Orion 8923 20mm Expanse Telescope Eyepiece

I bough this a few weeks ago, and I can say that I've been very satisfied with this product. This lens can fit on a Meade telescope as well as an Orion. The views are nice and sharp for its level. Got good views of Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its rings, Mercury (too brilliant to see a clear picture of it), the Orion Nebula, and close enough star systems like Syrius and others.The only thing I must be dissatisfied with right now is the weather: I haven't had many a clear-sky night in the past couple of weeks. But the lens is good. I can't wait to find filters for it!

I saw a review for the Orion expanse series on youtube and thought I would give it a try. This eyepiece is amazing! The 66 degree field of view is fantastic. The clarity is astounding and crystal clear. I am definitely going to invest in more sizes in this series. A must have to upgrade any beginner set. Worth the investment.

Used the 9mm Expanse for several observing sessions and I am pleased with it. I do just about all my observing for deep sky objects (galaxies and such) from dark skies in rural areas. With my 10 in Dob using the 9mm Expanse is like a space walk and compared to Plossl's the 9mm Expanse has as generous field of view and eye relief. My 10 in Dob is a fast f/4.5 and for less demanding deep sky objects it shows them as well as my TeleVue Plossls. I have not noticed any edge distortions in its field of view.One caution: if you eyepiece filters, in my case UHC and O-III filters, carefully screw them on and make sure the filter glass does not touch the top of the Barlowed field stop. If in doubt don't screw the filter in quite all the way. My filters screwed in all the way without any problems.

I have an Orion SkyQuest XT6 for over 10 years, and I've only had 3 eyepieces the whole time. Their standard Sirius Plossl 25mm, 17mm and 10mm. For the most part, the 10mm is pretty much useless, as the field of vision is so narrow that constant adjustments need to be made. I decided to give the Expanse series a try. This eyepiece is by far the best in the of the 4. Near Detroit, the light pollution is pretty bad. Viewing the plants and the moon is usually OK. My previous higher powered eyepieces usually made things look really bright and blurry. The Orion Nebula is usually a grey smudge. With the 9mm Expanse, I was able to see more shape to the cloud, and even a handful of stars in its heart. Cloud bands on Jupiter never looked better! I was also able to get a significant amount more detail on the moons surface than what I am used to. Looking at the sun was uneventful today -- only two sunspots.Ultimately, this is definitely worth buying!

The expanse series eyepieces are built quite well and provide a great wide field view with a longer focal length so you don't have to struggle to look through them. There is some fishbowl effect on the field edges but it is very minor and doesn't bother me at all, nor will it you unless you have very demanding eyes. This eyepiece provides 200x in my xt8 which is the best I can push it in normal conditions. One other thing, they are made in Taiwan, not China.

The best optics I've got in a plossyl. Much sharper than my expense 6mm, with less optical distortion than my 32 and 25mm eyepieces. With my 1200mm focal length, this is my favorite lens for globular clusters.

I must say that so far, I have only used this with my solar scope so I can't write a fair review about stargazing with it. For sun watching, I'm not too excited about it. For one thing, while eye relief is usually a positive thing, with daylight use, you get all glare until you block it with a fist around the eyepiece. I wish the rubber was longer or it had adjustable eye cups. The rubber eye cup folds down and the dust cap fits over that. It was so tight that when I removed the cap, the rubber came off with it and was very difficult to replace so be careful removing the cap. There is also a red glow in the FOV around the sun instead of a black field and a reflection right in the line of sight so that I have to move around to an exact location to get the reflection to move from direct line of sight and this is with the outside light completely blocked from entering the eyepiece. As far as the actual image, again with the sun, the wide FOV is not really very necessary with this medium power but I am looking forward to using it at night where it will prove valuable, I'm sure. The image is sharp and well defined in the center. Right now, by far not my favorite EP for solar viewing, but not really the fault of the piece itself. I'll be back to update the review after some night time use. As I'm sure all of you astronomers out there can attest, as soon as you get new equipment, it's either cloudy and warm or clear and cold.

This is a really nice eyepiece. It does manage to give a wider field of view with just a bit of distortion out toward the edges. Focus is very good with very little distortion. I think this is a good trade-off for all but the most severe use cases - the wider field of view really helps when an object wanders off the edge of the image, you can usually find it again quickly without having to swap to a lower-power eyepiece.