Ruud

I don't wear glasses. I use my M6.5 with the extension ring and the eye cup. That make eye placement is easy. As the eye cup lightly touches my brow I have tactile feedback which helps me keep my head in the right spot without effort. The risk of blackouts occurring is bigger at daytime because when the observer's pupil is small, but even with a daytime pupil I have no problems with this eyepiece. Is this the first time that you use an eyepiece with a big eye relief? It may be that you just need to get used to it. When you wear glasses there is no contact between brow and eye cup. I suppose that complicates eye placement somewhat.

Baader seemed completely in the dark about when the 17.5 mm would become available. And when it did, and the eye cup had been changed, they could deliver the new eye cup as a retrofit to older Morphs (at cost), but a new dust cap to fit the new eye cup they could not get their hands on. My guess is that the eyepiece is Chinese, except maybe for the designs of the waffle grip and barrel kerfs, and the pouches (which look suspiciously smart on lederhosen). I got angry with them, btw, when they notified me that they could not "deliver the new dust caps to [my] country". I'm in the country next door to them! They couldn't say of course that only the manufacturer had access to the dust caps.

Awesome!

We like you already

It has been a while, but now you're back. That's good.

Hi, Gary. Let us know when you're ready to spend more money! We're here to help you.

That's lovely.

If you don't mind (too) short eye relief you could go for this. I tried one and wasn't satisfied: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/explore-scientific-eyepieces/explore-scientific-82-degree-series-eyepieces.html If 16 mm is also good, get the Nirvana: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ovl-eyepieces/ovl-nirvana-es-uwa-82-ultrawide-eyepieces.html Celestron is cheap but needs a slow scope (f/10) to shine. Yours is f/8. You may want to talk to people who have experience with the Celestron on f/8. Anyway, it's here and the choice is 10 or 15 mm: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-eyepieces/celestron-luminos-eyepieces.html Please note, with 82° eyepieces you may see some coma in a Newtonian telescope.

A wonderful view!

Abbe orthos are a good design but they have little eye relief: 0.87 times the focal length. A 9 mm Abbe Ortho has 7.8 mm eye relief. The field of view is around 43°. Abbe was a revolutionary optician, but after a 140 years of subsequent developments his orthoscopic eyepiece is a bit outdated.

If you're around or over 60 or have a light polluted sky, an exit pupil of about 5 mm is preferable over one of 7 mm. My 8x42's are better than my 7x50 porros: smaller and lighter, optically as good, ergonomically better: easier to pack and easier to hold still (though for looking up I prefer some form of support). I have the 8x42 Bresser Everest ED with roof prisms, phase coating and ED glass (€325 when I got them). Should you go for roof prisms, make sure that have phase coating and ED glass. Over 42 mm roof prism binoculars can have poor edge performance. If you go for large, porro is a better idea. Identical to the Bresser Everest ED are the Celestron Granite binoculars. Both have gone up in price, making Nikon Monarch 7 8x42s a better deal (starting at €450). I looked through them once and as far as I can tell, the Monarch 7 also have a well corrected wide field, crisp views and equally good edge performance as the Granite and Everest. There are also a few 8x42 porro prism models. Check what bird sites have to say about what's available these days. Since porross don't need phase coating and have simpler construction, they should be less expensive than roofs of the same quality.

A 650 mm focal length f/5 telescope. Good eyepieces. I'll go for really good: Morpheus 6.5 mm will magnify 100 times (approx €250) Morpheus 4.5 mm 144 times (approx €250) Morpheus 6.5 mm + 2x barlow 200 times (slightly over €300) Delite 4mm 163 times (approx €290) It's difficult. The Morpheus have a 76° field of view, the Delite 62°. Both lines are very good and certainly spectacle friendly. The Morpheus are on the big side and are bigger still combined with a Barlow. The Morpheus are better value. The Barlow can also convert your 25 mm into a 12.5 mm. The 6.5 mm + Barlow would give you a choice of two magnifications. A hundred times is fine for most nights, but the atmosphere doesn't allow for 200x every day. With your budget I would choose a good Barlow and a Morpheus 6.5 There are many good Barlows around! You can certainly get a good one at around €60, but I don't know which is the best at that price. By the way, we all have different ideas about what is good. It depends on how spoiled we are. Coming from kit eyepieces you will certainly find the BST Starguiders good. Compared to Delos, Delight, Pentax XW and Morpheus however the BSTs are no more than fair. And then, if you consider that you can get 5 Starguiders for your budget ... but how are they when someone must wear glasses?

Hi Jim, welcome. Astrobackyard posted three videos on this little scope. Together they are a good introduction.

I recently found out that Google Earth (the program) has some magnificent maps of the Moon and Mars. Use View-->explore to find them. There are several ways to view the Moon. This historic map is may favourite. To the left you see the settings that will show it:

Hi Dave, That's a nice camera and lenses! Can I have them? Just kidding. We have lots of knowledgeable astrophotographers who will certainly help you take some magnificent pictures of the sky.

Oh I missed the word cap. I found end caps 2" in a box with used stuff at a local store. They also had new ones made of bright yellow very pliable plastic. Much like these: https://eyepiececaps.com/caps-for-eyepieces-5-or-10-packs/ I didn't get the yellow ones. The originally black used ones were grey with age but still looked better.

2" is not better than 1.25", just like size 9 shoes aren't better than size 8. For eyepieces it has to do with the size of the field stop. This has to to fit in the barrel. The focal length and apparent field determine the size of the field stop. Combinations above the blue line in the graph won't fit in a 1.25" barrel. Fore instance, a 50mm 50° eyepiece will not fit in a 1.25" barrel.

The 6SE has a focal length of 1500 mm. With your 25mm eyepiece you get a magnification of 1500 / 25 = 60 times. The calculation also works the other way around: if you want 100 times magnification, you need an eyepiece with a focal length of 1500 / 100 = 15 mm. For planets on a good night you can go up to 200 times (it depends on if the atmosphere is stable enough). An 8mm eyepiece magnifies 1500 / 8 = 187.5 times. (FLO has the the BST StarGuider 60º 8mm ED Eyepiece for £47, a good choice if you're on a budget.)

Even without charcoal you certainly have some nice looking shadows there. It's marvellous all over. Congrats on yet another big success!

+1 for Astronomy from OpenStax. Thirty chapters, over1200 pages. This is a comprehensive educational textbook. Introductory level. Here is a direct link yo the book: https://d3bxy9euw4e147.cloudfront.net/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/Astronomy-OP_oV0J80E.pdf (right-click and choose 'save linked content as...')

Here's a tip for once you know your horizon. You can do some nice calculations. This is Stellarium. The atmosphere is turned off and the Astronomical calculations is open (F10). Mars is selected and both it and the Sun are graphed for altitudes above 0°. For 23 June 2020, the graph suggests the best time to try for Mars would be around 4 AM, with Mars 20° above the horizon in the SE and the Sun still under the horizon. With Astronomical calculations you can discovered some amazing things. For instance with the Phenomena tab: Jupiter and Saturn will be extremely close together on December 21st 2020. Unfortunately they'll be quite close to the Sun as well: at sunset the pair is only 14° above the SW horizon. (All this is for my location.) In a telescope it will look like this: The blue segment is from Stellarium's Angle Measurement plug-in. The separation is about 7 arc minutes. That's a quarter the size of the Moon. The manual for Stellarium is in the folder ...\Program Files\Stellarium\guide (windows). There you can read what Astronomical Calculations can do and how the Angle Measurement plug-in works. Also try the plugin Observability Analysis. Clear nights.

Leica Zoom eyepiece Vario 8.9 - 17.8 mm ASPH. - 1.25" It's a good one and it's versatile.

Oops, it's a pupil guide.

I'm with Stu, the question about eye lens size was answered already. The rest is a bonus. Much was clarified and I got to see my first pupil guard.

Hi Louis. It's a late answer, sorry for that: I was mostly responding to John who was wondering if an exit pupil could be wider than the eye lens. But yes, Andrew's argument makes a lot of sense. A circular mask right on top of the eye lens could entirely obscure peripheral beams, and partially obscure beams closer in, thus obscuring some and dimming other edge beams, narrowing the afov and vignetting the view. A guide ring like the one that Don showed is intended for use near the exit pupil and is wide enough to allow all beams through. It's an aid for finding the exit pupil.