Antares W70 5.8mm

I purchased this eyepiece several years ago  for use in my old ATM 6" F8 because of the wide FOV it was advertised as having. I did not spend a lot to make the scope, so I did not want to spend a lot on the eyepiece.  At $45 dollars it was a bargain. It fit it's purpose very well, and gave me a very wide field eyepiece to replace the GTO plossl I had previously been using. Overall, the images it gave me were decent for the money and a significant improvement upon the 6mm Plossl I had previously used. Planetary-wise, this eyepiece shows a bit of glare on brighter objects, but a variable polarizing filter seems to control it pretty well. I am guessing the glare comes from the unblackened metal barrel. There is a bit of fuzziness near the edges but it is not generally too distracting, and there is also a bit of what looks like chromatic aberration, with a slight red halo above and a blue halo below the planet being viewed, but it is not that distracting either. A purist would probably hate it though. They would be much happier with an Ortho or a Nagler.  As far as deep sky images go, I found nothing too distracting with it at all. The is a slight fuzziness on the EXTREME edge near the field stop, but it is barely noticeable to me. It is a great eyepiece for resolving globular clusters in my scope. The views overall being pretty crisp without a lot of focussing mushiness.

I aquired a MEADE AR-6 achromatic refractor about a year ago. This eyepiece is not as good in this scope to me. It may just be me, but the old 6mm Plossl seems to do best in this scope. The W70 seems to aggravate the resident Chromatic Aberration a bit more, and does not focus as well. The glare appears a bit stronger too. Overall I give the edge to the Plossl, but by a very small margin. The views from either are still pretty close, even with the aberrations mentioned above.

I tried it out in my Meade SN-10 Schimdt-Newt as well. This scope is a very fast F-4 with a corrector plate to control the coma. This makes it more of a f-5.5 or so than a true F-4, but it is still pretty steep and hard on eyepieces. As expected, the outer 1/3 edge of the field showed some weirdness with star images not coming to good focus. The center section was quite useable though. If you can overlook the edge weirdness, the center field performance was similar to what I experienced in the 6" newt. This eyepiece is clearly intended for longer focal length scopes. I do not regularly use it in the SN-10 because the older Plossl gives better views in my opinion.

Eye relief for this eyepiece is pretty good, but still not enough for someone who wears glasses. I have to take my glasses off to use them. There is also a slight problem with eye positioning, as evident by very minor kidney beaning that can be annoying on occasion. I can, however position my eye just about anywhere over the lens and get a clear sharp image. It is pretty forgiving in that aspect.

Overall, this eyepiece is a good value in my opinion, for someone who does not wish to get a reverse mortage on their house, in order to buy a good eyepiece.  Antares, makes some quality gear. The W70 series is not perfect, but is a notch better than their cousins, the superview series. They seem to share a similar design, if not being almost identical, but the build quality on the W70 is much better, with it's machined housing and knurled grip. I recommend them for someone on a budget. It is a GREAT star party eyepiece! It has just enough of everything without being so expensive you can't afford it to walk off.

Pros

Good, wide field
Nice and cheap, good value for the money
Sharp focusing near the center of the field
Good eye relief
Great "Star Party" eyepiece!

Cons

Some weirdness on the extreme edge
Slight Chromatic Aberration seems to be present
Glare on very bright objects
very minor kidney beaning
Not for fast scopes (F6 would be the fastest I would go)

Rating

7.5/10