Meade Instruments 07199-2 Series 4000 8 to 24-Millimeter 1.25-Inch Zoom Eyepiece,Black

I have a Mead reflecting mirror telescope, and during a move I lost the eye pieces. This was bought as a replacement. It seems that it would fit into any Meade telescope that has the same size opening as this. It just slid in, nothing else. This one is great because it replaced the need for several different magnification pieces, with one adjustable piece. I don't know if you have tried to remove one and replace with another, but unless you have the hands of a surgeon you aren't going to get that process done and still be pointing at the same position. True, it is a little tough to turn the dial on this eye-piece while not messing up the pointing, after a couple tries I was able to do it reliably. I would zoom out, find the star, or location on the moon, that we wanted to observe, then zoom in, while looking through the telescope, as easy as that, I couldn't ask for anything more. In my opinion it is worth the higher price tag because it basically replaced all three eye pieces that I had before. Definitely high quality with my telescope, definitely works well with my Meade telescope.

after reading many reviews, many quite negative, i took the plunge because i simply like the concept of a zoom ep. popped it into my new orion 115 triplet and was amazed to find this an excellent eyepiece! you will love this for terrestrial viewing and the moon. i was stunned by the clarity viewing jupiter using the full range of zoom capability. eyeglass wearers may have some difficulty due to the short eye relief at max zoom. all in all a must have in the ep collection and at a bargain price. beginners should buy this for their first eyepiece. meade cannot be making much selling this ep at approx 74.00 on amazon!

Purchased zoom eyepiece for my Meade 80 ETX refractor telescope and after giving it a trial run on both astronomical and terrestrial sites I was pleasantly surprised. I found it to be very convenient in not having to rely on switching to several eyepieces at any one time. During my initial trial run in observing the full moon from my deck, it worked extremely well at the 8-24mm with little or no vignetting. The eyecup is an added bonus especially if you wear glasses. Well worth the price.

I have used this eyepiece for over a year in my Celestron Omni XLT 120 refractor, and it works very well. Planetary details observed with the eyepiece include Jupiter's great red spot and Saturn's Cassini division. I also have the Meade Instruments 128 3x 1.25 Inches Barlow Lens, which works well with this zoom eyepiece. The combination is nice because it starts at 8mm, which is maximum zoom with the eyepiece alone, and allows me to work toward maximum useful magnification in different situations. I have enjoyed nice views of Saturn at 150x - 167x, where the Cassini division, equatorial cloud bands, and several moons were clearly visible. Numerous deep sky objects have also been observed. The zoom eyepiece, 3x barlow, and a Celestron Omni 32mm Plossl cover my observing needs, and a Telrad attached to the OTA with elastic hook and loop buckle straps gets me on target.

This is a very good quality Zoom lense that does the job without having to shell out much more on multiple lenses. Range of 8mm to 24mm gives ample magnification and does it with so much ease, I am never going to use individual lenses again...probably...I have a 20 years old MEADE 115mm telescope that I used this with, and I did not know the picture quality will be so good. I was able to see the dimming Betelgeuse in all its Orange color glory with pitch black sky background, with crystal clear vision. Orion Nebula too though faint, was clear enough to WoW.Moon craters, Venus phases and were also clearly visible that I had never seen before.Pleiades Cluster was breathtakingly beautiful, and I could zoom in and out within a second to suite my viewing needs. I would recommend this Zoom lense to anyone who wants very good quality optics with so good convenience.

The general wisdom on zoom eyepieces is that you give up visual quality for convenience. I have not found this to be the case with this particular eyepiece. I attend star parties once a month or more, and after people take a look through this eyepiece, they're almost always surprised that it's a zoom eyepiece.It's solid and well made and offers very good views. It's a bit pricey compared to some of the other zoom eyepieces out there, but the price difference is worth it. I've tried most of the sub-$100 zoom eyepieces out there and so far this one has given the highest quality views by a significant margin.

I bought this eyepiece because it was cheaper than other similar eyepieces. Buy cheap and get cheap (I heard that somewhere) is very true in this case.The eyepiece performs well at the lower power 24mm focal length. The gas bands on Jupiter stand out well and the moons are sharp points of light. At the higher power 8mm focal length, slight re-focusing is necessary but most if not all detail is lost in "fuzziness" and the moons are no longer sharp points. Performance of the eyepiece between the focal lengths is mediocre to say the best.The "seeing" at the time was not the best, but a similar 7mm eyepiece performed much better than the Zoom eyepiece at high power.I don't recommend this eyepiece for any serious star gazing. There must be better zoom eyepieces in the market.

This is a very nice zoom eyepiece for the price. Much better than the Celestron I looked through. Not as nice as the Baader hyperion, but at 1/3 the price, a perfectly good piece of gear. Pairing it with a higher quality refractor wouldn't work too well, but as part of a cheap spotting scope setup (say, this together with a small used ED scope) and you would have a spotting scope that would match the sub-1000 spotters from most vendors, and most of the sub-1500 spotters.