General advice

[celestialmenace (Rob)]

Hi

I'm very new to astronomy & am looking for general advice.

I was recently given a celestron nexstar slt130, & couldnt really see planets as expected.

I have the 25mm & 9mm eyepieces which come in the box.

Can you please suggest what I might want to buy to get a good look at Mars, Jupiter & Galaxies?

Thank you

[that_guy (Tony)]

First to IIS!!

You cant see much of mars right now, it being furthest away from an opposition and all :/ but Jupiter should look awesome in your 130mm See its Galilean Moons and such, and you should be able to make out the Equatorial bands and such, you should try the 9mm on the planets and 25mm on the DSO, if you magnify too much on Deep space objects then it starts to lose details, so use averted vision, (looking away from the object and using your peripheral vision to look at it and youll see wayy more detail cos the corner of your eyes are more sensitive to light) but youll need a decent sky to look at some galaxies especially with a 130mm... hope this helped

Cheers,
Tony

[Robh (Rob)]

Welcome to IIS.
You should get a lot of enjoyment from your scope.
The 130 SLT has a focal length of 650mm. The magnification gained by your eyepieces are 650/25=26x and 650/9=72x. This is great for wide-field viewing of nebulae, clusters and large galaxies but a bit on the low side for observing planets. I would suggest you get a 2x barlow or add something like a 5mm EP to your collection. This will bump your magnification up to 72x2=144 for the barlow or 650/5=130 for the EP.

Regards, Rob.

[celestialmenace (Rob)]

Thanks to both of you.

I have heard of a Barlow so will look into it. I have excellent skies (I think), country Victoria.

Thanks again, I'll go out agian in a night or 2