[sj777 (Dave)]

Hi all,
Newish member here. I've been stargazing since end of Jan this year with my new 8 inch F6 collapsible dob and a 70/700 meade refractor and I'm looking for some advice on whereto next with EPs.

I started moving over to doing some imaging with a Star adventurer mount and my DSLR; visual was not giving me the wow factor due to light pollution. But a few weeks back one of the members of the astro club put an OIII filter and a wide field eyepiece on my dob and showed me a view of Eta Carinae that was spectacular. So I'm considering spending my money on some EPs and filters for the rest of this year.

I'm keen to get good views of the deep sky objects and also the moon and planets. I have been reading some of the eyepiece threads and I'm leaning towards getting a baader MkIV zoom for the reasons that everyone who has one has mentioned. I also want to get a widefield eyepiece and think a 31mm Nagler or equivalent is probably the right fit. This would give me a pretty good span of mags and fov I think. Would you agree?

The next issue I'm thinking about is the filters. The astro club member said a UHC filter would be the next best value move. But do I go 2inch or 1.25inch? I would like to be able to use the filter on both the zoom and the widefield EP and also on both the dob which can take 2inch and 1.25 via the adaptor. The meade is a 1.25inch focuser. Any ideas on how to best approach choosing the right size filter for my equipment? Also any comments on choice of filters?

Thanks