Stellarvue SV60 EDS : What Eyepieces Work Best ?

[jcole]

Hi Everyone .... I am new to this forum & need some advise on this compact refractor. My main use will be for daytime viewing wildlife with occasional  star gazing when the weather is good. I have owned many spotting scopes over the years, some high end which allowed switching eyepieces.  I prefer powers between 16x up to around 28x which brings me to the first question : Back focus..... whats the lowest power this refractor will allow me to use. I have a Pentax XW20 which will give about a 16.5x according to the scopes FL of 330mm length & would like to be able to use it if I decide to purchase the little Stellarvue. The second question : Whats the best erecting prism which would work best for my intended use. Last : any thoughts on the overall build quality, I have not seen any negative comments accept for the price .... Thanks John

[Roy Challen]

Welcome to the forum John! You'll find plenty of people on here with good advice to give. I'll kick off with some of mine - hope you find it useful!

I am just in the process of selling my mini refractor, which has almost the same specs as the Stellarvue - 60mm x 325mm. I happily used it with a 24mm eyepiece giving x13 mag, so you should be fine with the 20mm. It may go lower, but its already well within binocular territory, and as I don't have anything lower than 24mm, I can't say for certain how it'll behave.

I don't know what the 'best' erecting prism is but the Baader Amici prism must be one of them. Excellent build quality and optics, it has T2 threads either side which makes it very versatile. It's not cheap though - 245 Euros or thereabouts. I suspect if you must have a correct image, this is the one to buy.

I can't comment on the Stellarvue, I haven't used one.

Hope that helps

Roy

[jcole]

Thanks Roy ... I will check out the Baader prism

[BVietje]

Nice little telescope!  Do you have the 2" focuser or the 1.25"?  I have used the larger 110 ED, though almost exclusively at night, and it has perfoemed very well -- superb images of Saturn, Moon, Jupiter, etc...

You may need to experiment with eyepieces for daytime use, as the "rules" are all different than for night-time.   At night, we don't want to waste any light, and take care that the exit pupil does not exceed our dark-adapted pupil diameter (which would result in a dimmer image).  During the day, your pupils will be quite small, so you could end up with some very distracting and bothersome issues is the eyepieces are not picked with care.

BTW:  this instrument will make a wonderful little imaging OTA if you were to mount it on a small EQ mount, such as an iOptron.  If you like spending money, there's no end in the world of optics and imaging.....