Quote:
Originally Posted by Donman90
With the eye pieces, I'm a little ignorant as to how these drastically change the view? I'll be sure to do some more reading on this but perhaps someone could enlighten me a little, does it just provide a 'crisper' image essentially?
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Often a bloody heap better. Making a useless telescope aimed for the bin a great telescope. it all depends. When people talk about buying a telescope its really a package containing the OTA (Optical tube Assembly: the telescope tube basically), some form of mount or tripod to use it on and a few eyepieces which give you a range of magnification (a totally useless figure so ignore it in buying decision) and a few other odds and ends. The OTA is where the cost is and most profit made and the rest is often second rate for that OTA, usually incuded to make the setup look good and sound good on the packaging.
What people dont realise is its the eyepiece that does the hard work and provide the image quality not the OTA. So poor quality eyepieces which are supplied often have fringing evident and may not even focus properly or clearly is badly made or if made from plastic for its optics. A couple of hundred on a single good eyepiece is far better than spending the same on a set of a dozen. Having many eyepieces is meaningless in practice. Something like a Baader Hyperion or Morpheus eyepiece is very good glass optics. You'll get good eye relief meaning its easy to get your eye seated to view something at all (another problem with kit eyepieces). I bought a celestron 114eq years ago (totaly wrong buying choice) and it was ghastly to use then I bought a baader hyperion 8mm eyepiece. I was sceptical like you but wow what a difference it made, the darkness was darker, everything was clearer, crisper, sharper, colourful..nothing to do with the telescope being bad it was just the eyepieces it came with. this was a cheap scope. Later I bought a $10k+ scope and it came with one 2" eyepiece and again it was garbage which was unexpected at that price. Again my smaller baader hyperion improved clarity considerably. Find a scope to look through yourself with both kit eyepieces and a better quality one and see for yourself (or waste money buying the wrong stuff). In practice an 8mm and a 24mm eyepiece are all you need , the wider 24mm to help you get around the sky (star hopping) and 8mm for the closer views. At 8mm you get high magnification which also includes atmospheric distortions but 8mm should give you clear views most of the time and I think is the most practical high magnifaction size you'll use. Go to 6 or 4mm eyepieces and you'll quickly find it gets harder and harder to use and get a clear view due to the atmospheric limits rather than problem of telescope or eyepiece.
but in time you'll likely want such an eyepiece on hand so when the seeing is great you can get that extra magnification especially for planets. But most often day to day use a quality 8mm and 24mm will suit. Then add a quality Barlow later on maybe.
A 10+" dob and two quality eyepieces ($100+ ea), is all you really need for years. You will never see in the eyepiece wonderfully large and colourful closeups of planets or galaxies etc like you see in photos, no matter how much you spend. Saturn and Jupiter are always small. Nebula are black and white and dim.