Thread: New need advice
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Old December 11th 05, 05:46 PM posted to uk.sci.astronomy
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Default New need advice

What is partly missing from Chris Taylor's admirable description of
magnification etc is that better eyepieces than those supplied with the
telescope will offer clear advantages.

Even cheap Plossls will offer a larger field of view than you have now.
A larger field of view means things are easier to find in the
telescope. Lower powers are also more useful. Offering even larger
fields of view. (In other words you can see a much bigger area of sky
though the telescope)

Plus the advantage that instead of a big fuzzy blob bouncing about in
the field of view you will have a small razor sharp image that you can
study carefully. With a big fuzzy blob pretending to be a bouncing
planet you have nothing to study except the amount of fuzziness and how
much it can shake about. Touching the telescope will give it the shakes
and so will a wind or stiff breeze. The higher the magnification the
more it will shake.

With magnifications below about 120x you can see everything that there
is in the telescope image. But you need to study it carefully to see
the detail. Which takes a bit of practice.

If you magnify too much you lose everything. Lack of clarity, small
field of view and unsteadiness all spoil what you hoped to see by
making everything bigger. So forget 3 x Barlows. You will see far more
with two or three good, but inexpensive eyepieces (like Plossls) at
lower powers. 120x, 90x and 35x is a good spread of magnifications.
Using something like 7.5mm, 10mm and 25 or 26mm. I'd start with a 10mm
Plossl to get an immediate improvement over the Huygenians you have
now.

Chris.B