Great eyepiece for the price. It is not a Nagler but you can't beat the price. Image quality is great. I use it in a custom built 16" dobsonian telescope.

Got this eyepiece for use with my Meade LX90 12" scope. Love the wide field and sharp views - stars are pinpoints and the view is solid right our to the edge of the FOV.Also have an ES 2X Focal Extender, which I use frequently with this eyepiece for that same great results.Highly recommended!

As many of you may already know, I’m not a fan of high-end eyepieces. I find that the supposed bang you get is not worth the exorbitant prices these oculars are selling for. Some may say they’ll not be content with “good enough,” and go for the gusto. I, on the other hand, would rather get bang for the buck, and as cheaply as possible.I’ve tried them all, from the holy grail green-lettered ones with a religious following to the Pentaxes and all the way down to the oft-neglected Monocentrics that had soda-straw fields of view but weren’t half bad in the center of the field, if you could keep the object in the view long enough.When Meade went for the cheap and laid off all their expertise and went overseas for their stuff, some of their good people set up their own shop and formed Explore Scientific. These same people that designed the Meade UWA EPs and other lines went for a new eyepiece line, the Explore Scientific. They took some of the same design elements, added a few flairs of their own and came up with a great piece of gear.As far as the nitrogen purged deal, I could care less. Why? I live in the southwest and we average single digit humidity so I rarely, if ever have to worry about lenses (or my mirrors) fogging up. The wide field of this line of 82 degree eyepieces, especially at the modest prices, was certainly attractive when they first came out, and to this day, as of early 2018, those prices are still very reasonable.After using the Explore Scientific 18mm since 2011 and loving it, I was content with an Orion Q-70 38mm for my low-power wide-field views. However, at 48X, it was a little bit too low of a magnification. Also, the distortion at the edges added to the coma inherent in my f/4.5 optics was a bit much after a few years. It wasn’t something I couldn’t live with because after all, I mainly used that EP for outreach and the occasional large object, which I’d scan, rather than try to take it all in at once. However, Christmas time 2016 came along and I needed to think of something to ask Santa for. So…I had a chance to try before I bought at a star party with our club and I liked how this baby performed. So, when I got mine for Christmas, I was able to put it through the paces over the past year, 2017 and last weekend in February 2018. I call it my “Big Honkin’ Eyepiece” and that’s for a reason. It’s a big honkin’ eyepiece. If you have balance problems on your scope, you’d better get ready because this baby weighs a bit.Fortunately for me, my scope is a finely tuned machine and I can add this thing, plus my two-inch Barlow which sticks out about a half a foot and the scope still balances beautifully.What does it perform like? At 61X, I waste a little less exit pupil than 48X, but oh well, the views are still so spectacular, I could care less. The difference between it and the Q-70 is that now what I see at the edges is pure coma and not coma plus edge distortion. The result is that the edges are much sharper than before. Not perfect, but good enough for guv’mint work. If you’re an edge freak and have less than an f/5 scope, I’m sure you’d want a dust collector…sorry, coma corrector.The stars, especially at that magnification, are pinpoints to the 70% zone and I get more sense of color in them much of the time. One would think more magnification would bring out the color up to a sweet spot where your eye and exit pupil match better, but for stuff like open clusters it seems to me to be the opposite. Now, this is NOT the eyepiece for planetaries. Unless they’re absolutely huge, they’re just specks.This thing, with and without various filters, is outstanding for the Orion Nebula, the Horsehead complex and Flame Nebula, though I have to switch it out to really see the Horsehead itself. It’s also great for the Veil Nebula, the Pleiades, the Double Cluster, the Andromeda Galaxy group, the North American Nebula…the list goes on and on.Like all Meade derived EPs, it does have that orange tint to it in the field edges during bright daylight. That has to do with the coatings. However, this being an astronomical eyepiece, that shouldn’t be a concern.Every serious observer should own at least one big honkin’ eyepiece for those scanning moments. This one certainly does the job. Highly recommended.

This eyepiece is noticeably better than my 32mm Orion Q70–sharper throughout the field of view and of course wider. I love the views I get with this eyepiece. It functions very well as a finder eyepiece and gives that “porthole” feel that people talk about with wide angle eyepieces. However, I can’t say that it is worth $200 more than the Q70 at my level of experience or budget. Perhaps I haven’t been in this hobby long enough (on and off for 7 years) or perhaps my (moderately slow) f/7 scope was forgiving enough to the Q70 so as to level the playing field a bit. All I can recommend is that you actually look through a variety of eyepieces and decide for yourself what the best value is. For me, this was a Christmas present to myself and I am happy enough with it, so I am keeping it.

It's seriously crazy that you can buy eyepieces in China now that rival the previous 10 years of Japanese made glass. This is extremely underrated - it's like a 31mm nagler, with better eye relief, for half the cost. Wowza.... In your hurry to buy one, don't overlook the weight. This is a beast, and you might need to change the balance of your dobson. But if you want the view, this is THE GLASS.

Hii was really disapponted in this lens, i have a celestron 23mm 82 digs. that is far more better than this one.

What a view. Clear field edge to edge.

I love Explore scientific eyepieces, they're very well made and tested to last a life time. I'm not too good at describing the technical aspects of optics, this is just a really nice eyepiece. I primarily use a 10" Dob and this is a perfect fit to my eyepiece collection. I have Nagler's but Explore Scientific is right up there in my opinion and at a very affordable price. This eyepiece is a brute, it weighs 2 lbs 4 oz some may find this a problem but it doesn't really bother me. I like the feel of the eye cup, it's very comfortable viewing for extended periods. Finding objects like M13, M51 are much easier now. I was very surprised that there is such little loss of light considering how many pieces of glass are in it. Last night I found myself just touring the night sky with no particular agenda, just enjoying the view from space...this is how I keep the hobby fun! I will have the entire set of these before long...you can not go wrong for the money!