Splodger

Surprised to hear. It seems pretty accurate where I am in the US. Have just found a very good iOS app - Xasteria+. It accesses a variety of different sources of use to astronomers - 7Timer, Dark Sky, Meteo Blue, Clear Outside, windy.com, Sat24 and two others which are only of relevance to those living in the US. It’s only $0.99 here and I don’t know if there’s an Android app. Definitely worth a look

Having been bought by Apple, Dark Sky and the API are going to be killed off by the end of the year. Considering that Clear Outside uses the Dark Sky API, will it also bite the dust? I sincerely hope not but I think so. If so, will FLO put their muscle behind another app? We all know Clear Outside is not perfect but I think it’s the best app we have.

A little disappointing I must say. But at least 40° on my scope encompasses my major point of focus

Interesting. I had a hunt around and found that about half of the sites selling, or were selling as they are all sold out, the eyepiece have it at 52° and the other half, including meade.com, at 44°. Perhaps I bought it a telescope.com https://tinyurl.com/meade-40mm who are marketing it at 52°. Anyway Ive been bamboozled one way or another.

I'm with you. The Meade eyepiece I have is about as wide field as I can hope to get without spending a lot of money. At 40mm with 52° it's not at all bad.

I've had a quick look and the VB and the aperture for the diagonal are both 1.25" as far as i can tell. I think I would be getting to the point of diminishing returns if I were to go down the route of converting it. Someday soonish I may have a larger scope and I think I'd be better off spending money on that. It's very good to understand all this though. It will definitely my purchasing decisions going forward.

I thought I could use a 2” to 1.25” adapter

Thank you. Seems just about perfect.

Hi all, As the title suggests I would like to get my hands on a low power wide angle/field eyepiece for my Mac. It's a Meade LX85 150mm - 1800mm FL f/12. I knew when I bought the scope that it would have a narrow FOV, but I would like to at least get The Seven Sisters and Andromeda in the FOV. Also, I don't want to spend a great deal of money. 1.25" would be ideal, but I could keep a 1.25" to 2" adaptor attached to the eyepiece. I've never used an adaptor before and am also wondering if it would affect the FOV. Any suggestions? The images attached show the FOV of my scope with my 40mm 52° Meade Super Plossl and a Celestron Omni 56mm which has a FOV of 47°. I don't own the Omni, it's just the best option I could track down.

That brings to mine another question regarding Wide Field Low Power eyepieces but I think a new topic is in order - Low Power Wide Angle Inexpensive Eyepiece for my Mak? Ha! I should be so lucky!

I was thinking along those lines. More time at the eyepiece. Also I’m a bit clumsy. The less swapping out I have to do the better

I have a Meade LX85 150mm Mak. As mentioned above, the only time I have been able to get very high magnification was with a friends ES 5.5mm splitting doubles. Doing my maths now I can see that I wasn’t even close to 375x, but it wasn’t particularly difficult to focus and see differences of colour with that gear. The highest magnification combination that I have had with my own equipment is 200x. That with my 18mm Meade and 2x Barlow. The new eyepiece is a Baader 8-24mm zoom. I ordered it with a 2.25x Barlow. It so happens that I’m sending the kit back to B&H today and replacing it with the eyepiece alone as I have the 2x already. My thinking was that with that eyepiece and Barlow I could get much greater magnifications. I see now my expectations were unrealistic. Even so, extrapolating from what I have read above, the 8-24 zoom and Barlow combination will allow me the greatest magnification I can realistically achieve under any viable seeing conditions. I’m pleased with that. And pleased that After reading the comments above I won’t be disappointed at the eyepiece.

Hi, the theoretical max magnification for my scope according to astronomytools.com is 375x - 150 x 2.5. I’ve surpassed that on a few occasions but only with very good seeing. I’ve just got a new zoom eyepiece which together with a Barlow will easily allow much higher magnification. When the skies up here in Oregon eventually clear I’ll be out observing the moon. Will I be able to achieve greater magnification while observing the moon? Does it make any difference that the moon is only a hop, skip and a jump away? Thanks

Thanks Don. I think I’ll send the kit back to B&H and order the zoom by itself.

Hi there. I have just purchased both the zoom and the Barlow. Baader claim that the Barlow is matched to the zoom and will give better performance than the BHZ with another Barlow - in my case a 2x Tele Vue. Please bear in mind that I cannot test this out myself as I live in Portland, OR and the 10 day forecast is for rain. I am considering returning the barlow and just sticking with the Tele Vue if there is no performance benefit over the Tele Vue. Also i'm concerned that it's going to be a bit fiddly unscrewing the Barlow in the dark. Any thoughts?

If you on a really tight budget and just want finer control try The Poor Man’s Dual Speed Focuser - A Clothes Peg! Seriously, it works a treat. Just clip it onto the knob at 90° et voila! Fine adjustment at your fingertips. It works for me 😃

Perfect! Thank you 🙂

Does Focal Ratio affect brightness or is it all about field of view. Will an f/5 scope show the Andromeda galaxy more brightly in the eyepiece than an f/12 scope, or is it just about fitting Andromeda in there and seeing more of the sky? Also does the Focal Ratio of a scope have any effect on the amount or length of exposures taken in astrophotography? Thanks.