lens advice pls

[eriss]

Hi all

its been a while since we got out with the scope as the skies have been awful for months. managed to get out and view saturn last week... what a thrill !!!

BUT..

i need more poweful lenses.

at the mo, i have the 1omm and the 25m super and the lovely 'paperweight' Barlow x2 mag

i have a skywatcher 130.. what size lenses should i buy to enable me to see the images in more detail and/or closer.

saturn was good, but all in a golden colour. i'd like to be able to see the rings and bands of colour and be able to see Orion Nebula a little clearer.

any advice would be gratefully recieved. cheers

Eris

[umadog]

I'm afraid you need to downgrade your expectations rather than add higher power eyepieces. You have a 5" telescope. High power is 30x per inch (http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=547) so for you that's 150x. Atmospheric seeing (turbulence) doesn't usually support more than about 250x irrespective of your aperture.

If your scope is the one with a 900 mm focal length then your 10 mm eyepiece will give you 90x and barlowed it will give you 180x, which is about as high as you can expect to go.

The best things you can do are make sure the scope is well collimated, cooled down, and you observe often to catch nights of good seeing.

Saturn looked all golden because that is what it looks like: http://homepage.mac.com/stevepur/astrophotography/images/dmk/saturn_1_24_06.jpg There are shadings but they're hard to pick out and it takes experience. I presume you could indeed see the rings: your message is a little ambiguous on that front. The Orion Nebula will look best in winter and from a dark site. Going somewhere dark will show you more of it.

[paul schofield]

Hi Eris. Eyepieces really depend on how much you want to spend. I owned the 130 too and I used a BST Explorer 8mm and Barlow for observing planets and this worked great for me. Obviously the supplied Barlow was next to useless for me, so I bought a tal x 2 which is so much better. The supplied 25mm eyepiece you have should do reasonably well on m42, mine did. My highest power eyepiece for planetary is 8mm as on clear nights I can Barlow it & it works great. Someone will advise you better, but I would not buy an ep any more powerful than 6mm at a push, because it would not be used.