Orion Stratus 35mm Widefield Eyepiece

July , 2006

Yesterday afternoon my doorbell rang. We expected it was our sweet 87year-old neighbor bringing her home-grown tomatoes. We were wrong. It was small box from Orion. I was not disappointed. I mean, I do like cherry tomatoes, but they don't work well as eyepieces. Not that I've tried.......but....i digress. It had been so long since I pre-ordered this eyepiece that I would have completely forgotten about it had I not received an email shipping notice a few days before from Orion.

The box seemed a tad heavy for an eyepiece. Did someone send me a brick? I opened it to find a very nicely wrapped humongous 35mm Stratus eyepiece. It came in it's very own leather pouch. Very nice touch I thought.

I spent quite a while searching the sky last night with the 35mm Stratus eyepiece, and in short, it is magnificent. It's the perfect eyepiece for someone who loves to search and explore. My impression is that it will be a great comet-hunting eyepiece. The 68° field-of-view is a beautiful thing, just like the other Stratus eyepieces, except that this 35mm sports a 2" barrel. It's like looking down into a 55 gallon drum rather than a peep-hole! This eyepiece truly gives one the impression of looking through the porthole of a spacecraft in orbit! Almost like a spacewalk! Ok, ok....so I've never actually looked through the porthole of a spacecraft OR space-walked, but in my imagination, this is what I suppose it would be like!

 

 

 

My wife thoroughly enjoyed the experience for that very reason. You see more stars in the field of view! Another aspect that she appreciated was the eye-relief. She keeps her glasses on while observing and the eye-relief was perfect for her. She could spend more time with an eyepiece like that since the ease of viewing would relieve eye-strain and make it a much more pleasurable experience. The other benefit I noted when sharing the telescope with her last night was the wide field of view. Because we were looking at so MUCH sky, I could say "look at this!" and the object we were viewing wouldn't be gone from the eyepiece before I could remove myself from the chair so that she could sit there. It was wonderful see the Ring Nebula and the Dumbell Nebula in their context!

Our scope of choice last night was the Orion XT-10. When I'm in the mood for exploring the sky, I don't bother with setting up a German equatorial mount. It takes me about three minutes to set up the XT-10. Plus, I was curious about how the two would get along with each other. The XT-10 is an f/5. Results? I could detect the usual coma present in fast Newtonians and wished I could have tested a ParaCorr with it, but unfortunately I don't own one.

 

A ParaCorr is a coma corrector made by TeleVue. Coma, for you newbies, is a phenomenon that usually occurs when using a very fast Newtonian (f/5 or less) which is indicated by comet-like tails protruding from stars on the edge of the view. The coma I detected in the 35mm Stratus was no worse than it is with any of my other eyepieces, including my TeleVue 24mm Panoptic. What I can't wait to try is the same eyepiece in my Orion 100ED! Or even better yet, in my friend's AP-150! That would definitely be a great test since we could rule out mirror or lens problems.

Overall, I was extremely pleased with the Orion 35mm Stratus. The one question I'm sure I'll get about this eyepiece concerns its weight. The parcel's label indicated 4 pounds. Well, take away the box, the packing and the new Orion catalog, you are left with a whopping 3 lbs of eyepiece. I'm tempted to say that this is a LOT of weight to be slapping onto a telescope, but this is not unusual for wide-field eyepieces of this size. In fact, in the past we fondly refered to the TeleVue 31mm Nagler as "the grenade" because of its weight and size. The Stratus 35mm is smaller than that.

I had no problems whatsoever with balance using the XT-10. It seemed no different than using any other eyepiece. It's just the way it LOOKS whilst perched up there on the OTA that is intimdating. I feel positive that I'm going to hear lots of chuckles from the cheap seats out at Mansfield Dam this coming Friday when when one of those jokers exclaims "Andy!! It's SOOOOOO big!".

Oh, did I also mention that the Stratus ($200) is one-third the price of the 31 Nagler ($640)? The Orion 35mm Stratus would be better compared to the TeleVue 35mm Panoptic ($380). I can't wait to do a side-by-side comparison of the two.

At $200....this eyepiece is a steal! Better get one quick before Orion figures that out.