Meade Electronic Eyepiece

The name is somewhat misleading. What this is, actually, is a small, senitive black and white TV camera designed to slip into a telescope focuserin place of an eyepiece. Now this won't deliver images of faint, deep-sky objectsyou need a cooled CCD and long exposures for thatbut it will deliver excellent views of the moon and planets to a TV monitor, videorecorder of computer with video converter. Using videotape and a digitizer as a "poor man's active optics" it's possible to select frames and produce suprisingly good results.

At the asking price, it's a pretty good deal, too, and an inexpensive way to get started in digital astrophotograp

There was very little documentation, nothing saying anything about the focal length to give any idea of the actual magnification.

Fun for bright objects, I've used it to get images of Jupiter and Saturn and some of the moon. I could only faintly see Jupiter's biggest moons when viewing on the TV screen (with the contrast set so Jupiter is washed out). When using my video capture card I couldn't get the moons to show up at any level of contrast, but still got some medeocre pics of Jupiter itself. There's not a very wide feild of view so it's very dificult to center something without tracking.

I've noticed that I can use it as a poor-man's electronic microscope by attaching my 25mm Meade eyepiece to it and using my trypod to help steady and focus.

A fun toy but I wouldn't expect to get any nebula or any other faint object with it.

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I bought this product on sale for $39.00 at a local camera store after reading the reviews on this page. This was after I also bought an Orion Electronic eyepiece the week before. One thing that makes this eyepiece infinetly better than the Orion eyepiece is the fact that it is threaded for filters (or stacking of multiple filters) whereas the Orion eyepiece is not. Using it on my 6" reflector, I first tried it with a white light solar filter. The view was crisp as I expected on both the Meade and the Orion eyepiece. The Meade eyepiece is alittle larger than the Orion eyepiece (4mm vs. Orion's 3.8mm) but it is not really too noticeable. Viewing the moon at gibbous phase and the contrast tweaked, the view was also crisp and defined in both eyepieces. I finally tried it on Jupiter. Here is where the difference between the Orion eyepiece and the Meade eyepiece was most pronounced. Because the Orion eyepiece is not threaded, Jupiter came out completely whitewashed, even when the contrast was completely tweaked. Because the Meade eyepiece is able to be used with a filter, I placed a Baader's Planetary Contrast Booster on it. The 2 cloud belts at the equator were visible on my 20" TV as a monitor. Also visible were the 4 moons at the same setting. When used with a video card tied in to a pc, a person can frame-grab and have their own "poor man's" version of a CCD picture. Using this method, suprisingly good pictures that rival much higher priced CCD's may be achieved. This eyepiece in my opinion is well worth the price (even if you don't get it on sale) and has alot of potential when used with a video card. Just remeber to buy some extension cords and adapters for the RCA cables.

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This eyepiece is quite nice. I tried it out and was amazed at the results. I use it on a six inch reflecting telescope. I used it first on the best target in the night sky, the Moon. It looked as though I was looking through a window on an apollo capsule orbiting the moon. I am not kidding. It was great. I then moved over to Saturn. I could clearly see the rings and bands of clouds. This item is worth the cost!

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This ccd imager was quite surprising as to its clarity in viewing the moon. It also does the planets okay, though it does not resolve the moons. I have been practicing with it on a 32" lcd screen, with some success. I still have not been able to dial it in for nebulas or galaxies. Hopefully with practice it will work. There are a few aberrations, but they are not in the center field of view. I assume this is why they were sold used, mfr returns likely