Finally out and a good view of Jupiter

[bod00]

After weeks of cloud i have finally managed to get our for a few hours and focused on Jupiter!

As a very novice i thought it would have been harder to locate but i was very surprised at how easy it was and using my new 15mm BST ED eyepiece the view was distant but still very distinctive!

I borrowed a friends budget 2 x Barlow and although the view was a lot closer i found that looking at it without the barlow was still much sharper, is this the quality of the barlow or do you just generally get better results with just the eyepiece?

I am currently using a 15mm BST starguider ED eyepiece and i must say the comfort of the eye relief is superb and the extra detail and stars that i can see over my stock celestron EP is amazing, i would like to stick with the BST range but was thinking of adding the Baader Q classic barlow but i am a little put off after tonights viewing so any tips would be very much appreciated

Had a look around the sky at Polaris and other stars and generally had a great nights viewing, sadly i think saturn just isn't going to rise high enough for me to see it as its blocked by hills but hopefully i can get out to a better spot soon!

All in all i was very impressed with my 1st real time out and may the clear skies continue!

[bingevader]

Sounds like a good night!

As you are probably aware, the barlow has the effect of doubling the magnification of the eyepiece.

Your 15mm BST would then be a 7.5mm, depending on the telescope you have and the conditions, this might be too much magnification.

The higher the magnification the dimmer the object will appear, so there's a pay off between the size and clarity.

Sometimes it's better to just pull back on the magnification and have a smaller, but clearer and brighter object.

Cheers

[bod00]

Thanks for the reply!

I have a celestron astromaster 114eq so the mag would be 133x at 7.5mm (1000mm FL) to be honest the image was ok but just not sharp (a bit blurry) but that perhaps could have been the atmosphere conditions maybe!

My main aim is i have about £100 budget left for EP/Barlow this month and i was thinking of the 8mm EP and maybe the 25mm EP but i am not sure wether to swap the 8mm for a decent barlow and then i can build on the EP range over the next few months!

They do make a 5mm EP but i am pretty sure this would be overkill for my scope as it will be 200x mag the barlow seemed to work ok so just wanting to clarify the performance difference between the budget and expensive models

thanks