new eye pieces

[Kaszela]

Hi everyone. I recently bought a telescope Skywatcher Explorer 200P EQ5 and I had a go at it many times now and because I'm still new at it I have few questions. Can I buy and if so where from new eye pieces cos I had a go at watching the moon and now I want to explore more. Right now I have 10mm and 25mm. Can I buy a filter to watch the sun and is it expensive ? Links would be helpfull. Cheers for the help

[lardy]

Hi Kaszela and welcome,

Two companies I would recommend without hesitation are http://www.telescopehouse.com/ and http://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/ ... Harrison have been particularly helpful with questions when I have contacted them by phone. Also consider buying second hand at http://www.astrobuysell.com you will find most astronomers look after their equipment and some excellent savings can be made.

Baader solar film is sold by Telescope house, it's something I have never used but many many members on here will advise you about it's uses

[yeti monster]

Avoid at all costs any sun filter that screws into the eye piece, these are liable to fracture at any point due to the intense heat generated in their use, which could result in unfiltered, magnified, sunlight entering the eye causing instant and permenent damage to your sight. Use only a full aperture solar filter made from a recognised material, such as Baader solar safety film.

Constructing your own solar filter is not difficult and there are a good many threads already dealing woth this subject.

Try also First Light Optics, the forum sponser, for solar film and eye pieces. Good hunting and enjoy the skies

[rory]

here are a few links to online suppliers who many on the forum use, so youll know your not on some dodgy site .

http://www.firstligh...es-barlows.html

http://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/

http://www.rotherval...ssories_t5.html

theres alot of eyepieces out there and prices go from £20 to many hundreds, so you might want to research first.

clear skies...

[rwilkey]

With the SW 200P you might want to consider keeping the front cover on the tube and using the smaller hole for solar viewing (called off-axis viewing), this reduces the amount of light going into the focuser and might be easier to make a solar filter for out of Baader solar film. Make sure your finder scope has the dust-covers on when you view the sun BTW. On the eyepieces front you may like to tell us more about what you want to view (and your budget) besides the Moon so that we can help you more with the choices of eyepieces. For the Moon I use 18mm, 12mm and 8mm BST Explorers/StarGuiders from here: http://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/telescope%20eyepieces.html These are some of the best value eyepieces out there, quality is stunning for £47 a pop including postage, also the guy there, Alan, is a great guy to deal with, and if you don't get on with the eyepiece you can just return it.

[rwilkey]

Sorry, not sure why the link above is not working, but it is given in Rory's post above.