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Hello and I hope I did the right thing!

AndrewDT

By AndrewDT
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AndrewDT

AndrewDT

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UPDATE

I finally got home at 10.30 last night just as the clouds were arriving but I thought I would give it a go. I spent half an hour trying to align the scope which was very difficult as, by this time, there was a lot of cloud cover.

I couldn't input my Lat/Long fir some reason so I chose nearest city and finally, I managed to find thee objects and it said the alignment was complete.

About the only object I could see with the naked eye by this time was Jupiter so I punched in Jupiter on the controller and the scope slewed around 180 degrees in the wrong direction!! No idea why.

I didn't think I had too much time left before full cloud, rather than trying to re-align, I just picked it up and turned the whole tripod and managed about a 10 second view of Jupiter before the clouds came over for the night. Very disappointing!.

However, I did see Jupiter with much more clarity than my camera but I was surprised by how really really REALLY! tiny it was, just a couple of mm across.

Of course, I realise I was just using the 25mm eyepiece so I suppose with the 9mm it would have been bigger?

I guess this is why I need to understand eyepiece magnification, Barlows etc but I've spotted a few articles I should read so hopefully I'll figure it out. I'm confused at the moment about these and whether to buy one of those aluminium suitcases full of eyepieces and filters which are around £160 or a Baader Hyperion that Lee in the store recommended at £90 each? I really have no idea so any advice appreciated and I'll go and read the posts.

Slowly slowly etc...

A.

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AndrewDT

AndrewDT

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WOW Thanks ALan_B the field of view calculator is amazing. So, if I wanted ONLY to look at Jupiter then why wouldn't I go and buy a Barlow x4 and a 2.3mm Celestron eyepiece and fill my viewfinder? Am I missing something? Why would I buy the Baader eyepiece rather than the Celestron at 1/3rd the price ? I understand there must be a quality difference but would I really notice it as a beginner? Is it like hi-fi speakers where it's subjective after a point?

It still seems like I should buy the case with 5 eyepices and a Barlow or two and then I have every possibility covered.

I'm sure I'm wrong but please tell me why...... Such a lot to learn!

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Alan_B

Alan_B

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Hi - you will note I said "size", the image quality will suffer the greater the magnification and isn't represented by the FOV calculator. The size of aperture and "seeing" will greatly affect the quality of the image the rule of thumb is 50 x mag per inch of aperture for perfect skies.

So 8 incn aperture would be capable of usable 400 times magnification on top of a Chilean mountain . In the UK we are not so blessed.

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Alan_B

Alan_B

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I see from your post you have a Nexstar 127 SLT . that has a focal length of 1500mm

To work out magnification you need to divide this by the Eyepiece length

So 1500 / 2.3 = 652x mag - Not usable - add a 4 x barlow and your talking 2,608x mag DEFINETLY NOT usable

The highest usable mag. depends a great deal on the "seeing" - try 200x and see if the image is clear as a starting point

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red dwalf

red dwalf

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welcome Andrew,

it`s a big learning curve when starting out, but you 127 mak should be good for planets, and i`ve seen some amazing webcam images of Jupiter on this forum of people using your set up,

as for new eyepieces, it`s a mine field, i have a set of revelations and find them good quality for the price and one 21mm hyperion which i use the most when viewing using my 8 inch sct scope, but at £90 each you don`t need many, the revelation set is about £130 for a set.

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