[syousef]

Gee, has no one here ever gone as high as they can just to see if they could and what the result would be?

If I want good views I'll use 10mm minium on 8 inch (F=1000) or 10 inch (F=1250) scope. Sometimes with 2x barlow. So 125x without barlow or 250x with. All my eyepieces are plossyls of varying quality, so in good seing I'm sure I could go a little higher. The 6.3mm is more usable than the 4mm, but really the 10mm is my lowest eyepiece "of a reasonable quality".

If I don't need the magnification I'd go the 2" eyepiece or my 15" wide superview which is a lovely eyepiece (for the price).

But I have on a couple of occassions stacked two 2x barlows and a 6.3mm or even 4mm plossyl. So on the 10" with the 4mm eyepiece that'd be 312x, 625x (1 barlow) and 1250x (2 barlows). The results were predictably horrible and tracking with a Dob was fun and games, but you have to do that at least once in your observing life. Chasing Saturn, especially if your mount isn't the smoothest can be a real challenge ;-) It was a while ago but if I recall correctly I think 625x as high as I'd go without calling it a smudge rather than a planet so that's close to the 500x on a 10" scope 50x per inch limit that people talk about.