As most people here are saying, an EP kit would not worth the money. You will not gain enough from the expense. And with a 2" focuser, money would be better spent around that facility.
An EP kit would be fine if you didn't have eyepieces.
in your situation, you would be better served obtaining individual eyepieces. You can better control what you get, and not just take what you get.
An example is your 9mm plossl. You would have noticed that it has the smallest eye lens (the lens you look into. The other end of the lens system is called the field lens) of the three that you currently have. It is also the tightest to look into. Going to a 6mm plossl means an even smaller eye lens and having to just about park your cornea to look into it.
But for a little more cost than a 6mm plossl, you can get a much better eyepiece, also a 6mm, yet its eye lens is more than twice the size of your 15mm, and much easier to look into than the 15mm. And i am not talking about big bucks either.
If you are looking at a kit, it tells me that you might be on a tight budget. If this is the case, there are options available that will cost a whole lot less, perform extremely well, and if you take up just two or three of these, it will come in at less than the eyepiece kit, not three time the cost of the kit just for one eyepiece.
If you can give us an indication of your total budget, we can give you pointers as to what will serve you best. And if your budget is an open chequebook, you are in for a spend fest!
Filters can be very useful tools. Nebulae filters more so than colour ones. Which nebula filter? Have a read of the following filter guide. It details what the different filters can do. Understand this, and you can make a better informed choice.
Which colour filter? These you really won't use very much. Really, you won't. Best i can suggest us you read the above filter guide, and decide on two or three filters, four at the VERY most. How these filters reveal features is sometimes counter intuitive, often very subtle, and always demanding patience and a learned eye to identify what is being shown. Read about filters. This will help you start to make better choices and understand what other people are talking about when they montion OIII, UHC, Broadband, etc.
Mental.
Edit - to answer your question about the difference between the two kits, the only difference is the price that i can see, and on is badged Celestron & the other Skywatcher. Skywatcher OWNS Celestron.
Last edited by mental4astro; 07-02-2016 at 05:01 PM.
So you mean anything goes, or would you rather something more considered? A good eyepiece starts from around $70. Top shelf can go to over $1000. See what I mean?
I used to have a similar kit, but it was pretty crappy. Once you have seen proper glass you will never go back.
For widefield you can get a GSO 2inch (or 1.25 if you dont have a 2inch focuser). I got a 20mm 2 inch...and it blows the view from my 24mm meade 1.25inch...its really good value for money. http://www.andrewscom.com.au/site-co...-guansheng.htm
And then spend a bit more money on your high power piece. Having 2 or 3 good pieces will all you need, especially if you have a barlow, then its like having 4 good eyepieces.
...
But for a little more cost than a 6mm plossl, you can get a much better eyepiece, also a 6mm, yet its eye lens is more than twice the size of your 15mm, and much easier to look into than the 15mm. And i am not talking about big bucks either.
Music to my ears Alexander... exactly what I'm looking for (5-7mm), more mag for my 8" f/6 dob... any chance you could make some recommendations - in the not so big bucks region? I'm keeping my eye on the classifieds but it's hard to know what's good value for money.
Many of the long-timers here have a bunch of eyepieces acquired by trying ones at star parties, and trading the ones they don't wish to keep.
Chances are if you go this route you'll eventually buy 6-10 budget eyepieces and sell most of them over a few years, and settle down to a few "keepers".
Buying a set is an alternative but its something to take on when you know what you want and why otherwise you may decide to sell the lot come the day you want better eyepieces.
Investing in a premium set is something for the diehards - this can cost more than the scope.
Just be aware that the 6mm is the weakest of the line. It is still miles better than a 6mm plossl, but compared to its stable mates, it has some flaws.
As a comparision, I've attached a photo of my 9mm TMB Planetary Type II with a 9mm plossl. There is a big difference in ease of use and image quality. Plossls are a design that is over 100 years old. It was a brilliant design for its time, and is still very good in slow Newtonians that it was designed for. For todays' fast Newtonians, the plossl design struggles. Also, the shorter the focal length, the smaller the eye lens gets, and the closer you need to put your eye to the eye lens to see into it, until you need to park your cornea on the eye lens to see into it. The TMB Type II is a contemporary design that makes use of new exotic glass types that allows for the eye lens to remain large across its whole focal length line, and the eye relief is excellent and the same long amount again across all focal lengths. For the price, these are very, very good.
Give me a little time to prepare a more detailed reply. Your question is very similar to others here, and it relates to the relationship between eyepieces and scopes, and what an optical match between the two is necessary to produce a good image. I really don't want to give you just a dumb 'get this' or 'get that' reply. Better if you understand a little more of what is going on, then recommendations can be had, and you can make a better purchasing decision. Not everyone can afford a $1000 eyepiece. Some people need to stick to a budget of around $100. No good me offering $500 suggestions if they are out of reach. But a carefully considered $70 eyepiece may do if you understand the aberrations you see and are prepared to accept some small amount of aberration in the final image.
Last edited by mental4astro; 08-02-2016 at 10:04 AM.
Gday Jedd
If you can pick up a cheap Ep set from the classifieds go for it.
I got a set for $150 a couple of months ago which got me covered from 30 to 10mm + a couple of filters. Ep quality isn't great however it has helped me try out the different Ep's and find out what I do and don't like.
I have concluded that for cheap Ep's at or below 10mm you will be disappointed, as soon as I have surgically removed the 10mm from my eye socket I am going to catapult that into the nearest river.
Inevitably whatever road one goes down you will end up with 3 or 4 high quality Ep's (televue etc) that will sort you for life and ditch all the cheap stuff.
Then you get aperture fever.....
Then astrophotographitis....
And so on, and on
Music to my ears Alexander... exactly what I'm looking for (5-7mm), more mag for my 8" f/6 dob... any chance you could make some recommendations - in the not so big bucks region? I'm keeping my eye on the classifieds but it's hard to know what's good value for money.
Cheers, Iain
Hi Iain and others.
If you want a budget 6mm eyepiece you can't go too far wrong with the Long Perng LER series. I have tried the 3mm, 5mm and 9mm in my f5 dob, f8 refractor and CPC 800 (f10) and they are sharp with great eye relief (20mm), well color-corrected and with very little edge distortion. Andrews sell them for around $79. They have a 55 degree AFOV, which is better than a plossl, and while this is not as good as some of the other cheaper "wide-field" eyepieces out there, it is a field that is sharp almost right to the edge, compared to only about 60% of the way for a lot of the others- so the sharp, usable FOV is actually pretty good.
The Williams "Super Planetary" series and Orion "Edge On" are pretty much identical, but twice the price...
I have tried the 3mm and 5mm against a barlowed Nagler 13mm T6, and the Nagler 3-6mm zoom, and they stand up pretty well.
Compared to the Naglers, a bit of reflected light is visible if there is a really bright object (like the moon) just out of the FOV, and the image isn't quite as bright (the Nagler coatings allow more light through-put), but you are hard pressed to see much difference in the sharpness of the image.
Well worth a look: and you could get a 4-eyepiece set for around $300...
Watching this thread with interest.
I wonder whether a barlow might be worth considering for Jedd, given that some designs recommended here have barlows built in them and some others here use barlows themselves. It could nicely solve the short eye relief problem and the OP's desire for a 'set', plus allow eye piece designs to be used that may not otherwiese be suitable. I don't have much personal experiece barlowing though, so perhaps Alex and others could provide some wisdom?
Watching this thread with interest.
I wonder whether a barlow might be worth considering for Jedd, given that some designs recommended here have barlows built in them and some others here use barlows themselves. It could nicely solve the short eye relief problem and the OP's desire for a 'set', plus allow eye piece designs to be used that may not otherwiese be suitable. I don't have much personal experiece barlowing though, so perhaps Alex and others could provide some wisdom?
To barlow or not to barlow confuses me even more! Seems a pretty even split from reading various threads on the subject. With only the stock 10mm & 25mm eyepieces that came with the scope (which I presume a fairly basic) I figured finding a semi-decent 5mm (in the $70 - $150 range, or second hand) would be the best way to go.
I used to use GSO Plossls with a 2.5x GSO Barlow. 32, 25, 20 and 15mm Plossls with the Barlow will give a wide range of magnification to cover just about everything.
To get better the Explore Scientific 82 degree series at $150 USD are where the views are really good before the cash gets shelled out for minimal gains. No one has mentioned a coma corrector yet.....a must with wider view eyepieces than Plossls.
GSO Plossls and the 2.5x GSO Barlow are hard to beat.
Good point Matt , I have most Naglers , awsome but expensive !! , full set of Panoptics , simply the best IMHO and a full set of Radians , the best high power eyepieces out there in my 5 inch iStar . ( at a reasonable price ).
But as Matt says a set of quality Plossls and a Barlow will cover all uses .
I have gathered together a set of TV Plossls and Celestron Ultina barlow , all got on IIS classifieds over a year or so and this set lives in the case with my little 60mm triplet and gets more use than almost all my other eyepieces , a simple set that does it all very well .
Hope this helps .
If this is to much , take a good long look at the GSO 'Super views ' as suggested earlier , these are very good eyepieces but do perform best with a coma corrector in the longer focal lengths in short Newts , as Matt said .
On the filters , a nice light yellow is really good for viewing the subtile surface details on mars .
Brian.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MattT
I used to use GSO Plossls with a 2.5x GSO Barlow. 32, 25, 20 and 15mm Plossls with the Barlow will give a wide range of magnification to cover just about everything.
To get better the Explore Scientific 82 degree series at $150 USD are where the views are really good before the cash gets shelled out for minimal gains. No one has mentioned a coma corrector yet.....a must with wider view eyepieces than Plossls.
GSO Plossls and the 2.5x GSO Barlow are hard to beat.
You remember the old adage "Oils ain't oils"? Well, eyepieces ain't eyepieces when it comes to scopes.
Telescopes we think of as focusing light at just one single point. Not so. In fact, a scope's focal point is actually a 'plane'. AND a curved plane a that! Depending on the design of the scope, this plane is either convex (refractors, SCTs, Maks) or concave (Newtonians). And depending on the focal ratio of the scope, the shape of this curve is either very deep (fast scopes) or shallow (slow scopes).
Eyepieces then in turn need to be designed to deal with one shape or the other. The way the EP is designed WILL influence the way it deals with the manner the focal plane of the scope falls onto it. This is why some eyepieces are brilliant in one scope, say a fast refractor, and poor in a fast Newtonian. Nothing wrong with the eyepiece. The two are just not an Optical Match. And unfortunately, many people write off this or that eyepiece because they see a whole bunch of aberrations, and those aberrations would not be there if they had put the EP into the right scope design!!!
Some eyepieces can work well with both convex and concave focal planes. Oddly enough, these also tend to be more expensive EPs too... . BUT, they do not throw up the exact same image quality!!! There will be some compromise somewhere in the optical light train. Either a little field curvature, or a little softer in focus, or a little astigmatism right at the edge, or a shift in eye relief, or a little more eye strain, or eye placement becomes more critical... Something will change, however small. <WARNING: another cliche> - No Free Lunch here... But the nett result is still a very damn good image.
Barlows... double edged sword these things,
Curiously most people think these are somehow 'neutral' focal extenders, like maintain the native eye relief of the EP (which they don't, though close in most instances), or simply 'double' or 'triple' magnification. Yet they have other consequences on the way the light is dealt with by the eyepiece. Use the wrong eyepiece at the end of the wrong scope-barlow combination, and the image thrown up can be atrocious, even if the EP is a high end one or not.
But, use the right eyepiece in the right scope-barlow combo, and you've hit the jackpot!
I tend not to use barlows. Apart from the odd chance of an optical mismatch, for me it is more the case of another bit of kit that gets in the way in the middle of the night. It also introduces more glass between me and those precious photons I'm trying to hog for my eyes. And if the barlow is a cheapie, even worse in terms of poor coatings, lens quality, etc.
I do have a barlow, and I keep it only for one particular telescope I have, an 8" f/4 Newtonian, as with the shortest focal length eyepiece I have, it is only with a barlow that I can push the scope to the maximum the 8" aperture can give when atmospheric conditions are good. This combination gave me my best view of Saturn one night at the time - and in all honesty, I haven't used the barlow since! A barlow is a nice tool to have up your sleeve. But being able to use one very much depends on your scope/scopes and EPs too. Most people probably have one, but I'd say few actually use it much - they would rather have an EP that does the heavy lifting on its own.
~x.X.x~
There is a lot of bias when it comes to eyepieces. This then clouds objective reviews and recommendations. And I am not without fault. You NEED to look through a crap load of eyepieces. I may suggest this or that eyepiece, but best if you try out a mate's before you buy. You WILL change eyepieces several times over the years. Only this way will you come to your own unique eyepiece kit, with your own set of individual preferences. The EP's in my kit I've cherry picked for me, to suit my own set of preferences. Your own collection may well end up being 'near enough is good enough', and by me that is as valid as 'only top shelf performance',
. ( at a reasonable price 
).
. BUT, they do not throw up the exact same image quality!!! There will be some compromise somewhere in the optical light train. Either a little field curvature, or a little softer in focus, or a little astigmatism right at the edge, or a shift in eye relief, or a little more eye strain, or eye placement becomes more critical... Something will change, however small. <WARNING: another cliche> - No Free Lunch here... But the nett result is still a very damn good image.
