Nexstar 6SE

[Westgaterose]

Hi there

I was given this telescope for my birthday, and reading some of the other posts on this telescope has been very helpful. But I wonder if anyone can give me a rough guide on the eyepieces/lenses. I was also given a case with several different lenses but I haven't a clue which lens to use on which object. I could, of course, go through every lens every time I look at something but that seems rather onerous, especially in this weather!

Many thanks

[King of Eton]

Hello, I've not long purchased one of these myself and it sounds like you have the celestron eyepiece kit with the filters etc. In short lower mm eyepiece higher magnification. Drawback of higher mag, need good seeing conditions and in my short experience harder to focus. This will be obvious as you try them. So far I've found 25mm and 17mm good for the moon and Jupiter.

Good luck and have fun trying them out. It's not as bad as it sounds.

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[rowan46]

welcome to sgl. What a nice present. There is an eyepiece sticky somewhere. but the gist of it is. the wider the objective the less it magnifies and the wider the field of view. smaller eyepieces magnify more and are used on bright objects <10 can only be used effectively on planets and double stars 10-17good for tight clusters. 17-25 are my general use eyepieces and 25+ better for galaxies open clusters and very dim oblects lijke nebulas. of course these are general rules because the quality of the eyepiece. the apparture and focal length also have an effect. I have a nexstar 5 and find that a 5mm can only be used on a night with very good seeing. I hope that helps I think I have it right but I am sure someone will put us straight if I am not.

[Demonperformer]

That is a great scope ... I had one for a couple of years before recently upgrading to its big brother (an 8SE).

Although there are general rules, individual seeing conditions are such an important factor that it is very much a case of start with a guesstimate, if you are getting good views, move to a shorter focal length and try that. If the view is not as good, go back. That way you arrive at the highest magnification that suits the object and conditions.

[matsey]

Yep, I've got one too, it's a great scope

Definitely agree that being able to use higher mags will very much depend on the seeing conditions. But as a general rule of thumb, I've found that I can normally use my 7mm piece on the planets (the moon particularly shows amazing detail at high mag, jupiter most of the time but if seeing is particularly bad then it does struggle a bit) and also for splitting closer doubles, the 16mm for deep sky - clusters, nebulas and galaxies (though in my LP area and with the aperture I have, I do struggle to see most galaxies), and the 24mm for wider field objects, larger star clusters and pretty star fields. I also use the 24mm as the initial finder eyepiece, along with a 9mm piece with illuminated cross-hairs that's really useful for accurately centring the alignment stars at the beginning of a session.

Certainly nothing wrong though in trying out the different mags on an object.. that's pretty much what I did with the eyepiece kit when I first got my scope and was a great way of learning what eyepieces work best in various situations. So then if (when!) you want to start upgrading some of the eyepieces, you know which ones you use the most, and you can upgrade those first.

Matsey

[Westgaterose]

Thank you everyone. That's very helpful. When the clouds go away I shall play!

[LukeSkywatcher]

It really is all about trying each EP on different objects until you arrive at a view that you are happy with. The views will change though from night to night depending on the conditions of the sky "seeing". So something that works one night might not be so good the next night.