Quote:
Originally Posted by Renato1
When I was at a dark site hunting down galaxies and other faint stuff, a wide angle 20mm eyepiece with 1.25" barrel was hands down my most used eyepiece with my 8"SCT. My 15mm, 26mm, 32mm and narrow field 40mm 1.25" eyepieces just didn't get much use in it, because the 20mm teased out faint objects better than the others did - though they were fine on open clusters and bright nebulas.
An 18mm or 19mm wide angle eyepiece might be better for faint stuff from a light polluted backyard.
A 1.25" 32mm will give you the biggest field in this telescope for that barrel size. Avoid the 1.25" 40mm because it gives the same field of view as the 32mm.
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For high power viewing of planets, I found a 10mm was good on any night, and 8mm was good on many nights, a 6.4mm was good only on some nights, and a 5mm was only good on a few nights of the year ( but that was the case for my backyard, where you view may be better or worse).
I suggest also thinking of eyepieces in terms of exit pupil rather than just magnification, as that gives you an idea of image brightness in the eyepiece. As you have an f/10 telescope, a 40mm eyepiece has a 4mm exit pupil, 30mm has 3mm, 20mm has 2mm etc.
Regards,
Renato
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Thanks, that is just the sort of experience I wanted to hear about. Especially pointing out that 32 mm is the max field for 1.25", I hadn't thought about that for some reason.
I had calculated out the exit pupil sizes actually and was a bit concerned that to get the same magnification as with my old scope the exit pupil size would be quite a bit smaller with this one. Not much that can be done about that though I guess!
Everard