Tele Vue 2" Panoptic Eyepiece - 35mm

5.0 Great for everyone but especially for eyeglass wearers

The combination of its long 24mm of eye relief and its 68-degree apparent field make it easy for eye glass wearers to be able to see the full field of view when observing with this eyepiece. This is especially helpful if you're intending to use it as your lowest power/Finder eyepiece. And in comparison to the 31mm Nagler eyepiece, it is significantly smaller in size and lighter in weight so its easier to handle it at night when you're using it with your telescope. One other important advantage it has vis-à-vis the 31mm Nagler is its much lower cost.

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 Great eyepiece

Yes you can find better more expensive eyepieces. But this one is great for a low power eyepiece with my 12 inch f/5. I use a mix of Pentax and Delos now that I view with glasses and this one holds up well. Much easier to use glasses than with my 31 nagler that I sold to buy this. If you are looking at one of these you know that it is a quality piece of gear. No regrets switching to this one.

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 As expected from Tele Vue.

As expected from Tele Vue.

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 Heavy, but what a view!

My favorite eyepiece, the one I use the most, is the Televue 24mm Panoptic (1.25") I purchased two years ago. But I needed an EP that gave lower magnification with my 11" SCT. I bought this 2" 35mm EP expecting similar performance, and I have not been disapponted. Similar to the 25mm eyepiece, it provides contrasty images, and of course ample FOV. I also use it with a 5" f/6.5 refractor to provide 3° FOV. It is a heavy EP at about 1.6 lb

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 A great low magnification option

Easy to Use,Strong Construction,Quality Lenses

The 35mm TV Pan is one of the wide field gems out there. Many people wish the 2" Pentax XW's were still on the market. Having owned both the 30mm and 40mm XW's it is my opinion that the 35mm TV Pan is the alternative to get - and possibly the better eyepiece. In terms of specifications the 35mm Pan has similar weight and eye relief to the 30mm and 40mm XW's and has a TFOV that falls between them.

I find the 35mm Pan to be outstanding for framing large DSO with my 120mm ED APO. It is sharp to the edge and produces pinpoint sharp star images. Some people have complained about blackouts with this eyepiece. I have not had any problems with blackouts but I also sit down while observing.

The Pans do have strong pincushion distortion. At one time the pincushion bothered me while sweeping star fields but over time I have found that is no longer the case.

In short, if you are looking for a long focal length eyepiece that is a notch below hand-grenade weight and sharp to the edge you will not find anything better than the 35mm Pan.

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 Perfection.

Easy to Use,Accurate,Strong Construction,Quality Lenses

Heavy

If you're looking at this eyepiece you more than likely know what you're in for. But you really can't know how good this eyepiece is until you look through it. It is worth every penny, it is the absolute most perfect thing for wide field scanning. I now use it about 80%-90% of the time that I'm out.

In your average 6"-10" Dobsonian with a 1200mm focal length it will deliver 34x magnification, covering 1.85 degrees of the sky. The first time you point your scope toward the Pleiades with this eyepiece in the barrel you'll know for sure that you spent your money well.

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 An absolute must for F/5 Reflectors!

Quality Lenses,Strong Construction,Easy to Use,Accurate

Expensive

This eyepiece is an absolute must for anyone who has a 10" or larger reflector with an F/5 ratio.

I bought this for my 12" F/5 Dobsonian and it works great. It has minimal curvature of field and negligible coma. If you adjust the focuser for pinpoint stars near the center of field, the view will remain sharp out to about 90% of the field of view. The last 10% rim will be just a hair out of focus with a little bit of coma, but still tolerable - I attribute this to the F/5 ratio of the mirror, not the eyepiece's fault.

My 12" F/5 Dob came with a 2" wide field eyepiece that was absolutely terrible with respect to curvature of field. If you adjusted the focuser to achieve pinpoint stars near the center of the field, at about 1/3 the distance from center to edge the other stars would start become out of focus. This pretty much rendered the less expensive eyepiece useless. (In defense of the cheaper 2" wide field eyepiece, I did try it with my 6" F/8 Newt and its curvature of field wasn't too bad with the longer F ratio mirror.)

Although I hated shelling out almost $ 400 just for an eyepiece, you have to have it. Cheaper 2" wide field eyepieces are worthless if you cannot achieve sharp focus across most of the field.

I will also add that I had to add a counterweight to my telescope tube to partially offset the weight of this eyepiece. It weighs about 2 Lbs and will throw your telescope out of balance. (I leave the counterweight on all the time. I split the difference so that the focuser end of the tube is a little heavy when using the eyepiece and the mirror end is a little heavy when using 1-1/4" eyepieces.)

This review was provided courtesy of AgenaAstro.com

5.0 35mm Great Low Mag Eyepiece

Everything is good about this eyepiece

Maybe weight in small scopes

This is a great eyepiece, and is great for cruising the heavens. It provides the max TFOV in a 2" eyepiece. It has the same TFOV as the 31mm Nagler T5; it's just that the 31mm zooms into the sky a bit more. Fantastic eyepiece.

5.0 Televue Panoptic 35mm

Large FOV; Jaw dropping views; Holds value; Televue quality.

Still a bit pricey; A tad heavy.

I had a chance to use this eyepiece for a while at a recent star party and once again Televue comes through with an awesome eyepiece. This 35mm Panoptic has been called the "cheap" replacement to the 31mm Nagler Type 5 and maybe so, but to me it stands alone as one great eyepiece.

In my 8inch f/10 SCT, it presents a 1.2 degree true field of view. That's enough for me to view both M81/M82 together. The view of the two bright galaxies in the same field is alone worth the price of this eyepiece. I found no pincushion distortion. But later that night I did see some coma in a faster f/5 scope (which is not a fault of the eyepiece, of course), but it didn't degrade the view that much.

The cost new is $365 vs. $250 or so on the used market. Also the 28mm of eye relief is great for eyeglass users and non-eyeglass users as well. The weight comes is a hefty 1.8 pounds but is much lighter than the 31 Nagler which reduces the possibility of a weight problem. If you don't have the deep pockets to afford the 31 Nagler you might want to consider the 35mm Panoptic as a purchase. I think it does a good job, especially in a slow scope.

5.0 Great Field

Big FOV for non-Nagler, great performance at most scope speeds (f/15, f/10 & f/7)

Big and heavy, long eye relief

In the never ending search for the largest FOV possible, this was the big eye for the 11" SCT. This is an excellent EP with great contrast, light throughput and sharp to the edges. It has a little too much eye relief, hard to hold on center. But TV makes the eyeguard extender and it works perfectly to fix that problem. I thought this was the only way to go until I got the Pentax 40mm XW eyepiece which has a greater field and is sharper - Wow. No, I did not sell the Pan 35 and I still use it as there is a place for both in my observing.