Telescope Reviews: Got my 9mm Burgess/TMB Planetary eyepiece!

At long last, the 9mm TMB super planetary eyepiece I ordered arrived, and it came just in time for the break in the usually cloudy, hazy, muggy and rainy weather that is the norm here during the summer.

When I opened the box and looked at it, the high standard of workmanship was evident. Fit and finish was excellent, the coatings flawless and the rubber eye cup was made with ergonomics in mind. Evidently TMB super planetaries have multi-coatings on at least some if not all air to glass surfaces. When one cap is removed, the interior of the eyepiece is like a deep dark well as any well blackened eyepiece should be. It's also considerably larger and heavier than a Plossl or Orthoscopic of the same focal length, but it's not so heavy as to create balance problems for owners of small telescopes. In fact, I bought it for use on my smaller telescopes which nosedive with my Stratuses. The chrome plated 1.25-inch barrel is threaded for filters and has a shallow retainer groove.

When I inserted it into my 4.25-inch F/4 reflector, and turned it to the Moon, I knew I had a winner. There was almost no false color except a touch at the very edge. The wide apparent field of view of 60 degrees made following the moon easy and I had no trouble seeing the whole field at one time. Sharpness and contrast were very good and field flatness was excellent. As I had found out once I got it working correctly, my small RFT is a crusher of many an eyepiece for which this TMB was well matched.

Trying it in my 10-inch on various targets confirmed what I found with the smaller telescope. Contrast and light transmission were excellent. I looked at a dozen Messier globlulars, M-57, M-27 and double stars such as Almach, Epsilon Lyrae and Albiero. Color fidelity was excellent and star images were sharp points. Jupiter showed it's subtle shadings of tan and brown in it's belts, a testament of the TMB's high contrast. Other objects I tried it on were NGC-6543, NGC-7009, NGC-7662 and NGC-6905, all of which showed their strong blue or bluish green color. Despite a sky flooded with light from a first quarter moon and streetlights, M-57 showed it's ghostly oval ring shape clearly. I could see M-27's apple core shape without a nebula filter, and NGC-6543, 7662 and 7009 didn't need one either to show up well. I saw the darker zone in the center of NGC-7662 plainly. NGC-6905 was the only one that needed a nebula filter, and it's ghostly disk stood out well once I screwed an Ultrablock into place.

There seemed to be little astigmatism or any other significant aberration inherit to these TMB's and eye relief is very good. I was however using my Paracorr while testing this eyepiece. I was able to use it with my eyeglasses and without them equally well. I have to say TMB super planetaries preform like Tele Vue Radians in many ways, at a mere fraction of the price. They of course don't have the adjustable eye cup, which is no problem to me considering their price. I paid $67.00 for mine, and even at twice this price I would consider them an excellent buy.

If you have a fast Newtonian or Dob and want a reasonably priced high power eyepiece or two, these Burgess/TMB planetary eyepieces deserve consideration.

Taras

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10-inch F/4.5 Discovery Dob
6-inch F/8 Homebuilt Dob
4 1/4-inch F/4 Homebuilt reflector

Edited by Achernar (08/09/08 06:13 PM)