Hi Peacemaker and Buddsy,
Peace Maker - your didn't tell us what telescope you have. Buddsy, these comments are directed more towards some of your specific comments.
Like many others, if you only want to use this on f10 telescopes, then your choices widen considerably. If your budget extends to Pentax XW's you won't be disappointed. I have used Pentax XW's belonging to a friend of mine on his and my scopes. They are all very good. I have used the XW5, XW10, XW14, & XW20. Of the examples I have used the XW5,14,& 20 were outstanding. The 10 was excellent but just a touch less sharp than the 5 or 14. I compared a Pentax XW5 with a Baader Hyperion 5mm. The Baader is noticeably and annoyingly darker than the Pentax and the Pentax much sharper. It is on my future acquisitions list. On one night when the atmosphere was very stable, I was using it with two similar telescopes - a Takahashi TOA150 6"f8 and a Newtonian 6"f7. Using the Baader, both scopes gave average views, using the XW5, we were resolving better than the Rayleigh limit.
I am not trying to push you toward a 5mm eyepiece. I agree with prior advice that an eyepiece in the 12-14mm range will be much more useful than a very short one. So the XW14 is highly recommended.
Wide angle
I have the 'hand grenade' the
Televue Nagler 31mm. Beautiful eyepiece works on any f ratio. HEAVY!! about 1kg or 2 lbs.
You can mount a Vixen rail on your CPC tube and mount a small counterweight on a Vixen Dovetail adapter to offset the imbalance. Alternatively, I think you can buy Velcro strap on weight belts to add weight evenly around the front of the tube.
Before the Nagler, I used and still own a 20 yr old version of the
Moonfish 30mm UW 80 deg eyepiece-
http://moonfishgroup.com/catalog/produc ... anguage=en
I don't know if these eyepieces are still available.
It works well in my 8"f9 Cassegrain and my ED80 f7.5. Not so well on my f5.6 newtonian as they state clearly on their website. I also bumped into a guy in outback Australia during the 2012 transit of Venus. He had limited knowledge and had bought an AUD$8000 package from a local retailer. Meade 12"f10
SCT, fork mount, web cam for streaming etc etc.In the package were the worst eyepieces I'd ever seen. He was quite stressed that he bought a lemon. I looked at his eyepieces. One of them had a big air bubble in the eyepiece field lens almost in the centre of field. Others were just no name rubbish. We put my Moonfish 30mm in and it gave very nice views.
I don't own the
15mm 80deg Moonfish but I have read numerous bad reviews of it.
I own a
GSO Superview 42mm. Don't like it at all in any telescope. It's sold as 60 deg apparent field but it has an out of focus field stop which is quite distracting and limits the field to about 54 deg and then the soft edges limit the useable field further.
Joe
Amateur astronomer since 1978
...................Web site : http://joe-cali.com/
Scopes: ATM 18" Dob, Vixen VC200L, ATM 6"f7, Stellarvue 102ED, Saxon ED80, WO M70 ED, Orion 102 Maksutov, ST80.
Mounts: Takahashi EM-200, iOptron iEQ45, Push dobsonian with Nexus DSC, three homemade EQ's.
Eyepieces: TV Naglers 31, 17, 12, 7; Denkmeier D21 & D14; Pentax XW10, XW5, Unitron 40mm Kellner, Meade Or 25,12
Cameras : Pentax K1, K5, K01, K10D / VIDEO CAMS : TacosBD, Lihmsec.
Cam/guider/controllers: Lacerta MGEN 3, SW Synguider, Simulation Curriculum SkyFi 3+Sky safari
Memberships Astronomical Association of Queensland; RASNZ Occultations Section; Single Exposure Milky Way Facebook Group (Moderator) (12k members), The Sky Searchers (moderator)