Orbinar Plossl 40mm telescope eyepiece 31.7mm (1.25") 4-elements lens system

I ordered a Plössl 40mm and a Barlow from Seben in Germany at the same time as placing an order from two other items from inland (UK). Within just a few days after Christmas, the Seben order reached me two hours before the inland UK order got to me! So top marks for Seben's service; the lenses arrived securely packed - the Plössl was in a good plastic screw-down pot.The lens quality is great. For the money, these are surely unbeatable. We were given a Celestron 114mm Newtonian 'scope for Christmas. These lenses, plus a Telrad finder, have converted the Celestron from a frustrating bit of kit into a fun, easy to use and good-quality backyard instrument.The Plössl gives us fabulous views of Jupiter and four moons plus two cloud bands; with the Barlow we can see the Great Red Spot too. We have fab views of the Orion nebula, the central smudge of Andromeda Galaxy and the spread of the Pleiades, all in one hour of viewing. Fabulous. Can't wait to get out there often.As an amateur, and having used binoculars on a tripod previously, I can say that the Seben service and the very adequate quality of their Barlow lens and the Orbinar Plössl lens make me happy to buy again when I need to augment my lens set, as I surely will.

Bought this eyepiece to obtain a greater field of view than the 32 mm eyepiece currently had, for general deep sky observation with my 203 mm Dobsonian reflector. The build and quality of the optics seemed ok for the price. However I did discover the problem relating to long focal length/low power eyepieces i.e. your eye pupil diameter being insufficient to make full use of the aperture of the scope. I have since read that if you have a 'typical' persons 5-mm eye pupil, you cannot use an eyepiece longer than 30 mm focal length on any f/6 telescope, if you want full use of the aperture. The focal ratio of my scope is 1200/203 i.e.nearly 6. I found the distance of my eye from the eyepiece very critical in obtaining a reasonable field of view, if you moved too close or far away the field of view was seriously reduced. Was very difficult to maintain the optimum position. This is where a rubber eyecup to provide some eye relief and cut out extraneous light may have benefitted. For some reason one is not fitted whereas my 32 mm and smaller eyepieces all have one. Also lacking were any push on cups to protect the ends of the eyepiece when not in use, most other eyepieces I have bought have these in addition to the packing box.

Delivery was fairly quick (week and a half) considering it was from Germany and coming up to Christmas.The eyepiece itself looks very well made and gives great wide views with my f/7.9 scope.I will probably buy more

I just bought this eyepiece with their flag ship zoom eyepiece and what a nice surprise, I bought both separately on different day, I dropped a message to SEBEN customer service asking for same day delivery and no problem 1 hour later received a message order been processed and shipped out both in the same package. So pleased but ever better when the eyepieces arrived 3 days later FROM GERMANY.Very secure packaging and very secure screw-in container. the eyepiece itself very rugged and feels very very well made, it has a kind of weight to it which suggest that the build quality is very good. It has wide angle view even when used with the 2X Barlow.I will buy from them in the future no question about that.Very pleased...THANKS SEBEN, THANK YOU SO SO MUCH.YOU MADE ASTRONOMY EASIER CHEAPER AND FUNNIER.PS- not everything cheap is rubbish - SEBEN PROVED ME CONTRA.CHEERS GUYS>KEEP UP THE GOOD WORKWE NEED YOU GUYS

These rebranded Ostara eyepeices are very good optically and build quality especially for their price, I have the 40 and the 30mm.

I am using this eyepiece on a Nexstar 4SE with a prime focal length of 1300mm, giving a magnification of 32.5 X. This gives a nice wide field of view for observing constellations and some of the brighter deep=sky objects. (The "some" is a limit imposed by the scope rather than the eyepiece).I am a newcomer to astronomy and would recommend this lens as it is not expensive and performs well. The construction quality iand "feel" is very good, the lens can be unscrewed from the base, and the base is threaded to accommodate filters.

The one thing that annoys me about most of the reviews on this is that they are utter bulls**t!!! The company who made this eyepiece popped a letter in with it saying they would send a nice gift if I wrote a nice review about it. Looking at the other reviews, that is exactly what everyone else has done. The eyepiece is decent, but no way is it 5 star. This company should be reported to Amazon and all these decent reviews should be scrapped, since they're not an accurate reflection on the product...Anyway on to the eyepiece. I bought it so I could get wide eye views of the moon and take great photos. It is a heavy eyepiece too and I would prefer a slightly better case for it. I don't use it for anything else apart from the moon as my telescope is 6'. But for the price it is a good buy, it's just a shame it took 3 weeks to get to me in the UK.

You have to hold your head away from the eyepiece in order to see the whole field of view, which makes it difficult to keep your eye in the right position. However, once you have solved this problem, it is an ideal eyepiece for centering your target and then quickly switching to a high power eyepiece if you are viewing the planets or trying to separate a double star. It is also useful for scanning the night sky because of the larger area of sky it covers.