New Member

[TREJ]

Hello All,

A very new member here; I have enjoyed the postings,for a while.

I used to be an occasional skywatcher 35-40 years ago but my telescope has been in the attic since. The January Sky watch programmes renewed my interest and made me dig it out. The Telescope is a 60mm Prinz refractor (from Dixons) with 710mm focal length using 0.96” type 25mm 9mm and 6mm eyepieces which were a little poor, especially the last.

I have since splashed out somewhat and bought a Celestron NexStar 6SE which has improved my viewing greatly. My present eyepieces are Celestron Omni 9mm, 15mm, 40mm, X-Cel 12.5mm, the supplied 25mm plus the X-Cel LX 2x Barlow. All seem to work very well with the 6SE.

I was thinking of junking the refractor but in some reviews read that some old 1970 telescopes had reasonable optics so got a 0.96" to 1.25" telescope eyepiece adapter to try it out with the better eyepieces. I was really surprised at the improved view. Using my X-Cel 12.5mm eyepiece gave me a mag of 57 and good whole Moon views. Even the 9mm Omni was reasonably clear with about 80mag.

I’m not sure where I go from here apart from just enjoying the skies but am thinking of a binoviewer – anyone any idea of a make and more especially eyepieces. Do I try to match some of the ones I have or go for two others? I like using my Nikon 10x32 binos for general star viewing (small FOV I know) so I don’t want great magnifications just good sky views. Any thoughts?

TREJ

[Tinker1947]

These 10 X 60 should be light enough to hold and show some decent views....

First Light Optics - Helios Quantum 4 binoculars

[glowjet]

Hi Trej and welcome to SGL, you should get nice sharp views in both scopes with an Orthoscopic around the 9mm range, if you can get hold of a Japanese one s/h at a reasonable price , very useful on stars, Moon and Planets

John.

[Starlight 1]

Hi & Welcome to SGL.

[Atlas]

Welcome aboard!

[Charon]

Welcome to the forum.

[JamesM]

Hi and welcome to the forum. The best value binoviewers in terms of quality, finish and what's included in the price are, in my opinion, those made by William Optics and can be viewed here. I would also add that there are some people (few admittedly) that don't get on with binoviewers because they find it difficult to merge the two separate images. If it at all possible I would recommend trying them out before you buy just to make sure. They certainly make for a more relaxed view particularly on planets where they appear to stand out against the background creating that 3D effect.

Clear skies

James

[knobby]

Slightly off topic but how do you get on with the X-Cel LX 2x Barlow, mine seems to hold the EP slightly off angle ?

[Tribal-Wolf]

The old Prinz Astral scopes were quite well made, my brother still has the one I used to look through when I was about 14 and what really got me into all this. When I see them come up on ebay I am always tempted to bid but I manage to resist lol.

I think with a bino viewer you should try it, I contemplated one but the jury is still out for me until I get to try one.

I don't know if Alan at Sky's the limit might let you try one if they have one that is, I know they do some try before you buy thing with EPs etc.