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  #20  
Old August 1st 05, 04:31 PM
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Since I have a 24mm Konig and an Ultima Barlow, this gives me a 24mm
eyepiece and a 12mm eyepiece, right? Per my other post, it appears I
would next get a 4.8mm eyepiece for 100x????


I own the Ranger, which has identical optics to the Pronto
but uses a 1.25-inch focuser instead of a 2-inch focuster.
I also have an 8-24mm zoom eyepiece which, in combination
with a Barlow, lets me "dial in" pretty much any magnification
I want.

Your 24mm eyepiece should be just great for general low-
magnification browsing. Eventually, you may want to supplement
it with a 2-inch eyepiece to give you a *really* low power
and correspondingly vast field of view. When all is said
and done, that is the Pronto's greatest strength; few other
scopes on the market can touch it for low-power work.

For closeup views of deep-sky objects, I usually like to
use a magnification of around 50X - 60X on my Ranger,
meaning an eyepiece in the 8mm - 9.6mm range. I betcha
you would see M57 as a ring at 60X, where it might be
much harder at 40X.

For planets, I usually like at least 100X, and often higher.
Tight double stars and the Moon often profit from 150X,
although the marginal gain above 120X is fairly small.
Anyway, all these magnifications are best achieved with
the aid of a Barlow, because the eye relief of a standard,
moderately priced 3mm - 5mm eyepiece is painfully short.
In other words, to see the entire field, you nearly have
to press your eyeball against the glass.

- Tony Flanders