Coronado SM II 60 - barlow in front of BF, and which one

[Bender]

I bought a Coronado SM 60 II solar scope and fitted it with a moonlite focuser to use it with my binoviewer. Unfortunately it turned out that i dont have enough infocus for my Maxbright, even with the 2.6 corrector.

It was now suggested that i could employ a barlow in front of the blocking filter. Would it be safe to do so ?

And as my 2" 1.6 Antares barlow does not look trustworthy enough to me to carry the BF with a binoviewer, what other options for a good and not to heavy 2" barlow are out there. I would ideally screw the barlow element in the 2"/1.25" adapter that holds the BF, therefor avoiding to put any physical burden on the barlow.

[moon cat]

yes its safe to to put the barlow in front of the blocking filter, I used a cheap 1.25 skywacher 2x barlow lens screwed into the blocking filter and it holds the weight of the Williams binowviewer fine. This is with the standard SM 60 II focuser.

[Merlin66]

I use an older SM60 etalon with a x2.5 Powermate. (Didn't like the SM60 OTA so mounted it on an ED80)

[Bender]

That sounds encouraging. The only problem I might have is that the barlows in front of the BF will push up the magnification for my pair of 25mm plossl.

I was aiming at a focal length of 10mm with the 2.6 GWK.

With the stronger magnification it might get to much.

Maybe I should have got a Lunt 60. Had no problem with a 1.7 GWK to come into focus (you can unscrew the ep holder on the Lunt BF and attach the Maxbright bino directly)