My scope, a Hardin optical 10" DOB

Some say this EP is the beast, the best of the best, here are some awesome specs:
- 2"
- 82 FOV
- 31mm focal length
- Weighs 2.2lbs
- Eye relief is 19mm
- Excellent sharpness and contrast
- Edge to edge sharpness
- Spacewalk feel

Does it live up to its fame?


With this scope 1250mm@F5 and 82 degrees EP, the exit pupil is 6.2 degrees! The maximum pupil size at well adapted darkness is 7mm for a healthy young person, at my age (in the 40s), my exit pupil is about 5mm, so my eye pupil cannot see everything at once, I have to move my head around, this is what gives the spacewalk impression. Another contributor to the spacewalk effect is the awesome contrast and sharpness.

I always perform my tests and observations from dark sites, I pointed the telescope to M13 and held my breath, the dark patch was very dark even though the field of view was full of pinpoint stars. Sharpness was good edge to edge, I couldn't detect any edge discoloration as I had read in reviews on some other sites, this eyepiece gives jaw dropping images of DSOs, just incredible. You could sit all night and observe without getting bored. The night sky is as good as your own unaided eye, it just brings things closer without any image distortion.

This isn't really a planetary eyepiece, at least not in my scope which only give 40x magnification, still the view is awesome, the moon fits completely in the eyepiece, looks huge and floating in space...

I'd like to add that this is a very heavy eyepiece, this shouldn't be a problem for SCT fork mounted astronomers, others will need to re-balance their scopes.

Pros

Wide field of view
Incredible sharpness and contrast
Spacewalk feel

Cons

None

Rating

-- End of review