30mm TMB/Burgess Paragon

I just recieved my 30mm TMB Paragon from Burgess Optical and I was anxious to give it a try. I didn't need to buy it. I've been very happy, quite happy, with my Siebert Optical 34mm Observatory, but a poster in the Burgess Yahoo groups said, and I quote:

I'm not going to bore everyone with excrusiating details about what I saw, how many I saw and all that jazz. I'm going to cut right to the chase: I brought my very recently purchased $99 30MM Paragon along with me. I used it as my primary wide field EP, either specificly to look at an object, or to locate an object for closer viewing. To say that it delivered would be a gross understatement; indeed, an insult to the eyepiece! The beauty of this EP was that it was THE PERFECT MATCH for the 1278! It delivered on almost every object and brought out the very best of this scope. While it was out- standing on virtually every object viewed, it it was devastating on the larger objects in the sky, like The Double Cluster, M31, The Plieades and M8.

But it saved the best for last, so to speak. It presented the most spectacular views of M42 that I believe an achromat could produce. It had admirers of scope costing several thousand more than the humble 1278. The M42 almost matched the routinely "perfect" views produced by a TV 101 three tents down. An owner of a 12" Meade dob (with the OLD premium mirror) couldn't believe a 5 inch refractor matched his view of it. But the most amazing compliment it recieved was from the owner of a 14" Celestron CGE SCT next to me:

The owner was SOOOOO impressed with MY views, especially of M42, the next afternoon, he went and bought a..., get this, Bill,...a TV 41MM Panoptic, just to match the view HE saw in MY scope! Retail value of his purchase? Beyond $600!!! Now THAT'S got to be the ultimate compliment! It doesn't get any better n' that!!! Wow! pparently, the secret seems to be that the Paragon's FOV, coupled with the almost-by-accident 5" size, the right magnification, and perhaps the multi-coatings, produces an absolutely PERFECT picture view, framing those larger objects as "not-too-big, not-too-small" in the EP. "Perfect fits", that most sought-after of viewing experiences. Needless to say, I had a fantastic time, with other eyepieces in supporting roles, viewing as many objects as I could find, staying up 'till dawn three nights consectutively....

The upshot of all this, and the reason for writing here, is to urge all the 1278 owners who haven't done so, to BUY YOUR PARAGON BEFORE THEY RUN OUT!!!!! IT IS THE PERFECT EYEPIECE FOR THIS SCOPE!

IT'S ONLY $99! DO IT NOW. YOU WON'T REGRET IT!!!

Now, that was kinda hard to ignore, so I called up Bill and yakked for awhile then Tammy took my order. It arrived a few days later.

Well, the eyepiece was everything that the quoted poster made it out to be. Except, it wasn't filling a hole in my eyepiece case. My much loved Siebert was there also, perfectly matched with the 22.5mm Siebert.

So I started the night on my usual favorite, the Double Cluster. Then went to M31, the North America Nebula and then over to M8 before it set. I then went back to the Double Cluster for the bulk of the testing.

Based on the published specifications, the Siebert should have given a slightly larger field of view, but really, 2.1 vs 2.4 degrees? That's pretty close. 29x vs 33x. Again, very close. So it would come down to contrast and sharpness plus other ease of use factors.

Sharpness was a toss up. Both were as perfect as I can tell in the center (I have some uncorrected astigmatism in my eyes, so far I live with it.) and both seemed to soften up a bit at the edges. At times I thought that the Paragon had blacker backgrounds, I guess this is to be expected since the magnification is higher. But at other times I wasn't so sure. I didn't detect any color difference between the eyepices at all.

The Siebert are famous for having no pincushion and I'm sad to say I forgot to compare the two eyepieces!

Now onto comfort. Well, the two eyepieces are about as different as I can imagine in that area, but there isn't a winner! The Siebert is great when I wear my eyeglasses. I was able to find the sweet spot with ease with only the slightess bit of blackouts. I normally prefer viewing with my eyeglasses so I've never actually looked through the Siebert without them.

The Paragon, on the other hand, has a wonderful, absolutely wonderful eyecup. (This is just like the wonderful eyecup on my 9mm TMB/Burgess Planetary.) It is comfortable and holds the eye exactly where it needs to be. Blackouts? Impossible since the eye is correctly position at all times. However, when I folded it down, and tried to use the lens without my eyeglasses, twice I had it pop back up, once striking me around the eyes! I'm not sure what I did wrong, but this is an eyepiece that wants to be used with the eyecup up. And guess what, I didn't mind at all! (This might be an issue if my glasses actually did a good job of correcting my astigmatism since I would need to wear them.) Could I learn to fold the eyecup down correctly? I'll bet I could.

The observing session was cut short. It was the first cold evening of the fall and I really hadn't prepared for it. I had a hat and gloves but I was still chilled to the bone and had to go in. I declared the Paragon the winner but it wasn't a landslide at all, it could certainly have gone to the Siebert and I would not unhappy with that. Indeed, 4 days later when I'm writing up this blog entry I'm now second guessing my decision. I'll have to head out again, or maybe wait for M42 to get high in the sky. Oh, I'll sell one of them, I just don't know which one right now.

But, chilled to the bone I screwed a Lumicon UHC into the Paragon and slewed to the Veil. Ah, just beautiful. I couldn't stay long but I knew I'd be back on this object. And actually, I'm now convinced that earlier this month, with my binoculars, that I had grabbed the Veil. What I was seeing through the refractor exactly matched in shape what I had seen in the Canons. I can only guess that I had read the star charts wrong. Well, there's another observation to repeat then.