Stuu

4 hours ago, Starwatcher2001 said:

I have the XW 10 and it's one of my favourite eyepieces: good field of view and sharp. It's a very comfortable eyepiece to use with glasses, having a 20mm eye-relief. But it's equally comfortable without glasses as the eyepiece screws upwards. The XW range are expensive (to me), but are worth every penny and with care will last a lifetime. I plan to get more as finance allows.

The comfort part is a big draw as I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time peering through this one. I can manage without glasses but I don't think that will last for ever, unlike the eyepiece hopefully Well worth working the odd weekend to save up for!

21 minutes ago, John said:

I have the XW 10, 7, 5 and 3.5mm. They are all excellent. The 5mm would give you 150x which would be a very useful higher power.

 

 

They definitely do well in all the  reviews I've read. I really like my ES68° but the delivery time on any of the ES stuff is not good at the moment. The 10 will hopefully give me a good DSO eyepiece as well after some feedback on a previous post.

I did look at the Delos but it's quite a jump in price, I think I'm leaning towards the XW 10. 

Having only got into this last year I don't know any different with them being low in the sky, I'm lucky that I can get a good view of them where they are at the moment. The clarity of them last night blew me away! I hadn't seen them since last year with my 90mm achro where Jupiter was just a bright white disc. Just need the weather to sort itself of out now! 

It's a tough choice between the DeLite and XW, just need to book some weekend overtime in to fund it 😆 Thanks for your input. 

I managed to get some amazing views of Saturn and Jupiter through the powermate and 16mm. It's the first time I've seen Jupiter's cloud belts, absolutely stunning! It gave me a chance to have a play with some filters as well. The 3.2mm wasn't the sharpest of views but still fun to see at that sort of magnification. 

I was looking at that sort of focal length originally, it was between the 11mm DeLite, 10mm XW and 9mm Morpheus. But wasn't sure if I'm better off using something in that range with the powermate or just a shorter focal length. 

x 2.5 PM, ES 68° 16mm, Panoptic 24mm, Starguider 3.2mm. 

Thanks for all the input everyone. I'm hoping the clouds stay away long enough tonight to get a look at Jupiter and Saturn, so with a bit of luck I could have a better idea of what to go for. With my 3 eyepieces and powermate I have a gap in my collection between x117 and 234, so I think something around 4-5mm might be good. I looked at a couple of zooms but I'm finding I like a fairly wide afov. Fingers crossed for the weather for anyone still up and outside!

Hi everyone. 

I'm on the hunt for an eyepiece for my new OTA that will suit viewing planets, mainly Jupiter and Saturn. I have an F5 150/750 Newtonian. I've got a 3.2mm Starguider but after reading several threads, x234 magnification sounds like it's stretched the limit of average viewing conditions in the UK. I've not had the chance to see for myself yet but in the meantime, does anyone have any experience with the same sort of setup? I was thinking of aiming for around x170 - 180 if the Starguider doesn't work out.

On 27/06/2021 at 18:44, Pixies said:

Re the  exit pupil. What's the focal ratio of your scope? You calculate the exit pupil as eyepiece focal length / scope focal ratio.

For example, in my F6 dob, a 12mm eyepiece gives a (12/6) 2mm exit pupil. Some say that perceived contrast is best with an exit pupil around 1mm-2mm. I tend to agree. 8mm - 12mm eyepieces seem best for a lot of faint DSOs in this scope for me.

Here's a good thread if you have a couple of spare hours:

 

It's an F5 (150/750). I currently have 3.2mm, 16mm and 24mm. I've been considering a 10mm to give me a nice range , so that would give me 2mm exit pupil.

11 minutes ago, Tiny Clanger said:

Bortle 5 is what clear outside reckons I'm dealing with too, and I have a 150mm heritage dob. , so very  similar circumstances.

The key criteria for observing DSOs for me are :

Is the Moon up ? If yes don't bother, look at the Moon instead. 

Is the target in a 'good' bit of sky from my back garden ( there's a patch to the south west where light pollution is far worse) , if not, wait until it is.

Is the target above at least 30 degrees altitude ? If not wait ...

Also, my neighbours stop lighting up their conservatories like flippin' lighthouses around 11:30 pm, and the local council turns off every other street light at midnight, so after that's when it is a bit darker and better.

This time of year isn't great, it is never truly, properly dark , but at least it's relatively warm for faffing about outside , and you can still see some good stuff : on the last clear night I got my first ever sight of the Dumbell Nebula with the little dob and a UHC filter.

A weird looking but quite effective trick is to drape a towel or similar (preferably dark coloured ) over your head and the eyepiece to cut out some ambient light, like a photographer in a historical drama ... also worth having a dew shield on the newtonian, not so much for dew as to reduce that ambient light a bit more , just like a lens hood on a camera.

Worth finding out about exit pupil and eyepiece selection too. In my f5 dob, an 18mm eyepiece turned out from experience to be the ideal one for me to use to see faint fuzzies against my not very dark suburban sky . The discussion on here about choosing eyepieces by exit pupil showed me why ! 🙂

Heather

I have a fairly decent patch of sky from South to West with less light pollution than the rest of it so that's usually where I look for lower altitude objects. The towel and dew shield sound like a good idea, I'll give them a go. My main eyepieces are 68° 16mm and 24mm. I don't really know anything about exit pupil so I'll investigate further. 

9 minutes ago, Spile said:

Turn Left at Orion is my default list but I use others too and Tiny Clangers link to the Loughton List looks great. In addition, you'll see pots on here or Cloudy Nights recommending a target and sometimes ,I'll just give it a go! As for the planning away from the eyepiece, the downloadable version of Stellarium is indispensable for me especially for creating screen shots.

Up to now I haven't really been doing much planning, just seeing what's about while I'm in the garden. I'll definitely start being a bit more organized before I start, I don't know why I didn't think of doing screen shots! 

If i set the Bortle to 5 on Stellarium it's fairly accurate at the moment but on a moonless winter night I set it to 4 which seems about right. I've only just got the 6" scope after using a 90mm refractor so can't wait for winter to roll round again! I do have a neodymium and UHC filter but haven't had much opportunity to use them yet. I was amazed what a difference dark adaption makes, I just need to work out a way to stop my neighbor's security light coming on every time a moth gets within range of it!

Thank you, that's plenty of information to be getting stuck into! The Bortle rating is 5 and I'm using a 6" Newtonian. As I'm using a manual alt-azimuth mount until I can save up for something more advanced, it'll be good to have an idea what's going to be visible while I'm learning my way round the night sky. 

Hi all. Most cloudy this weekend so no telescope fun :( But I was wondering if there is anything that I can use on a clear night to tell me what DSOs would be within reach that takes my location/Bortle rating and equipment into account. 

Ok cool, thank you both. I have a Bahtinov waiting to go on a new OTA I have on back order. But in the meantime I'll give the zooming a go. 

Thanks for the quick reply. I've just been focusing on the PC screen as best I can. 

Hi folks. I hope everyone is well. I've absorbed plenty of information from these forums so far but it's time to ask a question myself. I have a Bresser Mikrokular camera that I bought as an introduction to imaging, so I could have a go using software and processing before spending some more serious cash. So far I've had better results holding my phone over the eyepiece. I know it's far from the best camera but I'd like to get as much out of it as possible. I've just been dropping it into the focuser like an eyepiece but was wondering if there's a better way to use it. The adaptor it sits in has a female 1.25" thread, can that be attached to anything useful?