6mm Radian

[Charon]

Will I be 'pushing' my luck ordering one of these? It will give me 338, I am just not sure whether I will get the right conditions to use it often enough to warrant the purchase, or should I go with the 10mm and try my luck with my 2x Powermate?

[dweller25]

How good are your sky conditions ?

In the UK x250 to x300 is the max most of the time.

[gooseholla]

I've never got on well with a 6mm or smaller on most nights in the UK. 6mm for my scopes gives 166x and 172x respectively. My 4 and 3.6 give too much (Nearer your figure quoted above), in my view, and are useless on all but a few rare occassions.

[ollypenrice]

Double star observers sometimes go for very high mag because they don't want 'quality', they want a split. I think that 338x would be crazy if you are simply going for a good view. I often have great seeing, at altitude, towards the wee hours and I stick to less than 300 nearly all the time. Less is more, very often.

Olly

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

For Mars you can push the C8 quite high. I have used 406x on occasion (Radian 10mm and Barlow 2x). I use 7mm (290x, Meade UWA 14mm and Barlow 2x) on nights of good seeing but more often use the 8mm Radian for 254x or more recently Pentax XF 8.5mm for 239x.

Much also depends on your own visual acuity, and your patience at the eyepiece. You have to wait for moments of good seeing at that kind of magnification

[swamp thing]

Personally. I would finish your T4 collection with the 12mm. This works extremely well with the Powermate. I know as this is how I get a 6mm Nagler.

The 12mm T4 stands up very well on its own to.

It's much easier spending someone else's money though.

Regards Steve

[Charon]

Thank you all very much for your help. Steve, I am on the look out for a second hand 12mm T4 but they are so rare.