first brief outing

[kamikaze1100]

whoo hoo ... i managed to get my new 200p dob out on saturday night for a couple of hours.

i just looked at the moon for the best part and jupiter which was pretty cool! I am a total newb so dunno if i have the base set up correctly or if i am using the correct eyepieces etc but if i remember i was using a x2 barlow with a 35mm super plossi (is that right???)

this is summat i may need to get some good advice on...... use of what type of eyepiece for what object to be viewed?

[Capricorn]

If the scope is going round and round and up and down fairly smoothly then the base is OK.

Eyepieces, if you bought a 35mm and put that in then what you say is right, except that the eyepiece that comes with the scope is usually 25mm. Also never seen a 35mm plossl. I would guess you mean 25mm not 35mm.

The supplied 25mm tends to be decent, the barlow is a bit more of an unknown.

If it came with a 10mm this is often not great but should be OK on it's own.

What to use, often personel preference. I will leave the moon out of it. as the size of it means you look at all in one go - low magnification or a bit of the moon in which case the magnification has to fit the bit.

Planets really Jupiter and Saturn. To get a decent view of Jupiter try 80x-100x, for Saturn try 120x-150x. So that means 15mm to 12mm for Jupiter and 10mm to 8mm for Saturn.

Which make is up to you, the standard budgets are BST's, Vixen Plossls, TMB clones, GSO plossls. Price range £30-£47.

If you have a 35mm then use that, if it is 25mm then possibly a 32mm for locating things, and a 20mm or 18mm for mid powers, I think 18mm the better.

So that makes the following: 32mm, 18mm, 12mm, 8mm.

These are not aimed at high magnifications, for that you are looking at a 6mm for 200x and 5mm for 240x. At this level 1mm can make the difference between being usable or not, so you end up with 5mm, 6mm, 7mm for the single purpose of magnification which is expensive. Plossls are possibly of little use here as their performance drops off and there is no eye relief - a 5mm plossl is almost a contact lens.

[kamikaze1100]

i bought a celestron eyepiece kit a while back which has a bunch of filters etc and 5 plossl's the one i said was 35 could well be 25 (lol)

i feel i must explain.... not only am i a newb but at times a bit of a dimwad as well!! so i may not understand technical stuff that well.

[Astro Imp]

First don't put yourself down, we all had to start somewhere.

Capricorn's advice re magnification is pretty spot on.

Remember these are only guidelines, you lose nothing by experimenting.

To work out your magnification divide the focal length of your scope by the focal length of the eyepiece you are using.

Example:- your scope has a focal length of 1200mm with an eyepiece of 10mm focal length the magnification will be 1200/10 = 120x.