is the equivalent of some rich person criticising the food poor people buy because its not all steak and expensive bottles of wine and that they should just starve until they can afford such expensive options. Some people on that site would probably sit outside of soup kitchens and mock those people who depend on them if they could get away with it.
Here in the UK its possible buy all 3 1.25 inch Luminos eyepieces for around £300, for a single Delos, its £349 for one. So, those comparisons are ridiculously illogical. Explore Scientific would be a slightly fairer comparison but even then, with recent price increases, you can buy 3 Luminos for 2 of those. Another option would be the Nirvana 82 degree. Xcel-lx 25mm is a wonderful eyepiece, not as wide as my Explore Scientific 24/68 but much more comfortable and not much less true field of view and a lot cheaper, works just as good in my F6 and 3 F5 telescopes.
Curious as to where you got the data that most people in the USA have F5-6 telescopes from. For years here in the UK they made the claim that the most sold telescope was an 8inch dob, rarely hear those claims now because it turned out those claims were based on the few telescope sellers and not all telescope sellers, fiddling statistics to get the result they wanted. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence knew that the most sold were 70mm refractors from the likes of Celestron that ship them out of Amazon/eBay in numbers that most telescope sellers dream of.
@@allnamesaretaken
Hi from the U.S. 🙂
U.S. market is a bit different from U.K. Most small refractors sold here in U.S have bad reputation for poor quality and worse yet, have been fettered with near useless 1.25 inch focusers. U.K. May be better, hard to imagine being any worse 🥴. While expensive small refractors are available and are fine instruments. They're not best sellers. Count your blessings in the U.K. market.
Excellent video. My experience is also limited but by far the luminos IMO is the best value for money. I've had the televue and still preferred luminos eyepiece.
The original axiom lx version had the same optics as explore scientific since joc made them for meade (series5000 uwa) and celestron (ax lx) before es existed.
After several years of es being a budget option, joc decided to exclusively make es, raise prices to posture as a premium brand and celestron and meade had to go to different suppliers.
The new meade 5.5uwa is absolutely excellent right on par with a nagler, but the larger luminos focal lengths do have issues.
The meade 4 , 7 , 16 , 28mm ultrawides are the same as wo uwan and are really good
I used to have the 23mm axiom lx and it was amazing. Es is a bit overpriced. I now have the orion versions of the 28uwa and 20xwa and they are better performers than the es82 30mm and es100 20mm
Appreciate your honesty.
Did you have a reason not to go with Televue? Did you notice if Televue retained in value in the used market?
Mainly the price since I'm just starting to dabble with visual astronomy. I think the Naglers typically go for around $250-$275 used. I've seen a few of the earlier version Naglers (I think) going for around $150.
Televue holds value, sometimes you can get a screaming deal on older type 1 and 2 naglers for as low as $100, but they are not available in long focal lengths over 13mm for type 1 and 20mm for type2, but 20mm type 2 naglers hold their value, and some like the 11mm type 1 are rare and expensive.
I have owned at least one of each type of naglers over the years, my first 4 premium eyepieces when I was starting out with an 8"f4 Hardin (gso), which made me quickly realize the need for such eyepieces, were the 8.8mm meade 84deg ultra wide (old smoothie), 16mm nagler2 and 7mm and 4.8mm nagler1. This was about 20 years ago and I got them on astromart used of course.
When compared with type 5 and 6 naglers, the newer ones have improved contrast for sure, and comfort in the shorter focal lengths since the type 6 has more eye relief.
My favorite nagler was the 31mm, and when all my stuff was stolen, I got the orion 28mm (wo uwan), which is the closest thing since the others even the es did not quite match the nagler. I first discovered that when a friend and coworker got the 28 uwan back in the day around 2006 and others in our observing group had 31 naglers and we got to compare them in my f4 and his f5. When I finally had a chance at a cheap used 31 nagler (one of the benefits of working at a telescope store), I jumped at it, and it was heaven for wide field in my televue 101. I had to put everything in storage later and the tweaker got it all and insurance wouldn't pay a dime.
I have several of the hard cases from Harbor Freight. I can't see how Pelican cases could be much better. Personally I would have kept the ES 11mm but I don't have the two to compare with each other.
It was a tough decision, but they view was very comparable between the two.
Luminos line is great, and best EP's are the 2 inch 19, 23 and 31mm. Tele Vue Delos is AMAZING anything from 17.3 and higher-especially when doing planetary visual viewing. Try a 10mm Delos and you will see the difference. Luminos has great eye relief and their twist-up rubber eye cup is great, as is Delos relief and eye cup system.
Yes, I'm very happy with the Luminos line, especially for the price! I would like to try some televue ep's one day though. I'll keep an eye out for a used one on Cloudy Nights.
@@deepskyutah5257 I have the entire 72deg Delos line and they are great-especially for planetary viewing. Lowest mag is 17.3 , though, so if you want a good 82deg Ep with great eye relief then the Type 4 17 and 22mm are nice... I like the Luminos 31, 23 and 19 2 inch EP's a lot. GREAT value!
Hey guy, I have a C11 EdgeHD and I love the Luminos Line of eye pieces. Collect them all!
Thanks great review 👍
Thanks!
I liked the Luminos, sold the 10,15 and 23 but still have the 31mm!
They have great bang for the buck!
Good stuff, I get my ES eyepieces from Aliexpress. Just ordered a 30mm 82 degree eyepiece for 220 bucks or so. I reckon that's pretty good when the Nagler's go for almost a thousand
That's a good idea. I hadn't thought of checking Aliexpress. I'm tempted to look for a used Nagler to see the difference.
I'd be worried that I would receive a counterfeit Chinese copy from Alixpress
@@Mike_Curtis I suppose that's a possibility. I've never actually had a "successful" transaction on Aliexpress. I tried ordering 2 filters last year. Both took 90+ days for delivery. Sellers kept trying to string me along. I had to file claims with my bank for both of them. I guess I did end up keeping one of them, and it appears to be legit.
@@deepskyutah5257 seems like more hassle and risk than it's worth. If course, this is coming from the perspective of someone in the US like yourself. Options are more limited to those in other countries, so Ali is probably a reasonable option in those cases.
@@Mike_Curtis You can check out store reviews on Ali, plus ES is a Chinese brand. It's not wish.com.
It matters for me because I'm a student on a budget. A saving of $200 is meaningful enough to me to buy straight from the manufacturer in China.
Ive bought most of my gear from aliexpress with no issues to date. Maybe because Australia is closer to China? I also never go with the default ahipping