Excelsis Ratings/Reviews - Votes:Celestron X-CEL 10mm

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Celestron X-CEL 10mm

I purchased the 10mm X-Cel for a head-to-head test against a 9mm Vixen Lanthanum, 10mm Celestron Ultima and a 9mm Orion Expanse.

My first impression was that The X-Cel is a massive eyepiece - about the same size as a 35mm Ultima. It is very well constructed with a sizable rubber grip ring, chrome barrel with a safety undercut, nice coatings and a soft rubber eyecup that folds down very easily.

In the telescope, the X-Cel had nice light throughput - equal to the Ultima and Expanse and better than the Vixen. It also had very good contrast on par with the more expensive Ultima and Vixen. Both the 20mm eye relief and 55 degree FOV were quite luxurious.

The optics on this eyepiece were not quite as sharp as I expected. Stars were a little fuzzy as compared to the other three competitors. It was also harder to acheive good focus with the X-cel than with the others. This may be caused by my fast f/5 scope or it could be the eyepiece itself. The X-cel is sharper when barlowed for planetary observation, leading me to believe that it may perform better at higher f-ratios.

The X-Cel's planetary performance on Jupiter and Saturn was good - not great like the Vixen or Ultima in sharpness, but quite nice. I think it would equal any average plossl. It did have two planetary shortcomings - First, the eye lens is so large that if you wear glasses, the planet's image reflects back onto the eye lens - quite annoying. Second, the barrel was slightly oversized, making insertion into and removal from a barlow quite tight.

Overall, I think this is a very nice eyepiece - not great, but good. While only adequately sharp, it is bright and has excellent eye relief, contast and field of view. I will probably try one other X-Cel to see if the lack of sharpness is universal or just a problem with this specimen.

Overall Rating: 7
Optics:7 Value:8
Weight: 10 (Trustworthy Vote)
Date: 12/18/2003 07:14:26 am PST
By: PJBilotta
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=324156

Reply Replies: 0

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