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Old 04-11-2021, 01:45 AM
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Don Pensack
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Don Pensack is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 508
For visual, not using a coma corrector, stay at f/5 or longer.
As for eyepieces, you'll need a few.
Baader Morpheus are nice eyepieces and work well down to about f/4.5, but a set of 4 or 5 might require a larger budget to buy than you need starting out with visual use. I see the Saxon Cielo eyepieces are available at a decent price, and they're good enough you would enjoy using them--a wide enough field not to feel cramped, but not so wide that you would see more coma from the scope (the wider the eyepiece, the more visible coma is at the edge). And usable with or without glasses. You may have some uncorrected astigmatism in your eye that would make using glasses useful to improve the star images.

If you are thinking an 8" f/5 on the mount, I would suggest getting an 8" f/6 dob instead and continue to use the mount for imaging.
The dob has the advantages of:
--greater stability at high powers in a breeze
--less coma at f/6 than f/5
--a comfortable seated viewing experience
--no odd eyepiece positions or leaning over the mount to look through the eyepiece
--very quick setup
--easier to transport than an EQ-mounted scope
--can be used at the same time your other scope is shooting an image.
--easier on eyepieces--most eyepieces perform better at f/6 than f/5, so gives you more choice of eyepieces.

Beginners often start out with too few eyepieces to choose among. The advantage of the 60° Cielos is you might be able to afford a set of 4 or 5 instead of one or two, and have choices for the different objects in the sky.
After all, you'll be looking at objects well under 1' across all the way up to 2° across and more. Multiple magnifications are called for.
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