Hioptic 6" Maksutov Cassegrain NMC1900x152 Telescope Review

HiOptic 152 > Eyepieces

HIOPTIC PLOSSL EYEPIECES


TWO PLOSSLS

The telescope came supplied with a couple of eyepieces. These were 6.5mm and 20mm Plossls with fully coated optics. They seemed very similar to Meade Plossls in weight and size but the  20mm lacked any grips and the coating used was a light blue, similar to that use on the rest of the scope. The edges are blackened to stop reflections along the edges of the glass. The lenses also came in handy bolt cases to keep them clean, however, as with most of the items supplied in this kit they arrived having looked slightly used, in this case having small white hairs everywhere.


Eyepieces

BREAKDOWN

The lenses can be broken down for cleaning. The eye cup can be removed revealing a ridge that can be used for an afocal camera mount to attach to. The barrel has threads that allow filters to be screwed into them. Unfortunately no filters were offered with this kit.

Eyepieces open

TOO MUCH ZOOM!

One issue that cropped up during testing was that the supplied eyepieces offer too much zoom. When combined with the 1900mm focal length of this telescope the 20mm gives 95x zoom and the 6.5mm gives 292x zoom. Both require reasonable seeing conditions to gain focus and during testing some days would only allow for 70x zoom to reach focus. This is not a problem for a seasoned telescope users who will expect such things as atmospheric disturbance but new telescope customers may worry that they have a duff scope on their hands when it will not focus!

SUMMARY

Hioptic made a mistake not providing a wider eyepiece than 20mm with this scope. Most suppliers use a 26mm. A wider 40mm or 32mm eyepiece should be next on any potential purchasers shopping list.