What additional lenses for a Skywatcher skymax 90?

[emmak]

I'm about to take delivery of my new mak-cas Skymax 90 which come with 10mm and 25 mm eyepieces. Should I buy a barlow lens? Any or lenses or anything else that would be useful - I'd like to look at saturn and the moon in detail for starters. Any good brands?

Thankyou

Emma

[John]

Emma,

Useful additional eyepieces would be a 15mm plossl and a 2x barlow lens. You would then have magnifications of 50x (25mm eyepiece on it's own), 83x (15mm eyepiece on it's own), 100x (25mm eyepiece with 2x barlow lens), 125x (10mm eyepiece on it's own), 166x (15mm eyepiece with 2x barlow lens) and finally 250x (10mm eyepiece with 2x barlow lens) but that last one is really too much power for your scope so I suggest that you stick to 166x as a practical maximum.

As for brands, there are lots - it depends what you are prepared to pay. The Antares brand eyepieces and barlows have always seemed a good combination of quality and value for money to me and would probably work fine in your scope - you could get the eypiece and the barlow for around £40.

John

[emmak]

Oh well done, thats exactly the info I was looking for. I am Rubbish at working these things out, thats just brilliant thanks jahmanson

[The Warthog]

The Moon will take all the power you can throw at it, up to a point, but I wouldn't push it much beyond 200 with a 90mm scope. I would suggest, rather than a 15, a 35 or so for wider, low power views of DSOs. That would give you a power of 35, and an FOV of 1.5 degrees, in a Plossl. The Barlow will cover your high power views adequately.

Of course, you can get decent Barlows pretty cheaply, and they will perform very well in an f/15 scope. You might consider buying one of the Plossl kits that are available from Celestron or others, and keeping the eps you have to use if your primary eps get dewed up, and sell off the shorter ones that you just won't use with that scope.

[philsail1]

Wise words from the "Warthog" there Emmac. I have the Skywatcher 90mm (bought recently for my 55th birthday!), and I am happy with the 10mm & 25mm & 2x Barlow it came with, as they give you the magnification which the scope can cope with. I tried a 6mm Orthoscopic, to give me magnification of 208. This was good, but dim and difficult to focus. I then Barlowed this with a Celestron Ultima 2x, to give a magnification of 416!! I could see huge craters on the moon, but the image was just too difficult to focus, and the whole view was shimmering and vibrating - an unusable combination.

Tried an Antares 10mm Plossl and this gave good clear and bright views at a magnification of 125. Just about coped with the Celestron 2x Barlow - but image becoming dim, and difficult to focus.

As this scope has a narrow field of view, I too will be taking advantage of the "Warthog's" suggestion of obtaining a 35mm Plossl.

Great little scope though - I have mine on a photographic tripod (if you have not got one, DO NOT buy the same one as I have got - the "Velbon 7500." The tripod is great but the head lets it down badly. You cannot tighten the forward and backward horizontal axis thumbscrew enough to stop the scope gradually tipping backwards when you're observing an abject at more that 70 degrees tilt).

Regards,

philsail1

[THE-BIG-MAN-SAYS]

I also have the Skymax 90...I have just piggybacked it on mt 10" LX90...I'll be putting a photo up soon...

A GREAT SCOPE...I LOVE IT...

I too tried the Tripod, at first thinking it would be great for portability...and suffered the same consequence...

These scopes are rough and tough and can be packed and carried in luggage/baggage without cause for concern...I bought a ETX 90 Bag for cheap off ebay...a little foam/bubble wrap and your sorted.

I will am currently rationalising my eyepieces as I have a couple of doubles Meade 4000's (I was going to buy a binoviewer for my previous scope...Explorer 200)...so will be selling them soon.

If you can wait a week max, I'll be sorted out...If interested PM me and I'll PM you the cost before I put them up for sale...a may also have an older barlow I can throw in to start you off...that was how I got it...

I won't be charging the earth...we all got to start somewhere...!!!

STEVIER

:saturn:

[wooah62]

This is all good information and 11 years on I've bought the Skymax 90 asmy first scope....thanks to all...hope you're all still enjoying your hobby ?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Haha, I was about to comment, when I saw the date. OK, technically this counts as a comment.