Tele Vue 100° & 110° Ethos Eyepieces

Tele Vue is known for its in-house eyepiece and telescope designs by Al Nagler; our latest eyepieces brings new meaning to the term "in-house." The concept for this eyepiece series was proposed by Tele Vue President David Nagler, with performance parameters giving it the fundamental characteristics (the ethos) of a Tele Vue eyepiece: high contrast, comfortable eye relief and full field sharpness. Control of astigmatism, field curvature, lateral color, angular magnification distortion correction, and low pupil sensitivity for daytime use were specified criteria.

Following Tele Vue's philosophy of pushing the state of the art, long-time Tele Vue employee and optical design protégé Paul Dellechiaie took up the challenge and designed the basic eyepiece form. Under Al's guidance, Paul tweaked his design to fulfill the original goals.

While sharpness is inherent to the optical design, contrast is maximized through the intelligent use of flat finished baffles and ultra low reflectance, high efficiency coatings tuned to the composition of each element.

Introduced at the 2007 Northeast Astronomy Forum, Tele Vue once again broadened the amateur astronomer's perspective on the universe with: 100° of pure Tele Vue quality. The field area of this new eyepiece is more than 50% larger than an 82° field. The Tele Vue Ethos is essentially multiple eyepieces, delivering the true field size of a longer focal length, narrower apparent field eyepiece with the benefits of higher power and darker sky background.

We invited NEAF attendees to take a look and see the universe the way we think it was meant to be experienced, with a field of view incredibly wide and sharp! We were very pleased indeed by the response and validation of our design goals.

With 110°, the Ethos-SX has 21% more AFOV area than the 100° Ethos design. This permits a nice 62% power increase from a 6mm Ethos, while retaining 68% of its TFOV. The 3.7mm actually has more TFOV than our 8mm Plössl, 6mm Radian, and 5mm Nagler Type-6!

In 1¼" mode, it is parfocal with the wide range of 1¼" Tele Vue Plössls, Panoptics, Radians, Naglers, Nagler Zooms, and 6mm and 8mm Ethos eyepieces. The screw-on 2" adapter (included) is designed to make it parfocal with 13mm and 10mm Ethos when they are used in their 2" modes.

Al Nagler eagerly pushed Ethos designer Paul Dellechiaie to extend the new 3.7mm focal length to reach 110°, the same field size as the LEM Simulator optics Al designed 45-years ago to train NASA astronauts for lunar landings.

The new 4.7mm Ethos-SX, like its 3.7mm progenitor, is designed and crafted to combine its exceedingly wide field of view with all the contrast, color-rendition, distortion correction and center-to-edge sharpness needed to achieve that natural view.

Compared to a lower power eyepiece with the equivalent TFOV (similar field stop) such as an 11mm Plössl (9.1mm field stop), the greater power - for higher resolution, and smaller exit pupil (for a darker background to enhance contrast) reveals a deep sky experience "even better than you imagined".

The 4.7mm is a 1¼" format and is parfocal with the wide range of 1¼" Tele Vue eyepieces. 2" adapter included.

In 1¼" mode, if you use Tele Vue's "high-hat" 2"-1¼" adapter, it will be parfocal with Tele Vue's Plössls, Radians, Type 6 Naglers, Nagler Zooms, 1¼" Panoptics and 8mm ETHOS.

The 10mm is parfocal with the 13mm ETHOS.

Its 59mm rubber grip diameter makes this model usable in binocular viewers — for most people.

We have not specifically endorsed the 13mm Ethos for Bino-Vue use because of the large diameter barrel. Even so, we were advised by Mike Harvey at the Winter Star Party (February 2008) that only 1-person in 25 had interpupilary limits with the bino'd Ethos (63.5-mm for the initial production 13mm).

However, since many of our customers have been thrilled with the experience, we have maximized the potential use by narrowing the barrel from 63.5-mm to 62-mm diameter for eyepieces delivered beginning mid-March 2008. While the difference is only 1.5-mm, (or 0.75-mm for pairing a first production unit with current production) we decided to make this small change public, in case you want to give it a try.

The 17mm ETHOS is an ideal complement to the 31mm Nagler Type-5. They are parfocal (both have focus locations about 3/8" above shoulder) and the 31mm Nagler Type-5 has exactly twice the true field area.

The 21mm focal length completes the logical set of 21mm/13mm/8mm and nicely juxtaposes the 17mm/10mm/6mm combination. Each step within these two sets approaches a 3x field area gain. The 21mm's effective field stop diameter is 36.2mm, bringing its true field close to the 35mm Panoptic (38.7mm Field Stop diameter). Its true field is also larger than the 26mm Nagler with its 35mm effective field stop diameter. In an f/4 Dobsonian, the exit pupil is just 5.25mm using the 21mm Ethos instead of 8.75mm with a 35mm Panoptic, or 6.5mm with a 26mm Nagler.

Some items that are showing as in stock are in stock at our holding warehouses, not at the shop. To double check the stock levels at the shop, please contact us on 01909774369 or sales@rothervalleyoptics.co.uk.

The delivery times for most items is 1 - 2 days but again, please double check stock levels on important orders before placing an order via the website.

The delivery costs for courier next day are for mainland UK only. If you live in the Scottish Highlands/Islands, Channel Islands or Northern Ireland, then a shipping surchage will apply. please contact us for prices. Smaller items can still go 1st class via Royal Mail.

Please note that if you are wanting to take advantage of our Saturday and Sunday timed services or next day pre 12 or pre 10:30 services, you MUST check that the stock is here at the shop before placing orders. Also, orders using the Saturday and Sunday services must be placed before 1pm the previous working day. Also, please remember to check that the stock is here at the shop before placing orders. If the stock is not at the shop, we won't be able to ship on any of the timed services. 

Please note International customers will need to contact us for a shipping price prior to ordering via the website. We don't ship all items internationally. It is at our discretion what we ship outside of the UK. This all depends on the size and weight of the items. Please get in touch with us for any postage costs. Please note we do NOT ship telescopes or heavy items outside of the UK. This is due to massive postage costs and problems regarding returns.

If you have any questions regarding stock levels or delivery, please get in touch.

Zygo Interferometer Testing For ED Refractor Telescopes!

We are extremely pleased to announce our Zygo Interferometer is now installed and ready for use! Our experienced staff can test refractor lenses up to 120mm aperture and provide a comprehensive 2 page report showing the optical quality and Strehl ratio, plus much more information. We are using the very latest Zygo MX software to provide a more detailed report compared to other standard reports.

The interferometer is essentially a measuring instrument. Within the interferometer is a calibrated laser that is pointed through the optical test surface, then onto a high quality reference sphere, then back through the test subject then to an internal camera which gives us the measurement on the screen. From this, we can adjust the position of the test optic and the reference sphere to obtain a perfectly calibrated system. The more central the laser to the test optic and then on return, the better and more accurate reading and measurement we can take. This takes a lot of adjustment to get the best results from the optical surface. Once the measurement has been taken, we are provided with a series of results that show the optical quality of the surface plus other information. Continue reading for an explanation of the individual values and you can also see a test report that was done on one of our RVO Horizon 60 OTAs. 

We are offering certain telescopes with a Zygo test at an extra cost. Mainly ED doublets and triplets. All available telescopes with a Zygo test report are listed here. Just select Zygo Test Report from the drop down box at the top of the listing and we will test the optics in house and provide a full 2 page report with your scope. This will show you the optical quality of your telescope optics. We can also offer this service on your refractor telescope. Please get in touch for more details about this. 

At Rother Valley Optics, one thing we pride ourselves on is customer service and quality of our equipment. When we test your telescope, we will ensure that it is of the highest quality otherwise, we will reject the scope under our strict quality control and test another model for your peace of mind. One of the main values to look at when testing a refractor is the Strehl ratio. The higher this number, the higher quality lens you have. At Rother Valley Optics, we will guarantee the highest possible Strehl ratio for your telescope.  We will aim to provide 0.95 Strehl or higher on Takahashi, RVO Horizon, William Optics and many more! Generally, the higher the Strehl ratio, the lower the Astigmatism and Coma meaning a better image quality from your instrument. 

Other measurements such as the PV and RMS are important too. With these measurements, the lower the number the better as it shows less curvature on the lens. The flatter an optical lens, the better it will perform. The PV rating (Peak To Valley) is a measurement from the highest point (Peak) to the lowest point (Valley). From this we get the RMS (Root, Mean, Square). This is a similar figure to the PV and measured exactly the same way. The RMS is basically an average height difference from the PV so again, the lower the better. As you can see form the example below, we measured an RMS of just 0.027 wave which is a very good value.

We also measure the Power with our systems which is essentially the error from the reference sphere to the test optic. The reference sphere we use on our system is a very high quality sphere so the closer to zero the Power, the less error between the 2 elements thus ensuring a higher quality optical surface. 

You will also see some more values such as Astigmatism and Coma. Again, these are measured by the interferometer when we take measurements of the optical surface after adjustment. These are values which ideally would be at 0 but as our test optics are all curved lenses, there will always be astigmatism and coma present. The lower the number, the less of these aberations you will effectively see but with most refractors, you can buy field flatteners which will compensate for the coma anyway. The astigmatisms value is explaining the error between the symmetrical curvature of the lens. Basically, no lens will be perfectly symmetrical, the lower the astigmatism, the more symmetrical the lens surface is. 

Once the Zygo test report has been completed, the optical alignment is thoroughly tested and tuned to ensure they are spot on before they leave us. 

All available telescopes are on the website at the link below and ones we've tested already that are available straight away are also listed.

https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/zygo-tested-refractors.html

Here is an example of the test what we provide. This was a test on one of our Horizon 60 ED OTA's.

For any questions about this amazing new service, please either call 01909774369 or email sales@rothervalleyoptics.co.uk.

Are you interested in this product but would like to speak to someone with some more information? Simply fill in the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can!

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