Moving on from Sw eyepeices

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

after the letdown of first light last night with my niece on jupiter, i think it is time to bin the cheap skywatcher eyepieces and find something better. i have had a good look and like telescopes the choice is huge.

i have been looking around and have a price range from around £30 to £40 for each eyepiece. but i cannot decided between the meade series.

meade 4000

meade 5000.

would you say the above will be a better view than my sw ep's. i will also be using them with a heritage 76mm F300 , a sw 114mm F1000 catadioptric and a sw 200p.

What will be best starter sizes be 25mm and 10mm or something inbetween. i am worried about spending this much on an eyepiece to get a view just as bad as the SW el cheapo ep's.

could you guys and girls push me in the right direction please and thank you

[Carbon Brush]

Big subject eyepieces. Also very much personal choice.

A couple of pointers or ideas though.

Do you wear specs? If so long eye relief is important.

Thinking about your SW200P (cos I have one) cheapie EPs can be a bit bluurry at the edges. A quality long FL with 68ish deg FOV will give you 'spacewalk' views.

A short FL (planetary) EP with narrower FL will give good Jupiter type views.

The stock 25mm with my SW200 gives pleasing results. The 10mm is a posh dust plug.

I have used various Meade 4000. They OK but not sparkling. Even seen astig in some long FL varieties. If your budget will take it, look for better.

Never used a Meade 5000.

Hope this gets the ball rolling.

David.

[kniclander]

I'm selling a couple of meade 4000s on ebay (6.4mm and 12.4mm). IMHO the difference between e/ps tends to be fairly subtle although I would think you would notice an improvement between the skywatcher 10mm e/p and the meade 12.4 and moreso between a barlowed skywatcher 10mm e/p and a meade 6.4. What realy helps with jupiter is lookig at it when its high in the sky, not over-doing the mag and looking at it for a long long time

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

thank you david

no specs but viewing eye is a tad on the lazy side, but a wide view would be more comfy with a lazy eye, less straining for me.

my 25mm with a cheap barlow becomes a long dust cover, on its own in the 76mm it is ok'ish. the 10mm i shoved in and took it right out again on the 114, replaced it with the 25mm and barlow. we had bright blob jupiter views, but the moons became more like pinpoint stars.

the choice is huge but anything that is 5x better than the sw eyepieces will be great anything 7x better would be a big bonus for me and the niece, i want her to see nice views of jupiter with atleast some color/banding and not a big bright blob and the same for me to.

[E621Keith]

For a budget of £40 and if you need good eye relief, you should consider the BST explorer or the TMB planetary clone.

1.25" Eyepieces

[Carbon Brush]

Keith's suggestions are good. A lot of people recommend these eyepieces.

I think if you talk nicely to Sky's The Limit, they may offer you a sale or return.

Certainly they used to do this.

Provided the SW200 size doesn't cause carrying and setup issues, I suspect your other scopes will see much less use once you get a half decent eyepiece on the SW200.

From my SW200 use. The EPs shown will be good in the 8/10mm range for high magnification. I would think about something about 25 or 32mm with a wider (68deg?) FOV for a 'wow' view. Though a narrower FOV will still give good results at lower cost.

On most nights, I find the atmosphere, rather than the optics, is the limiting factor on my SW200. so it is worthy of good EPs.

Don't forget that eyepiece choice is very personal. What suits me may not suit you. One reason there are so many types on offer. Also, you can sell on unwanted EPs at not too much loss.

David.

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

i am afraid i cannot purchase from online.

my choices are skywatcher or meade from warehouse express.

have decided to try both the meade 4000 and meade 5000 series. am unsure of size, so was thinking something close to my sw ep's.

i am having a heart op this week so going to get them tomorrow, decided going with a 20mm and something like a 8-12mm.

also a cheap Tal moon filter if possible.

[Catweazel]

For a budget of £40 and if you need good eye relief, you should consider the BST explorer or the TMB planetary clone.

1.25" Eyepieces

hi Keith, will these be a lot better than the Skywatchers that come with scopes then?

[John]

hi Keith, will these be a lot better than the Skywatchers that come with scopes then?

To put them into context, the eyepieces supplied with scopes (not just Skywatchers) are generally worth around £5-£10 each. The exception is the Orion (USA) scopes where they supply a couple decent plossls. The Orion scopes are more expensive than the same scopes with the Skywatcher branding on them - about 2 plossls more expensive !.

The BST Explorers and the TMB Planetary clones are a lot better than the eyepieces usually supplied with scopes.

[Catweazel]

The BST Explorers and the TMB Planetary clones are a lot better than the eyepieces usually supplied with scopes.

Thanks John

I might look into an 8mm BST or TMB then. I also have a 32mm GSO Plossl that I bought for DSO's, so hopefully that will show better quality than the free ones as well.

[John]

The 32mm GSO plossls are very nice eyepieces - I think you will really enjoy using it. They are good for viewing the larger DSO's and scanning starfields but also for actually finding the smaller DSO's before applying a bit more magnification to them.

[E621Keith]

hi Keith, will these be a lot better than the Skywatchers that come with scopes then?

I haven't use BST, but I have used the old Celestron x-cel. The x-cel was not a very good but it was much better than the stock Kellners eyepieces that came with my 120 achro. The Kellners on that scope was better than the ones that came with my club's Celestron 127SLT.

I don't know what eyepieces Skywatcher supplies with their scope and it's probably dependent on model, but my guess is the BST would be much better.

The 25mm E-lux plossl that came with my C6 was ok and served as my finder eyepiece until recently, in fact I liked it more than my 32mm Meade S4K plossl for that purpose. The ones that came with the SLT was very poor. On the other hand, top of the line EdgeHD models comes with Axiom, which will be better than most eyepiece you can get for under £100.