Meade 4000 QX Wide 36mm

I purchased this eyepiece after looking through it briefly at a star party. I say briefly because there was a long line of people behind me waiting their turn. The telescope was an 18" DOB, I'm not sure of the make and model, I just remember people in front me in awe as they looked through it. I was personally astonished but what I could see through that telescope. We were looking at M42 (The Orion Nebula), it was unlike I had ever seen it before, much more pronounced and very three dimentional. I asked the owner about the eyepiece, he said "Meade 4000 series QX 36mm". Later in the night, I asked if I could borrow the eyepiece for a few minutes, he said 'OK' and handed it to me.

I knew that viewing M42 through my telescope (Celestron 8") was not going to give me the same views as the 18" DOB, not even close, so I prepared myself for a disapointment.

I placed the eyepiece in the diagonal, move the scope towards Orion (no Goto) and tilted my head towards the eyepiece slowly, I wanted to test this eyepiece and get a feel for it from begining to end.

First off, eye relief is long, very long for me, specs show it at about 25mm, that's a whole inch, I wasn't used to that, so I had to stableize my stance in order not to allow any body movement. Once I did that, I became very comfortable with it.

First light
Looking at M42 through this eyepiece was as if I had purchased a new scope, it made me feel as if my telescope acquired super powers. My telescope is a C8 with XLT coating, those telescopes have wonderful optics and deserve only quality eyepieces, I had purchased a Televue Everbrite diagonal (99% reflectivity) and my next step was to buy a quality eyepiece. I only have a few eyepieces, most of which are decent but not of this quality.

The view wasn't as crisp as in the 18", but it was lot crisper than in my other eyepieces. I moved the telescope towards my next target, M13. At first I had the core right in the middle, M13 was picture perfect, there is something about being in complete darkness, no sound or air polution and looking at M13 seeing hundreds of stars.

Then I decided to test the eyepiece's edge sharpness, I moved the scope to where the core was on the edge of the field of view, there it got a little ugly, the image was a little fuzzy towards the edges, stars where a little washed out, just a little, but I could still notice it. Nonetheless, the view was breathtaking, the FOV very wide and contrasty.

M100 was a little difficult in my 8" scope, the spirals were not very pronounced, this eyepiece didn't make much of a difference unfortunately. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that better eyepieces cannot improve views of faint object? At least that was my experience and please correct me if I'm wrong.

M31 on the other hand looked great, better than with my other eyepieces, the core was a bit brighter and dust lanes were more pronounced, I could actually tell the difference in transparency as I looked closer to the core.

At first I assumed it was an expensive eyepiece, when I returned the eyepiece, I asked about the price, "a hundred bucks" he says. I was surprised, very surprized.

All in all, I give this eyepiece a 9/10, it could have been a 10 but the edge fuzzyness was a little disapointing.

Pros

Great views

Cons

Edge not very sharp

Rating

-- End of review