StarWatcher Barlow 2x

[emadmoussa]

Hi,

Last night the luck was on our side as the skies were clear - not perfectly clear due to some fog though - I noticed that my Skywatcher barlow 2x gets sharp images slightly blurry. I'm not sure if barlows in general do that, or it's simply the one that came with SW Explorer 200p. Any thoughts?

[Connect2space]

You may need to focus it again, when I use a barlow lens it goes a little blurry so I focus it again and it always seems to work for me.

[rwilkey]

Hi Emadmoussa, it's funny you should highlight this as the same discussion took place a few days ago on here, and the long & short of it was that there are two SW Barlows , and one is sharp and the other versiobn is poor, unfortunately I think you might have the poor version that just plainly has poor optics. See discussion thread here and scroll to bottom of page for verdict:

[emadmoussa]

You may need to focus it again, when I use a barlow lens it goes a little blurry so I focus it again and it always seems to work for me.

I actually do focus it again. It still doesn't give me the same crisp results my other eyepieces do without the barlow.

[knobby]

Could also be that the Barlow is taking the magnification too high. Which e.p. are you barlowing ?

[emadmoussa]

15mm and 25mm

[Welrod50]

I suspect that either the atmospheric turbulence is bad enough to blur the image at the eyepiece, or the Barlow itself is low quality. I suspect, given the info provided already, it is probably the latter

[Spec-Chum]

I noticed last night that the seeing was quite poor here in Yorkshire.

133x gave a noticeably sharper image than 171x on Jupiter with my 14mm Meade and my Barlow.

[nephilim]

Thats a different barlow to the one supplied with my Skywatcher and MINE is definately the naff one!! I think it 'could' be the seeing.

[emadmoussa]

Last night it was clear sky, but it seemed that there was a thin layer of fog or other atmospheric disruption. Yet, I had this issue with my barlow even under good atmospheric conditions. I looked around and it seems that my barlow is not the best of quality.

I'm expecting a set of 9 plossls by the end od this week ranging between 6.5mm and 40mm. Hopefully this will spare me the need for a barlow.