I have a question for you seasoned astro-jedis. Ever since I got my telescope I have been trying to get decent views of jupiter (saturn is gone, jupiter is all I am able to view plantry wise at the moment). When I first got my telescope jupiter was still low in the sky, 138x was possible and was about the range of my EP collection at the time (thats with a 9mm GSO EP with no barlow, the 4mm Andrews EP supplied is a waste of time). Then I got a 2x barlow, and thought that possibly 277x would be possible with the 2x and 9mm, but alas the image will never come to focus. At first I put this down to possibly collimation, and jupiter not being high enough, but now with jupiter fairly high (I have been trying for the last 2 months), I thought I would have a chance of it, but it still wont come to focus.
Thinking it may still have been collimation, I spent a few hours last week and stripped my focuser down, cleaned, lubricating and reassembling it. I then went about trying to square it, then grabbed a cheap laser (again GSO branded, tested and collimated at 10ft [I'm waiting to get an Ez Collimator]), reduced the focuser slop as much as I could (by adjusting the focuser tension, and adding a thin layer of sticky tape around the end of the laser) checked the focuser was square again using the laser and then collimated as best I could (checked afterwards with the Cheshire). Phew!
I then took the telescope out on Sunday night when the seeing conditions were fairly good (and no clouds!) and tried again; I still cant get the thing to focus at 277x. Its fine at 100x, 138x but anything higher just isnt going to happen (I only have a 9mm GSO, 25mm GSO, 30mm GSO SV 2" and a 40mm Andrews 500). So I have a question: is this a case of possibly bad seeing, collimation, poor EP quality or expecting too much out of visual views of jupiter? Is anything around 250+ possible with decent EP's? Perhaps its time to spend some money and grab a decent planetry EP, but I am really unsure of what to expect. I see images of jupiter all the time (on this forum) and I can't see anywhere near the detail because I can't get the image size. I realise the GSO EP's are average, but are they that average? At this stage I dont think I could get approval to spend any more than $200 on an EP.
Any advice appreciated, sorry about the novel.
