Hello all and welcome to part 2 of "Adventures of a dobsonian enthusiast who is a cheapo but still manages to do some astronomy"
The biggest problem I've had throughout my life is that i'm not very bright. This weakness of the brain matter manifests itself in my inability to make logical purchases. Actually let me put this differently, I have an ability to make haphazard purchases without much thought or planning
Honest disclosures aside....lets get on with the discussion
Chapter 1: 2 inches are better 1 1/4 right?? I mean that makes sense right?
So the first accessories I bought for my newly working 10 inch dobsonian were some eyepieces. Mostly because i'd had enough of the cheap, narrow field of view plossls that come with each and every scope.....my second hand scope was no exception as it also came with a 15mm plossl with a view like a pinhole.
Behold the 'amazing accessories' that came with telescopes I've bought:
I really don't like these
And so I decided the problem must be that these were 1 and 1/4 inch eyepieces. And that I needed 2 inch eyepieces. Sooo...
I got this:
a rather nice 30 mm GSO superview 2 inch eyepiece.
But then I thought, what if I need me some that sweet magnification...after all my large telescope should give me all the magnifications right. That's a great thing right? So I got this:
a great 2x barlow. A GSO 2x ED barlow. 2 inches of course.
Now this is a nice eyepieces/barlow set, but in my feeble mind I thought 2 inches was what was important. But when I looked at the moon and the planets (this is now March 2021 so Jupiter and saturn are visible early in the morning) the views were not very pleasing.
DSO's were pretty good though. I found globular clusters like Tucanae 47 and Omega Cen looked pretty good through the GSO SuperView. The Carina nebula looked good too.
But then I saw some youtube videos and
Chapter 2: I find out about Field of view, and get a better eyepiece
Oh so I guess FOV is a thing. I never even took that into consideration when I was buying eyepieces. Did I not just say I wasn't very bright
So this time I did a bit of research and got this:
Have you seen that movie 'Seven' with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt......"WHATS IN THE BOX??!!"
Well this:
An Explore Scientific 14mm 82 degree FOV eyepiece.
Suddenly the DSO's started looking much better, this is a great eyepiece for smaller DSO's. I also use it for planetary with the GSO 2x barlow and the views are great. I started noticing individual stars in Omega Cen.....and Tucanae 47 never looked better. The moon is crisp and the planets look like proper heavenly bodies. Finally I have done something right
So of course the only thing to do next is to do something wrong
Chapter 3: Time for a harebrained scheme
Since I've done something right with the Explore Scientific eyepiece purchase I now start believing that I must be some sort of genius....an astro-savant if you will.
My line of thinking is that if I can somehow crank up the magnification up to around 400x and then connect my mobile phone to the eyepiece I will be able to take great videos of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. I will then upload this video on youtube and get million of them likes and billions of them views
Eventually I will be drowning in dollars and then finally i'll be able to afford that 18 inch Obsession that started this whole thing.
So what do I do? I go out and buy another GSO barlow
And now this is my 'astrophotography equipment' (in quotes because its probably a sin to call this stuff astrophotography equipment):
I set it up the following way.....my mobile phone on a mobile phone adapter connected to the 14 mm ES which is inserted into the 1 1/4 inch 2.5 GSO barlow which itself is inserted into the 2x ED barlow which then goes into the telescope focuser.
Did I not say I wasn't particularly bright? Why do I need to keep repeating myself
In any case you can check the results here:
Saturn at 400x
Jupiter at 400x
Jupiter at 200x
Chapter 4: Some other useful equipment
I found that the 8x50 right angle finder that came with the scope is a pain in the *** to use. So I got a GSO Red Dot Finder:
This is very useful as it has 3 different patterns you can choose from. I like the bull-eye pattern.
I also use some mattress holders I got from an Ikea mattress purchase, check it out. There's actually 2 of these, one on either side of the altitude bearing. These help out with transporting the OTA. And of course a dolly to move the whole thing around.
I will eventually process the videos I got with PIPP, Registax/Autostakkert etc.
But please don't expect any great photos
Thank you for reading through this and I hope you all have clear skies and great seeing conditions wherever you live.
