Telescope Reviews: Best EPs for a XT10i?

You have chosen a great scope! The 10" push-to Dob is a favorite for lots of folks. Good luck with it.

The 11mm ES 82° eyepiece is a great one, and priced well. It will blow the socks off the 10mm plossl that comes with those scopes. It also barlows very well. I like the the GSO 2X 1.25" barlow as you can unscrew the lens and make it a 1.5X barlow as well. The 11mm ES 82° and a barlow will really give you some very good moderately high power viewing options.

Depending on your budget, I would also recommend a low power wide field eyepiece. In a 1-1/4" size, you can't do any better than a 32mm Plossl (for the money) Sterling, GSO 32mm Plossls are decent. The TV 32mm Plossl is excellent.

Moving up and out to a 2" low power, wide field eyepiece will enable you to take in some wonderful large patches of sky and really put objects in context with their surroundings. The 10" dob has good wide field capabilities that you should take advantage of.

The TV 31mm Nagler coupled with a Paracorr is the gold standard for gorgeous wide field views in your scope, but... the cost is astronomical.

There is an aboration called coma that is inherant in your scope. Cheap low power eyepieces do a *BLEEP* job of correcting for it and you will see seagulls instead of stars, especially around the perifery of view. TV Naglers and some of the ES eyepieces do a better job correcting for coma, and the paracorr all but eliminates it. Most people are so stunned by the wide field views that they don't notice or object to the coma they see when looking thru a good quality low power eyepiece, and for them a paracorr is not a necessity.

The 30mm ES° eyepiece strikes a good balance between price and quality. For around $250 you will get huge enjoyment cruizing the milky way and it will take in Pleiades nicely.

I bought a 38mm Orion Q70 clone(an Agena 38mm SWA) and use it in my 10 dob and really like it. Of this inexpensive line of 70° eyepieces, the 38mm is the best of the lot. Yes, the exit pupil is wasteful, and the stars have tails in the outer 1/3 of view but I still keep going back to it every time I have my 10" dob out. I bought it used on CN classifieds for $60. I would suggest you keep yours eyes open for a similar deal. You just might get hooked on big wide fields and end up investing in premium optics. You will always be able to sell it if it doesn't float your boat.

Good luck with your new scope.