4mm Meade Series 5000 PWA Telescope Eyepiece

PWA stands for Premium Wide Angle, and that's just what you get with the 4mm Meade Series 5000 PWA Telescope Eyepiece. An immersive 82° field of view pulls you into the image at the telescope, extremely helpful at the high magnification level this eyepiece provides. This high-quality eyepiece features a 7-element lens system with fully multi-coated premium-grade optical glass, combined with blackened lens edges for the best possible image correction in color, contrast, and brightness. The blackened lens edges help prevent errant light from bouncing around inside the eyepiece, reducing reflections and glare while also boosting contrast.

The massive 82° apparent field helps frame more of the object through the eyepiece, and also keeps small objects at high power (such as planets) in the field longer if you are using a manual telescope that does not automatically track with the object. A 4mm eyepiece results in fairly high magnification with most telescopes, so with a standard field of view eyepiece, the view at this high power can be extremely narrow. But with this wide 82° field of view, looking at the moon for example — more of the moon will be in view, even though you are focusing down onto specific craters. As a benchmark, in a 1000mm focal length telescope, the magnification will be 250x, and the field of view is 0.33°. And in a shorter telescope such as an 80mm f/6 refractor (480mm focal length), the magnification is 120x with a 0.68° field of view! Since the moon is 0.5° diameter, this means in an 80mm f/6, you get the entire moon in the field of view, while still having a magnification well over 100x! 4mm is an excellent high-magnification eyepiece to have in your collection, depending on the aperture and focal length of your telescope (just be careful not to exceed the resolution limit of your scope, which is usually determined by multiplying your telescope aperture in millimeters by 2). Ideal for lunar and planetary detail in medium to long focal length telescopes, and for helping push small focal length telescopes up to enough power to start seeing planetary detail.

The 4mm Series 5000 PWA eyepiece is also parfocal with the other eyepieces in the PWA line, meaning there will be little to no focus change when switching between eyepieces. It features 12mm eye relief along with lens caps and a rubber eyeguard that can fold down if you wish to comfortably use glasses when viewing. The 4mm PWA is threaded for 1.25" filters and weighs 7.2 oz (205g), with dimensions of 51mm x 98mm.