Opinions on quality of this Barlow please

[Matthew Neale]

This barlow came with my first Scope a celestron powerseeker 114 EQ (I purchased second hand so assuming it was the original Barlow supplied with that scope). It doesn't look to be of the best quality, is my assumption correct or for general observing is this satisfactory?

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[Highburymark]

Hi Matthew,

It will be the basic 3x Barlow that came with the original scope, and as it's a Celestron scope, it will be better quality than many of the department store products from brands no-one has ever heard of. But it may only be really useful for the brightest targets - moon and maybe Jupiter/Venus - you will find that the telescope isn't made for high magnification of challenging targets. Wait for a clear night and try your eyepieces on the moon, with and without the Barlow - you'll soon get an appreciation of its performance then. You'll also discover that a clear low magnification image is a lot more satisfying than a fuzzy, feint high magnification image.

[Knighty2112]

Stock Barlow lens. OK for the moon and brightest planets. Pretty useless for anything else.

[Highburymark]

Am I right in saying the telescope came with 20mm and 4mm eyepieces? If so the 4mm is already very high magnification -which means if you use it with a 3x Barlow it will completely overpower the scope's optics.

[Joe12345]

That exact Barlow came with my first scope(I don't think it's a celestron barlow as it was a 'non-celestron' scope).It's now a part of an art project at school, due to be spray painted in a few days.

Stock eyepieces and other accessories tend to be pretty rubbish, but to get you started it should be ok.

[John]

Hi Matthew,

The minimum acceptable standard for a barlow lens is that it should be achromatic, ie: the lens should comprise 2 elements to control, to a reasonable degree, chromatic abberation being added to the image by the barlow.

The really low cost plastic types, alas, often fail to meet even this minimal standard. The one you picture could be one of those.

Your image will only be as good as the lowest quality item in the optical train so a poor barlow will be letting the rest of the kit down. The points made above regarding too much magnification to be useful are also very valid.

[Mak the Night]

With good optics you may be able to push a four and a half inch scope to a maximum of 250-270x magnification. Although anything around 200x would be a decent high magnification for viewing the Moon or planets with that scope. If I'm correct there are 10mm and 20mm eyepieces usually supplied with the AstroMaster 114 when new. I also believe it has a 1000mm focal length so the 10mm eyepiece will give you a 100x magnification. The 20mm (erecting eyepiece) will give you 50x. It would be better to buy a decent 2x Barlow like this Celestron Barlow: http://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-eyepieces/celestron-2x-universal-125-barlow.html

The 20mm eyepiece should look like the one above on the right.

With a decent 2x Barlow like the one in the FLO link above you would get 100x with the 20mm eyepiece and and 200x with the 10mm eyepiece. I personally wouldn't use the 3x Barlow  you show in your picture.

The 2x Barlow above was supplied with my SW Explorer, it is unusable. It is completely plastic apart from a metal tube passing for the draw tube and I suspect the lenses are plastic too. 

It's best to splash out on a better 2x Barlow to avoid disappointment. 

[Matthew Neale]

Thank you all, I now use a Skyliner 200p so I've got a greater Max mag. That said I've not use the Barlow for anything else other than the moon in my current telescope, however I did use it in my previous astromaster 130 EQ for Jupiter I'm from memory it wasn't brilliant. But I couldn't tell if that was down to seeing issues or Barlow issues or both maybe?

It only has the 1 lens by the looks of it so I'll definitely change it, that celestron Barlow you showed me looks it. I'm prepared to spend up to £40 on a Barlow so what else is there out there?

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[Mak the Night]

Thank you all, I now use a Skyliner 200p so I've got a greater Max mag. That said I've not use the Barlow for anything else other than the moon in my current telescope, however I did use it in my previous astromaster 130 EQ for Jupiter I'm from memory it wasn't brilliant. But I couldn't tell if that was down to seeing issues or Barlow issues or both maybe?

It only has the 1 lens by the looks of it so I'll definitely change it, that celestron Barlow you showed me looks it. I'm prepared to spend up to £40 on a Barlow so what else is there out there?

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It will only have one lens element anyway, although that will comprise of more than one lens glass pieces. 

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-eyepieces/celestron-x-cel-barlow.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celestron-93326-1-25-inch-Barlow/dp/B00008Y0TM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449421912&sr=8-1&keywords=omni+barlow+lens

http://www.telescopehouse.com/barlows.html

I tend to use my TeleVue Barlows now but I have three Celestron 2x shorty Barlows and the Celestron Omni is still carried in my eyepiece box. It doesn't have a removable lens element like the one in the FLO link I posted but it is very well made, light in weight and sometimes still useful.

[Highburymark]

Am I right in saying the telescope came with 20mm and 4mm eyepieces? If so the 4mm is already very high magnification -which means if you use it with a 3x Barlow it will completely overpower the scope's optics.

Just looked up the package for this scope and yes, it comes with a 4mm eyepiece and a 3x Barlow! Are they the most inappropriate accessories ever offered with a scope of this size?

[Mak the Night]

Just looked up the package for this scope and yes, it comes with a 4mm eyepiece and a 3x Barlow! Are they the most inappropriate accessories ever offered with a scope of this size?

Yes, I was wrong about the supplied EP's.

http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/astronomy/telescopes/powerseeker-114eq-telescope

[Alfian]

It looks very much like the Barlow that came with my 70mmm Celestron Travelscope, which also came with a 4mm EP. I am of the opinion that Celestron just threw these in with the package to make it look as if purchasers were getting more for the money. Both items are shamefully poor (sorry), just plastic tubes with a poor excuse for a lens in. The 4mmm went in the bin and I used the Barlow plastic casing to make something else. Fortunately the scope ota was better.

[Knighty2112]

It looks very much like the Barlow that came with my 70mmm Celestron Travelscope, which also came with a 4mm EP. I am of the opinion that Celestron just threw these in with the package to make it look as if purchasers were getting more for the money. Both items are shamefully poor (sorry), just plastic tubes with a poor excuse for a lens in. The 4mmm went in the bin and I used the Barlow plastic casing to make something else. Fortunately the scope ota was better.

Yeah, I got a 4mm EP and the 3 x Barlow too. The 4mm EP is long gone as it was useless. The 3 x Barlow is OK for some moon views with certain EP's, but little else.

[Mak the Night]

It looks very much like the Barlow that came with my 70mmm Celestron Travelscope, which also came with a 4mm EP. I am of the opinion that Celestron just threw these in with the package to make it look as if purchasers were getting more for the money. Both items are shamefully poor (sorry), just plastic tubes with a poor excuse for a lens in. The 4mmm went in the bin and I used the Barlow plastic casing to make something else. Fortunately the scope ota was better.

The scope OTA looks OK, but it has a f/l of 900mm, which surprised me as it has a 114mm aperture/primary. My 130mm Explorer has a f/l of 900mm and a spherical mirror. Could the Powerseeker 114EQ be a Bird-Jones type?

[Alfian]

Looking at the Celestron site, the Powerseeker looks like its the "full" 900mm. If it was of the Bird Jones type, it would be much shorter, so that seems like good news.

[John]

The scope OTA looks OK, but it has a f/l of 900mm, which surprised me as it has a 114mm aperture/primary. My 130mm Explorer has a f/l of 900mm and a spherical mirror. Could the Powerseeker 114EQ be a Bird-Jones type?

From the pictures of it, it looks like a conventional newtonian of around F/8. The tube is quite long.

Celestron don't specify whether it has a parabolic primary mirror or not which would lead me to suspect that it's spherical. At F/8 it should still be able to generate some decent images though.

I agree that a 4mm eyepiece and a 3x barlow are not really appropriate to the specification of the scope.

I believe the original poster has a 200P Skywatcher now which is a real step up from the 114mm Celestron

[Mak the Night]

Looking at the Celestron site, the Powerseeker looks like its the "full" 900mm. If it was of the Bird Jones type, it would be much shorter, so that seems like good news.

OK, thanks. I thought it looked long for a Bird-Jones.

[Mak the Night]

From the pictures of it, it looks like a conventional newtonian of around F/8. The tube is quite long.

Celestron don't specify whether it has a parabolic primary mirror or not which would lead me to suspect that it's spherical. At F/8 it should still be able to generate some decent images though.

I agree that a 4mm eyepiece and a 3x barlow are not really appropriate to the specification of the scope.

I believe the original poster has a 200P Skywatcher now which is a real step up from the 114mm Celestron

It does look like a conventional Newtonian with a long OTA. I just wondered about the 900mm f/l as it's exactly the same as my 5.1"/130mm Explorer. It is f/7.89 as opposed to my Explorer's f/6.92 though.

[John]

900mm is a popular focal length for scopes for some reason.

[Alfian]

Looking at the Celestron site, the Powerseeker looks like its the "full" 900mm. If it was of the Bird Jones type, it would be much shorter, so that seems like good news.

My Tal1 is an odd size 110/805 (f7.3) with a spherical primary and though it's optics are ofwel proven good quality, I have always been surprised just how good it is. I don't know the 114 will compare but "small" can be nice sometimes, I hope it works well for you.

[Don Pensack]

This barlow came with my first Scope a celestron powerseeker 114 EQ (I purchased second hand so assuming it was the original Barlow supplied with that scopeScreenshot_2015-12-05-00-18-25-1.png). It doesn't look to be of the best quality, is my assumption correct or for general observing is this satisfactory?

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If you scored it on a 1-10 scale, 10 being best, it would rate a 2.

1) It is too high a power to be useful.  1.6x to 2x would actually be used and yield good images.

2) It isn't well-corrected, so it adds appreciable problems.

[Matthew Neale]

If you scored it on a 1-10 scale, 10 being best, it would rate a 2.

1) It is too high a power to be useful. 1.6x to 2x would actually be used and yield good images.

2) It isn't well-corrected, so it adds appreciable problems.

Well on the bright side it could have been worse lol. It's been ok on the moon, but I'm guessing most things probably would on something that big and bright. It would be nice to see comparisons between viewing through a basic Barlow and a half decent one. Just so as I know what to expect

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[John]

..... It would be nice to see comparisons between viewing through a basic Barlow and a half decent one. Just so as I know what to expect

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In some ways it's what you don't see that sets them apart. What I mean by that is a good quality barlow (or similar device such as a Powermate, TeleXtender or Focal Extender) simply adds the additional magnification. Other than that, you would not know it's there.

Lesser units work OK in that they give you the extra magnification but also introduce slight side effects such as additional light scatter, slight loss of contrast / sharpness, a little false colour.

If the barlow in question is not at least achromatic then it's likely to introduce false colour quite noticably.

[Matthew Neale]

Ah OK thank you, next on the list then is a new Barlow from one of the suggestions above

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[Matthew Neale]

One moonfish Barlow en route :-)

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