Zoom eyepieces are an excellent purchase if you recently bought your first telescope or if you are doing the research to get one soon. The best use case for zoom eyepiece is when you are looking to maximize the range of magnification options you have access to, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money in many eyepieces. Any beginner should be able to understand how they work simply by testing them for a few seconds. Using a zoom eyepiece is really easy and intuitive. With zoom eyepieces you simply turn the focal length dial when you want to change it and you are done. Doing that with multiple eyepieces can be obnoxious as you need to switch them in and out every time. When you are starting out, it’s hard to get a feel for what magnification is the best fro the object you are trying to view, so you need to experiment a lot. So, when you compare the cost of those multiple eyepieces against the price of one zoom, the zoom comes out on top. However, you’d need 4 or more eyepieces to cover the same focal length range that a single zoom eyepiece has.

Zoom eyepieces are more expensive than getting one single fixed eyepiece of equivalent quality. Cheaper in comparison to buying multiple eyepieces.This makes them extremely versatile and also saves a ton of storage space. Zoom eyepieces can cover the magnification of many different eyepieces in a single package. Multiple magnification levels in a single eyepiece.The most common sizes are 7-21mm and 8-24mm. Zoom eyepieces generally cover the mid-range of focal lengths. Instead of buying multiple eyepieces to cover a wide range of focal lengths, you can simply get a zoom eyepiece and get access to all the magnification levels in-between. Zoom eyepieces are designed with a dial or turning mechanism that allow you to adjust the focal length while the eyepiece is still inserted in the telescope’s focuser or star diagonal, eliminating the need to switch between eyepieces whenever you want to adjust the magnification. Zoom eyepieces give you access to a wide range of magnification options in one single device. Skip to the best picks What is a Zoom EyepieceĪ zoom eyepiece is a versatile type of telescope eyepiece with a variable focal length.

Vivitar telescope eyepiece lenses