Barlow advice please

[Gina]

I have an Evostar 80 ED DS Pro scope and would appreciate recommendations for a decent quality Barlow for planetary imaging. I could go up to £100 or possibly a bit more if that gets me significantly better quality.

Thank you

[Merlin66]

Gina,

I use the ED80 for solar imaging and find the most used item is the TV x2.5 Powermate. This gives just under f20 which I find is around my limit during the day.

A Klee x2.8 barlow is the next in line......the x5 TV I think has been out the box once in the last three years!

[jgs001]

Gina, the Celestron Ultima 2x is a very nice bit of kit. You can push it to higher magnification by putting extention tubes between the camera and barlow also, giving you 3x or 4x should the conditions actually allow. I've got a revelation x5 barlow, but it's only been used a couple of times.

[26Left]

I also use the TV x2.5 Powermate for imaging and it works very well for me. I have also used the TC x3 Barlow. In some ways, Barlows are better (IMO), because you can control the magnification by increasing the distance to the camera sensor using extension tubes. The TV barlows also have less glass, which is probably a good thing.

You're going to get quite small images with the ED80, but I have no doubt that the detail will be supurb. I have used an ED100 (and a x2.5 Powermate) for planetary imaging in the past with great results.

Tom.

[Gina]

Thank you for your replies

I have a Revelation Astro 2.5x Barlow which I tried last night with the moon and my DSLR giving a nearly full frame image. I was not impressed I have to say. They say it's an apochromatic lens of quality matching much higher priced optics (or words to that effect). The quality nowhere near does justice to the scope.