38mm or reducer

[BigJohnson]

Hi guys & gals

A newbie here, so please bear with :-)

Just getting back into astronomy after a 20 year break, and have took a dive into the deep end and purchased a CPC1100 - and I love it.

I'm primarily using 2" eyepieces, and have a 24mm & 32mm, but looking for something a little wider. Looking at either 38mm or 40mm. Current eyepieces are Panaview & Swan.

Question - do I go for a 38mm panaview/swan, or look at something different, a 40mm 1.25? Or do I get a focal reducer and use with the existing?

thanks muchly

:-)

[John]

Hello and welcome to the forum

If you want to see more sky than the 32mm 2" shows you are going to need to stick with the 2" format. A 1.25" 40mm eyepiece will have a narrower apparant field than the 32mm 2" does because it's smaller barrel restricts the size of the field stop. I'm not sure that focal reducers work well with 2" eyepieces but I might be wrong. I'd probably go for a 40mm 2" eyepiece with a 70ish degree apparent field of view such as the Skywatcher Aero ED 40mm or similar, for a max field eyepiece.

[russ.will]

One advantage the reducer does have in the CPC1100, is that it also corrects for Coma, so not only will you get a wider true field of view, you will get a better corrected view too.

As reducers from Meade, Celestron & Antares crop up for £50-65 second hand quite regularly, I'd suggest that for an SCT owner, it's something you should have in your EP case, just as others would have a Barlow.

Russell