Quote:
Originally Posted by GazzMeister
....I'm not sure how hard it is to track a planet or other object with high magnification eyepieces. I never knew how fast they would move across the field of view before I got my current telescope..........
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Hi Gareth! Well, I guess that you will need to try it sometime at a Society gathering. My experience - I've recently bought a cheap 6mm Plossl eyepiece - so a fairly narrow field of view. I put it in a 2x barlow in my 8" F6 dob and I'm at 400 magnification. I haven't had a great problem tracking the planets by hand as I observe. I haven't timed it, but I guess they move across the field of view in some 15 sec. Enought tome for me to set up, then invite someone to have a look and they get a good 10 sec before the object slides out of the field of view. However, it's woth mentioning that I have improved the altitude and azimuth bearings on my basic scope to make the movement quite smooth to allow the little nudges needed to return the object to the other side of the field of view. Of course, it's not often that 400 magnification is much use (seeing quality!) - more often I'm not exceeding 250 magnification where the problem is less.
Eric
