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[Tom T]

As many of you know, we are shortly going to be offering some new services at CloudyNights.com, and one of the things we are looking to do is offer some reviews that are a little more quantative than we have been in the past. Please remember, we are not changing how we will do business – rather we are just offering some additional content.

I’d like to thank you for all your input on the mount rubric and ask for similar input on a rubric for eyepiece evaluation.

In short, we'd like to know what you see as important questions for our reviews to ask/answer when they are evaluating eyepiece performance.

Items we will be looking at (and encourage you to look at) as examples:
1) Current reviews and articles on CN - what benchmarks are currently used?
2) Sky & Tel mount or other magazine reviews - how did they do it - what do they look at?

Here are a few examples of a few checklist items to help get you started:

1)TFOV – as measured, not stated by manufacturer.

2)Weight – as measured, not stated by manufacturer.

3)Eyepiece aberrations: Lateral color / color fringing – Use a bright test object (Moon / bright planet) above 40-50 degrees elevation and look for a ring of color around the outside of the eyepiece.

4)Eyepiece Aberrations: Rectilinear Distortion - During the daytime point the scope / eyepiece at something that displays vertical lines (a picket fence is an excellent test subject) and look for the lines to curve out away from the center of the field (pincushion) or in towards the center of the field (barrel).

We appreciate all input. Remember, we are trying to make the guidelines as quantitative as possible so multiple reviewers can evaluate the products with as little as possible subjectivity.

I'll also posting this in the equipment forum, please restrict your answers to that forum.

Thank you!

Tom T.