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Old 25-05-2014, 11:29 AM
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barx1963 (Malcolm)
Bright the hawk's flight

barx1963 is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Mt Duneed Vic
Posts: 3,982
My usual advice for first time scope buyers is to use the ones that come with the scope a few times before spending cash. The reason for this is the concepts of eyepiece design and nomenclature can be a little hard to grasp unless you have actually used a couple. AFOV, TFOV, eye relief, exit pupil etc don't make a lot of sense until you have tried to look through a few and even the most basic kit of a pair of plossls at 10 and 25mm adequately demonstrate these concepts. Once a beginner understands how they affect their view in their scope, they are placed to make in informed decision when spending their dollars.
Obviously in this case that is not possible. While I am an unabashed Televue fan and the set of 13mm T6 Nagler and 24 Panoptic is very nice (having used it a lot in my 12") it is a little expensive.
You will need a reasonable low power EP and 24/25mm or thereabouts is about right. The good news is that a 25mm plossl is still a very good EP and can be picked up cheaply (I think the Bintel one is $40?) while a higher grade Televue one is usually about $100. It will give nice wide field, good eye relief and won't break the bank.
For a bit more power, something around 10-12mm is good. At these focal lengths Plossls start to get harder to use with short eye relief and very small eye lenses. Something a bit better may be called for. Unfortunately in the Televue range, you are going to be looking at more than $300 which will blow your budget so a good Explore Scientific may be a good idea. I haven't used one yet to ant extent so will not offer an opinion on them but reports I have seen give them a good wrap.

Hope this helps

Malcolm
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