Astro-Tech 10mm UWA 82° 1.25" Eyepiece

This 82° 10mm Astro-Tech UWA eyepiece is an excellent medium high power/ultra wide field eyepiece with an outstanding price.  The focal length should hit the sweet spot on longer focal length telescopes and just be an absolute performer in all telescopes.  

The optical designers used the latest computer design programs to optimize its performance. Its seven element/four group design uses low dispersion and high refractive index lenses and full multicoatings for high contrast, high resolution, and flat field images across a very wide 82° field of view. The lens edges have been blackened to improve contrast.  The eyepieces are parfocal within the UWA series.

The 10mm 82° Astro-Tech works with any telescope from a fast focal ratio reflector to a long focal length refractor or Maksutov. It's particularly good with Dobsonians and fast focal ratio refractors, providing high magnification with a very wide field of view for observing smaller globular clusters and compact nebulas.  It provides and almost ideal match to an 8" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain's resolving power to the resolving power of your eye for maximum lunar and planetary detail.

A 10" f/4.5 Dobsonian reflector gives you a full 0.79° field at 103x with this eyepiece, half again as wide as the full Moon, for eyepiece filling views of showpiece nebulas like Orion. Even an 8" f/10 catadioptric has a 0.45° field at 182x that's almost as wide as the full Moon itself, for thrilling close-up views of our nearest celestial neighbor.

At 12mm, the eye relief is good for such a short focal length eyepiece, although eyeglass wearers will still see a somewhat vignetted image. This isn't as much a problem as you might think, as the 82° field of view is so wide that even non-eyeglass wearers have trouble seeing the whole field at once. This is an eyepiece that shows you a "lost in space" view of space for a true full-immersion observing experience. With its unconstricted view, your eye relaxes, allowing you to easily use the "averted vision" technique to study faint details across a huge field of view.

The eyepiece has a soft fold-down rubber eyecup and comes with dust covers for both ends of the eyepiece.