Tele Vue recently announced a number of product anniversaries, providing a glimpse all the way back the mid 70’s. Here is a rundown of those products.
1977
Tele Vue built and sold a 6.1″ aperture, 279mm focal length, f/1.8 objective way as well as a 5.2″ aperture, 343mm focal length, f/2.6, But these weren’t telescopes, they were flat-field TV projection lenses, Astronomical gear wasn’t part of the Tele Vue brand until the 1980’s.
1982
In 1982 Tele Vue add the eyepieces offering Wide Fields with 65° apparent field of view that fit between the Plössl (50°) and Nagler (82°) eyepiece lines introduced in the prior two years. This line has since been superseded by their Panoptic lineup having similar focal lengths but a wider apparent field (68°), better edge correction, and longer eye-relief.
There was one new Plössl introduced that year – the popular 32mm slotted into the lineup between the 55mm and 26mm Plössls. It provided the widest possible true field in 1¼” barrel eyepieces. That focal length is still in production today.
1992
Tele Vue introduced the portable Pronto telescope. With its 70mm diameter objective, 450mm focal length (f/6.4), and 2″ drawtube, it could function as a terrestrial spotter or grab-n-go astronomical telescope. Low power fields of 11-lunar diameters made it a great scope for sweeping through the Milky Way. Later models had a 480mm focal length bringing the f/ratio to 6.8. The current production Tele Vue-76 APO scope has the same utility and focal length as the later Pronto but with a bigger 76mm objective and better color correction.
2002
This year saw Tele Vue introduce the 60-degree Everbrite diagonal, the 24mm Panoptic (68° apparent field) eyepiece that provides the widest possible true field in 1¼” barrel eyepieces at a higher power than their 32mm Plössl, and the 2x Powermate amplifier for visual and imaging use.
2007
Tele Vue introduced its fully corrected, 100° apparent field eyepiece when the 13mm Ethos was introduced. This eyepiece offered high contrast, comfortable eye relief, and full-field sharpness along with control of astigmatism, field curvature, lateral color, angular magnification distortion correction, and low pupil sensitivity for daytime use.
2012
Most of the Delos (72°) eyepiece line of long eye-relief eyepieces were introduced this year. These were the 17.3-, 14-, 12-, 8-, 4.5-, & 3.5-mm models.
The Delos was conceived as a longer eye relief Ethos. Reducing the field to 72° allowed freedom to increase eye-relief, while controlling pupil aberrations and overall size. The Delos design achieves full field sharpness, virtually perfect f θ (theta) distortion mapping, and color neutrality. Image fidelity is maximized utilizing glass-matched multicoatings and anti-reflection surfaces throughout the eyepiece.
2017
The final group of DeLite (62°) long eye relief eyepieces were released in 13-, 4-, & 3-mm focal lengths to fill out the nine eyepiece line.
This was also the year that they started selling afocal eyepiece adapters for the TNVC/PVS-14 Gen-3 Night Vision Monocular, a white phosphor Gen-3 image intensifier tube which provides a much more natural view than the emerald green of previous night vision devices.
You can learn more about Tele Vue’s current lineup of products here.
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