Which Barlow?

[DaveGarland]

I wonder who could help me? I'm ordering a Skywatcher 200p tomorrow and would like to know what advice you good people could give me. I want a good barlow for use with a Phillips SPC880 for planetary imaging. I'll be quite happy tinkering with my new scope for a few weeks so I'm not in any particular rush. I'm more interested in good advice.

Thanks for any help.

Dave.

[LeeG]

Hi ive just got for my sky watcher 200pds, only managed one night with it so far as clouds covering the sky. After doing quite abit of research i found out that the 'Tal' Barlows are very good for the money, you should pick one up around 30-40. I ordered mine yday so unable to say what its like yet, not like i have much experience in testing them anyway lol. Is that camera your using a webcam? After one myself but abit lost....

[DaveGarland]

Yup, I'm very happy with it. You can see a picture of Jupiter on one of my posts that I took with it. That was taken with just a 130 though that doesn't even have motor tracking so I'm hoping to improve things quite a bit with my new scope. And new barlow of course

[runoffshed]

I bought a 2x Celestron Ultima from the Buy/Sell section last year for £60 and am very pleased indeed with the quality. I would have liked the Televue 2.5x as I could have done with a little more focal length for image scale but they tend to go for £100 plus. They have a great reputation, though. Using the Ultima to image with my Vixen refractor gives F20 / 2000mm effective fl which I think should be ok for Jupiter/Saturn etc...(I'm new to imaging). However, still found it mighty difficult to get an image on my Phillips SPC880 - and keep it there - as the tripod on my old Vixen GP mount is so wobbly.

Good luck!

[Gina]

You definitely need a better mount (and plenty of funds to buy it with!).

[runoffshed]

You definitely need a better mount (and plenty of funds to buy it with!).

You're right ....although the head is pretty good. It's just the terrible aluminium tripod that came with it. Members on SGL have posted fabulous wooden tripods they have made to improve their mounts and this is, yet another, project to be started!

(Apologies ...not trying to hijack thread)

Anyway, Celestron Ultima .... very good indeed

[Gina]

I went a bit further than that Concrete pier complete with a home built observatory round it