ITFC_Sam

Long shot perhaps but any of these visible in a 5 inch scope? I guess M87 would be due to its sheer size?

Doh! Can't believe it never occurred to me to buy a moon filter, just ordered one. While I'm here here's what I got when I put my phone up to the eyepiece. Turned out much clearer than I expected!

Had an interesting but potentially stupid thought last night. I always instinctively use my right eye for observing everything but of course the moon ruins any night vision gained. If I were to use my left eye for the moon would that leave my right eye's dark adaption unharmed and allow me to view faint objects immediately afterwards?

This will be the first time for me looking at an asteroid through a telescope. What can I expect to see? I'm imagining a small point of light similar to a star moving slowly across the sky. Other than using a low powered eyepiece, what else can I do to make finding it easy?

The short eye relief generally isn't a problem for me, though with that said I'm steering away from the 4-6mm in favour of the 8-10mm. I do plan on getting a new barlow soon afterwards, I recall the Tal 2x barlow having a good reputation on here? http://www.firstlightoptics.com/tal-eyepieces/tal-2x-and-3x-barlows.html It's currently out of stock but does anyone know how much is costs?

I was looking to upgrade eyepiece by eyepiece as I am on a budget and came across these Vixen's http://www.firstlightoptics.com/vixen-eyepieces/vixen-npl-eyepieces.html My scope is an f/5 130mm newt which came with 10mm and 25mm eyepieces (which are bog standard) and a 2x barlow (which is useless). Are these eyepieces a noticable upgrade? If so up to what magnification would be possible with this scope?

Was just about to post a very similar question so I will sneak it in here. Due to my money situation it would be best to upgrade one eyepiece at a time, starting with the 10mm. The scope is F/5 (and I have no idea what eyepieces are best for that), willing to spend up to £50.

Yes the barlow was absolutely great for the moon, showed the craters in amazing detail far beyond that of my old binos. Would any more detail come out of Jupiter if it were to be viewed at about 6pm when it's higher in the sky?

Wow I forgot I made this post I've managed to take it out twice so far with generally good results. Had nice views of the moon, M45, M31 and Jupiter in between some pesky clouds. Collimation seems to be fine as I get the ring effect on a unfocused star, nonetheless i have ordered a collimator. My one major concern is with the 2x barlow, which when viewing Jupiter wasn't focusing at all. I could just about make out the banding with the 10mm eyepiece but the barlow reduced it to a fuzzy yellow ball. It was fairly low down on the horizon so could this be due to poor atmospheric conditions? I ha

After months of interested reading about astronomy I have settled on the Skywatcher Heritage 130p Flextube as my first scope due to its simplicity, portability and cheap price. However I still have a couple of questions about using this scope and astronomy in general. 1) Collimation is obviously important and it may need collimating out of the box, how do I go about this for a dobsonian telescope? 2) I've read when tracking planets they move across the FOV and you need (in the case of the Heritage) to manually track it, would this not be the case for every object viewed as the earth rotates? 3