Eyepieces & Filters

[CHRISZ]

Hello, just starting out and need a little advice. I own a celestron 11" cpc telescope. To save me alot of time and money i wanted to know what any of you out there recommend as good quality eyepieces 1. for viewing planets & 2. for viewing galaxies and nebulae. Also what filters for viewing similar. Brands & size of eyepieces and filters would be appreciated. More opinions the better. Cheers

[madtuna]

Hi Chris. :welcome:

Firstly what size diagonal do you have now 1 1/4 or 2" and what eye pieces do you currently have?

[CHRISZ]

1 1/4" diagonal & 40mm plossl eyepiece (standard comes with telescope) & 2 polarized moon filters

[madtuna]

The majority of my viewing is done with two EP's, a 30mm 80 deg Andrews 2" cheapy and a 20mm Celestron 1 1/4.
I also use a Celeston 1/14 2x barlow and a Televue 2" 4x powermate.
The combination of the 4 covers 95% of my needs in all my scopes.

The Andrews is good value for money, though it has seagulls around the edge, the centre is sharp as a tack.

I will be replacing both with better quality EP's soon but IMHO I don't think you need a huge amount of EP's just a couple of good quality ones and a barlow or powermate.

I certainly don't need all the ones I have.

[marki]

Hi Chris

Steve makes good sense here. When I first stared I bought a heap of eyepieces through sheer ignorance. To make it worse I bought from different manufactures and different types (what does parfocal mean folks:shrug: oops). I ended up with 7, 9,12mm vixen LV's , a 40mm celestron elux, a 7 - 21mm zoom, 14mm pentex XW, 2 meade 4000 26mm and series 5000 26mm as well as a 9mm illuminated reticle. It was only after this spending spree that I learnt about telextenders (fancy word for barlows).

My scope is at F10 which is the same as yours. I only use the 40, 26 and 14mm eyepieces for visual the rest stay in the box. If I use these with a 2X barlow I effectively have 20, 13 and 7mm eyepieces as well. At 7mm I am really pushing the scopes ability (10" lx200r at about 360 X mag) and that is about as high as I would go in the city even when seeing is good and the moon is below the horizon, you just loose too much light. The 40mm delivers a reasonable wide field considering the F10 focal ratio.

All you really need are 2 or 3 good quality eyepieces and a 2X barlow. Try to get a parfocal set which means you will not have to re-focus much as you change the eyepieces to get the best view.

The main filters I use are red/green/light blue and yellow wrattens (good for planets) and I also have astronomik CLS (broadband for light pollution) and OIII and Hb narrow band filters (only useful when used from a very dark site to view specific objects). I have others for CCD work but have found the wrattens and CLS filters to be of the greatest use visually in the city.

Good Luck :)

[CHRISZ]

Thanks marki & madtuna for the info. appreciated

I'm trying to avoid ending up with a heap of equipment thats either useless or that i never use.

cheers

[Ian Robinson]

check out Lumicon's Web site , stacks of advise on filters to use in visual and photographic astronomy. http://www.lumicon.com/astronomy-accessories.php?cid=1&cn=Filters

Before they went on on-line (in the days before Jack Marlin retired) their catalogue gave all this and more.

[Merlin66]

Chris,
Why should you be any different to the majority of us!!
There are eyepieces, adaptors, gizmos, do-hickies, whatitz that at the time we can't live without..... after a while we try to convince ourselves that we now know a bit more and understand what is really necessary......
Does that stop us buying, trading, trying......NO WAY!!
Welcome to the crazy world of amateur astronomy....

[Raktajino]

[quote=Ian Robinson;342068]check out Lumicon's Web site , stacks of advise on filters to use in visual and photographic astronomy. http://www.lumicon.com/astronomy-accessories.php?cid=1&cn=Filters

Just had a look at this site - very informative. Thanks for the link Ian. :thumbsup:

Rod