Good to see you again, Stace. Personally, I've never owned a Zoom EP cause I liked collecting EP's and because I heard that they were not the equal of specific focal length EP's. But I also know that in the twenty years of doing this, Zooms have come a long way. You should get good results with that one. Good luck trying to catch a clear night in the UK soon and look forward to your report on this. Always good to use your own eyes for an up-close-and-personal session once in a while.

The people who dislike this video are the same people who pass out dental floss on Halloween.

I got the Celestron Zoom oculair 8-24mm 1,25", which I really enjoy using. Its also cool, that it has T thread, when you remove the plastic eyecap bit to mount a camera!

Great review Stace.. does it have threads under the rubber sheath that can connect to a t-adapter by any chance? That was nice feature to have on the Celestron zoom.

Hi Stace, I have the Baader Hyperion Zoom 8-24mm, used it a few times, also have the adapter to go to my Nikon Z50. The only issue I have had is when using it with the camera, the clickstops not strong enough and the camera can cause it to turn. Other than that, all good. I was messing around last night with mine, I had removed the 2" nose, and just used the 1.25" nose and went straight onto my AR90s/500 guidescope and was visually looking at Saturn and Jupiter. Didn't even use the mount, just opened a window, lent the scope on a cushion on the window sill and just moved around until I found the target. Total lazy moment!

Hey Stace, You're right, sometimes it is nice to kick back with a bit of relaxing visual, although visual astronomy almost feels like a dirty word now days! lol Quite often with eyepieces FMC stands for Fully Mullti Coated, so one up from MC multicoated. FMC's should have better control over glare and scatter. I don't mind zooms but you're absolutely right about them being a jack of all trades and master of none. Maybe perfect for an imager who wants a quick look. However, One look through something like an Explore scientific 100 degree eyepiece or an Ethos then the merits of individual eyepieces do become clear.....at a very high price tag of course lol

I have d the Meade 8-24 mostly for outreach. It's fine for the purpose, but not as contrasty or sharp to the edge as an single focal length ES or TV. The Celestron 8-24 has similar specs appearance, and build quality. The open box one I tried had an uncleanable smudge on the optics so it went back.

I recently purchased an SVBony 7-21mm zoom eyepiece, and it definitely makes it easier to set up views at different magnifications. There is a reduced field of view versus standard eyepieces, but for my casual viewing with family, the zoom eyepiece makes for a convenient night of stargazing of multiple objects of interest.

Is it possible to fit this on top of a monocular without replacing the eyepiece?

Yay. My zoom eyepiece 7-21.5 mm is the most used eyepiece of my collection. I use it for night astronomy as well for solar observing. The big advantage of a zoom eyepiece is, that you don't have to exchange/switch a lot between eyepieces. During a public astronomy outreach, before the Covid situation, I’ve had only using a zoom eyepiece.

I also do some very occasional visual. I’ve got a few Starguider eyepieces, but really my Baader zoom is the only one I ever use. Never had a Nagler, so I don’t know what I’m missing!

Big fan of the Baader. However, the AFOV is kind of tight above 16mm. Great for travel. I still find I need a good low and high power (27 and 6 mm) to round things out.

I have recently bought this and I quite like it 😊.

I really enjoy my zoom eyepiece (baader, like so many others). I showed my nephew and mother in law some objects and the zoom function is really handy to show the different objects in the field of view where they really look good. Fi. showing planets in full zoom o the double cluster in Pegasus in a much wider field of view. Showing others several objects it’s really practical not to have to swap eyepieces every time and re-focus .

I have the Celestron version but I don’t have the appropriate telescope to test it. I have a OneSky, which has 2 issues: 1) helical focuser is BAD for zoom eyepieces, you can’t zoom without messing up focus. 2) the eyepiece is heavy. On a collapsible Newtonian, it deflects the the secondary and messes up the image.

Hi Stace. Like a lot of other folks I have the Baader zoom. This sits alongside a bunch of other eyepieces in my collection, including some very expensive Naglers. However the zoom gets used far more than all of the rest of them put together. The reason is it’s just so damned convenient. I find the quality to be excellent even though, on paper at least, zooms are always considered to be compromise. I can’t speak for the SV-Bony as I’ve never used one, but if the quality is anywhere near as good you’ll be very happy, particularly on planets and the moon. Have fun👍

Great Video. Honest question, do you need your glasses when using the eyepiece given you can adjust the focus? I honestly don’t know but curious

Its the only eyepiece I own. For the amount of visual I do it covers all bases for me for the odd occasion I want to have a look instead of image.

FMC = Full Multi-Coating - BH have their phantom coating. All modern EP have FMC or an equivalent. BH Hyperion has a separate range of individual EP so they "trade" a bit on their other lenses - well respected. A zoom is going to be a compromise, so the FOV is going to vary with focal length. Comparing BH and Celestron and Svbony - the price ratio also "zooms", but even the BH that is most respected (and expensive) is value for money e.g. two of the Hyperion EP for the same money. One trade-off is FOV which is wider on the better lenses, just don't ex[ect 68 degrees or 72 across the zoom range (Svbony is much less than the others). The BH Barlow is interesting and the 2" mount for "swapping" out with a camera - "use it or lose it".

Glad to see your smiling face. Okay, this is my OPINION, and it's NOT based on actual usage. In photography, the 'professionals' or those 'in the know' always used to say 'Use a dedicated single focal length lens.' You would ask them why, and they would tell you 'the quality is so much better' Okay I can agree with that, to some extent. When zoom lenses first came out, way back, they weren't that good. If you had a 70-200mm lens, and you wanted to shoot at 105mm, the common knowledge was that for the best photo, get a 105mm lens. Over time, that changed. Whether it was that zoom lenses got better, or people just decided that the zoom lens could produce as good a quality as a single focal length lens is debatable, but honestly, in photography, I really don't see that much of a difference. Now, with eyepieces, yeah, if I was going to have a zoom eyepiece, the Baader would probably be the way I would go. Either that, or a Pentax. Okay, since I don't have any experience either way, I'll give you my impressions based on specs and price. The SV171 is about $60USD. It was an AFV of 38º to 56º. It has seven elements in four groups. The Pentax is more for spotting scopes, but I don't see any reason why you shouldn't use it in a telescope. The Pentax has a AFV or 38º to 60º. It has six elements in four groups. The Baader Hyperior Mk IV has an AFV of 50º to 68º, which puts it at the top of my list immediately. This EP also has 7 elements in four groups. I don't see that the Aptura, Meade, Celestron or Orion EPs are that much different, other than the AFV is a little wider It's almost six times the price, but if I were looking for a zoom EP, I would probably buy the Baader.

hi stace love the videos my astro club members have asked me to ask you to give us a talk online on our club online skype video meeting sometime

So, our understanding about SvBONY gear is that it is the remnants, the seconds, the leftovers from the manufacturing of other astro stuff. The vendors (Baader, Meade, Celestron, etc.) give certain specifications to the Chinese factories in terms of the gear they're fabricating. The Chinese manufacturers make a whole buncha stuff, and then they grade it by quality. The A+ stuff goes to TeleVue; the A stuff goes to places like Explore Scientific and Vixen; the B stuff goes to places like Baader and William Optics. That leaves all the C stuff to go to the major vendors - Celestron, Meade, Orion, SkyWatcher. And then there's the lesser quality stuff. The stuff that doesn't make the optical cut. The stuff that was graded D, for not quite getting a passing grade. That's the stuff that goes to the lesser vendors. And that's where SvBONY comes in. They snap up all this optically subpar stuff and sell it for cheap. Now, everything I've just said has been informed suppostion. A little bit better than guessing - informed guessing. But we think that this is a correct overview of how astronomy gear works. If anyone's got any other information, I'd love to hear about it.