Eye relief is the distance from the last surface of the eye lens of an eyepiece to the plane behind the eyepiece where all the light rays of the exit pupil come to a focus and the circular image is formed, sometimes called the "Ramsden Disk." This is where your eye should be positioned to see the full field of view of the eyepiece. If you must wear glasses because of astigmatism, you'll usually need at least 15mm of eye relief or longer if you want to see the full field of view with your glasses on.

A note on our eye relief figures: Quite often, our eye relief figures will differ from those of the manufacturer. This is because we measure the "usable" eye relief, while the manufacturers specify their usually-longer (but technically correct) "designed" eye relief.

The eye lens of the eyepiece is normally recessed below the rubber eyeguard or rubber rim of the eyepiece to keep the lens from being scratched during use. An eyepiece might have a "designed" eye relief of 15mm (and the eye relief will truly measure 15mm from the eye lens to where the image forms). However, if the eye lens is recessed 3mm below the eye guard, the Ramsden Disk forms only 12mm above the eyepiece body (the 15mm "designed" eye relief, less the 3mm of eye relief made unusable by having the eye lens recessed into the body of the eyepiece). This "usable" eye relief of 12mm (measured from the rolled-down eyeguard - the closest point you can get your eye to the eye lens - to where the image forms) is the eye relief figure we would measure and list in this website.

Why is it important to list the "usable" eye relief? For those people who don't wear eyeglasses while observing, a few mm difference between the eye relief they expect from the manufacturer's literature and the shorter eye relief they actually get in real life doesn't mean a lot. They can simply move a little closer to the eyepiece to see the full field, and never realize that the eye relief is a little shorter than they expected. However, some people must wear eyeglasses while observing, because of severe astigmatism. These observers can't move closer to the eyepiece if the eye relief is shorter than expected because their glasses get in the way. For these people, the real life "usable" eye relief is more important than the technically correct but sometimes not fully usable "designed" eye relief. We measure and list the actual usable eye relief so that people in the real world can pick the eyepieces that will work best for them.