big let down looking at mars? me or my scope i wonder?

[Charon]

Looked at Mars 2-3 nights ago with only my poor 56 yr old eyes, was an amazing sight. Cannot wait to try my scope on it.

[661-pete]

Just done a bit of checking on your equipment Rich.

Your 50az has a focal length of 600mm, so with the 12.5 mm eyepiece alone, you'll get magnification of 600/12.5 or about 48x which is probably as good as you can expect.

There is a practicable limit on the magnification you can get from any scope, this is about 50 times the objective size in inches. Beyond that mag., you won't see any more detail, only blur in a larger size!

So with your 2-inch objective, the best you can hope for is 100x which is what you'll get with a 6mm eyepiece (or 18mm with 3x barlow). Your 20mm with the barlow would get you approximately that, but there is no point in using the 4mm eyepiece - you shouldn't really have been sold that with the 'scope. Also you won't have any joy with the 12.5mm eyepiece with the barlow. To be honest, you'd have fared better with a 2x barlow, to use with the 12.5mm, rather than a 3x to use with the 20mm. 2x barlows generally give a superior image quality to 3x's - so I'm told (I've never tried a 3x myself).

Sorry if this is casting a damper on your enthusiasm! My suggestion is, leave the planets for the time being and look for deep sky objects, using the 20mm and 12.5mm e/p's. M42 the Orion nebula is a good target to start with, if you are in a reasonably dark sky place you'll see lots! And the four big clusters in Auriga and Gemini: M35 to M38. The Pleiades M45 will be a bit big to get in all at once, but have a go at it all the same. And M44 the Beehive.

Good luck with your future viewing!