Am I being a pansy, or missing a great oppo?

[Moonshine132435]

Thanks Rich. Out of curiosity what does the 33mm give you, I would have thought there is hardly any magnification there at all?

[RichM63]

32mm;

150/750 OTA

Mag 23x, Exit Pupil 6.4, TFOV 2.99

EP Calculator attached

EP_Calc_v2.xlsx

[cotterless45]

I rarely use anything over 25mm from town . There's just too much light pollution and higher magnifications can counter this. However at pristine dark skies nothing beats a low magnification view of

Clear skies !

Nick.

[Moonshine132435]

Thanks Cotterless. I never thought of going in that direction; I guess I've fallen into the newbie trap of more more more magnification. To be fair, I was pleasently surprised viewing Saturn on my 12mm at how much detail started coming through after just a few minutes. What you see at the outset is definately now what you get.

Rich, I was more wondering what benefit you got out of a 32mm lense, I'm not familiar with those abreviations or the numbers? 

[RichM63]

For me this is purely subjective and personal, but I enjoy the wide field of view and the ability to see more of a constellation or interesting objects in relation to other objects.

I do have very dark skies and can easily get 'lost' just oggling through the 32mm.

The 6.4mm exit pupil is at my age not far off the maximum that my eyes will dilate to, any larger would be wasted because the exra light would bounce off my nose.

The TFOV at 2.99° gives me an indication of how much sky I can 'fit in' without moving the scope.

At higher magnifications this field diminishes as you effectively zoom into a target.

You can get much more expensive EPs costing hundreds or even thousands that will possibly perform better, I can't afford them, I doubt my eye would notice the difference, and nothing will see through thick cloud.

Sorry for the layman's explanation, it's just the way I understand things.

[Moonshine132435]

Thanks Rich; I'm pretty new at this game and am working quite hard to get my technical knowledge up to speed.

[Macavity]

The biggest "quantum leap" in performance for *all* my (current / modest) scopes was via VIDEO astronomy.

Integral to this was GoTo as a first step. Personally, I was never overly enthused by searching for and observing "grey blobs" visually. Nor was I tempted to try and emulate the stunning results of skilled (richer? lol) *classical* imagers. But I do like keeping a permanent record of my experiences. Not for everyone (for reasons often cited!) but video astronomy seems "right sized" re. my skills / expectations? 

[Tim]

Even if you have GOTO you don't have to use it of course
 
Finding faint things in light polluted skies can be incredibly frustrating.
 
I always shelter a wry smile when seasoned astronomers who learnt the sky the hard way look down their nose at the younger of us who have embraced the technology that makes star hopping unnecessary, unless you really want to do it.
 
So there's the decider, if you want to star hop, and spend time bobbing about the sky (which all looks remarkably similar through an eyepiece) rather than concentrating on the object at hand, then great, but these days, we don't have to do that, and astronomy is all the richer and more accessible for it. 
 
Enjoy your scope, it seems you are going to have great fun
 
Cheers
 
Tim

[D4N]

Star hopping does go a little way to helping you realise just how much empty space there is out there

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[IanL]

Star hopping does go a little way to helping you realise just how much empty space there is out there

Imaging goes a lot further to helping you realise what you thought was empty space isn't

(Sorry couldn't resist that!)

[Tim]

Imaging goes a lot further to helping you realise what you thought was empty space isn't

1262485_10200520595999856_270754004_o.jpg

(Sorry couldn't resist that!)

I was about to post just the same

[Moonshine132435]

Well I'm still working with my manual, star-hopping reflector, though I'm adding on an Altair finder so I don't have to crick my back to see things. I've not seen a DSO yet, but what I have seen is three unmissable, buy-now-or-forever-miss-out deals on very nice rigs. As someone upstream metioned, there's no rush to upgrade, good deals come along all the time.