Barlow?

[GabsGiggles]

Hi everyone,

I own an Orion SkyScanner 100 and I'm thinking about getting a Barlow. Initially I thought about an Orion Tri-Mag 1.25" 3x but I don't know it will perform with my telescope. I need your advice, will a 3x be ok?a 2x? Or do you have a different option?

Thank you,

Gabrielle.

[JamesF]

What eyepieces do you have at the moment, and what is the focal length of the telescope?

James

[GabsGiggles]

The focal length is 400mm. I have the eyepieces that came with it: 20mm and 10mm.

[JamesF]

Your current eyepieces will give you a magnification of 20x and 40x in that case, and as the maximum magnification of a 100mm aperture scope would generally be suggested as around 200x there's no reason not to try a barlow. If you tried a 2x barlow then you'd probably gain little from using it with the 20mm eyepiece unless that is better quality than the 10mm, so perhaps a 2.5x would be better, giving you magnifications of 50x and 100x. You could try a 3x barlow, but I'd worry that the small aperture might mean the image isn't bright enough. I don't know that there are very many 3x barlows around and they may not be very cheap.

An alternative would be to look for some shorter focal length eyepieces, but in an f/4 scope you're really going to need good quality ones.

James

[GabsGiggles]

I'm a newbie at this. Right now, I'm interested in palentary viewing until I train my eyes for deep skies. I thought about getting this first and then another piece next month more suitable for deep skies. Now I'm really confused.

The Orion Tri-Mag 1.25" 3x Barlow Lens is only $58 dollars. The description says ''Perfect for extracting higher powers from short-focal-length telescopes''.

Am I being too naive?

[JamesF]

I'm really not sure. Perhaps someone else will have tried the same barlow and can comment from experience.

James

[GabsGiggles]

Feedback on this is basically what you told me. It darkens the image for deep space objects but no problem with planets. What would you do?

Thanks so much for your help!

[JamesF]

I really don't know what I'd do, I'm afraid. It's a bit of a gamble. It might work, but I don't have experience of a scope that fast at that kind of aperture so I'm really not sure.

James

[Qualia]

It may be a bit of a gamble but this x3 barlow and even this x5 barlow are relatively cheap and might do the trick on planets.

[GabsGiggles]

They seem good! If only they were USA based... I think I read 36,89 EUR the shipping to USA? That's a bit high.

It may be a bit of a gamble but this x3 barlow and even this x5 barlow are relatively cheap and might do the trick on planets.