Barlows

[Charky]

just a quick one here.

I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit on spendable funds now after buying the Dob. I do plan to buy myself a nice set of plossls eventually, but for now I figured a barlow was a better investment. I do have the eyepieces from the meade hanging around, so they're always an option, but the 10mm and 25mm skywatcher ones are superior, from what I could tell from compating the 25mms.

Anyway, when I decided to buy the barlow, I realised I had no idea what I was doing. How do you tell a good from a bad? Are there any recommended makes? Is it just wishful thinking to hope I could find a decent available one for change of 20 quid?

[rikroe666]

You might be best looking at used ones on astro buy and sell or ebay, you will get a revelation astro, celestron omni, gso  or something similar for that money.

I just sold my revelation last week for around that price.

They aren't  the best but they are good value for money.

[Russko13]

I've heard the orion shorty plus is a good option lots of great reviews about

[John]

The Orion Shorty Plus and the Celestron Ultima (same unit) are excellent but will be more like £40-£50 even on the 2nd hand market.

I tried a Skywatcher Deluxe 2x barlow recently and that was surprisingly good for it's low cost. Another decent but cheapish one is the Revelation 2.5x 3-element barlow which I think you can get for around £32 new.

[luminova11]

I have one of the 3x ed barlows like skies the limit sell. Suprisingly good for the money; £24. The lens unit also unscrews to give about 1.5x when screwed directly to the ep.

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[Schorhr]

Hello,

instead of Plössl you could consider a 2" Erfle as overview eyepiece and these http://m.ebay.de/itm?itemId=140717462903 will work fine, especially on f/6 or f/8. At f/5 they struggle with the Same issues as Plössl, but their wider field of view makes finding things easier.

A Good Set of eyepieces like the ed Flatfield for the High magnificaions.

If you choose the Barlow path, either the one luminova suggested or another Apochromatic Barlow.

I have a bresser 3x achromatic Barlow, it adds quite anoying color fringe, while the 2x Seben 10gbp achromatic Barlow does not (and that one is similar to all the other 20-40gbp 2x achromatic short style barlow).