PowerSeeker 127EQ better lenses?

[Mattox (Matthew)]

Hi all,

Astronewbie here

After getting my first pair of Binoculars (Saxon 11x70) for Christmas I've been out pretty much every night scanning around the sky and being blown away.

Luckily for me my Dad has been into Astronomy for a little while and is about to move up the ranks and buy a NextStar 8SE which means I get the PowerSeeker 127EQ.

I know it's not the best scope in the world but I'm wondering if there are some lenses I could buy to make it a little better, it will be the scope I use in the backyard when I just want to have a quick look and get a bit of inspiration.

I've noticed with the lenses included the field of view is very narrow & for some reason M42 looks much better with Binoculars than through the scope (In suburban Perth, with a fair bit of light pollution).

That said tonight we saw the Orion Nebula, Venus (or at least we thought it was), the Pleiades & Jupiter and 4 moons so we were pretty happy!

Cheers in advance, looking forward to joining the community.

[Poita (Peter)]

I'm not sure which eyepieces would be best for that scope, but Andrews have some inexpensive plossls that are good value at $19 each.
http://www.andrewscom.com.au/site-co...ccessories.htm

[Mattox (Matthew)]

Cheers,

Which sizes should I get? They have

4mm, 6.5mm, 12.5mm, 15mm and 20mm focal lengths
30mm and 40mm focal lengths

[Poita (Peter)]

Well it has a focal length of 1000mm so a 30mm will give you 33x magnification, a 20mm will give you 50x magnification, a 12.5 will give you 80x magnification, and a 6.5mm will give you 150x magnification, which I think would be well and truly the maximum it could cope with.

You divide the focal length by the eyepiece to get the magnification, so you can make you own choices there.
Personally I'd grab a 20mm and a 12.5mm and maybe the 6.5mm, but it depends what you already have.

Also, the scope probably needs collimating (lining up the mirrors) otherwise the view can be much lower quality than it should be:
http://www.celestron.com/c3/support3...eid=2310&nav=0

Once you get to know the scope, you may want to try some improvements to the collimation system detailed here:
http://www.astronomyforum.net/celest...er-127-eq.html
but you may want to get some local help with that, and I wouldn't clean the mirror unless it was absolutely filthy, easy to do more harm than good.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

I had a similar scope and the 10mm was just barely useable, tiny FOV and eyerelief, woudn't go any shorter than a 12.5mm.
Good quality EPs with a nice wide field will help, but better waiting until you get a really good scope first.

Malcolm

[Poita (Peter)]

Good to know, I figured the 12.5mm might be the most you could go. Thought you may squeeze a bit more performance out if it was all collimated perfectly.

Well, that makes it easy, grab a 20mm and a 12.5mm to get started, it is less than a $50 investment and you will get some good use out of them.
Save more expensive eyepieces for when you get a better scope.

Originally Posted by barx1963

I had a similar scope and the 10mm was just barely useable, tiny FOV and eyerelief, woudn't go any shorter than a 12.5mm.
Good quality EPs with a nice wide field will help, but better waiting until you get a really good scope first.

Malcolm