Whats The Best Eyepiece For Viewing Mars

[ToxoLight]

Hi Joel and welcome to the lounge, ask away, and remember the only daft question is the one you don't ask.

[Mak the Night]

Thats a good suggestion

It's just a shame that the eyepiece and Powermate will cost around 4x as much as the scope is worth

I agree with your diagnosis of the scope - it certainly looks like an Explorer 130 to me as well.

Welcome to the forum Joel - feel free to ask further questions on how to get the best from your scope

Well ... I was stating what eyepieces I personally would use lol! Hopefully I'll have a bigger SCT by the time Mars is at its best this year. I'm pretty sure you would get a good view of Mars with the Explorer though. I know people buy wide angle eyepieces for different reasons but the predominant reason I shelled out the spondoolies for some quality wide angle (Nagler, Delos) was that RA moves so quickly at 200x plus it is difficult to keep things in frame. For high power planetary with my Mak the T5 Nagler/Powermate combination gives me the widest view. I'm with you on the idea that the eyepiece is half the telescope. The 10mm Celestron Luminos is a nice 82° EP with a large field stop, but it does have a few problems IMO, even with comparatively slow scopes. The 16mm Nagler is physically smaller with only a small subjective lens and only 10mm eye relief, but the difference between it and the Luminos for lunar viewing shows. Directly compared to the 10mm Delos the Luminos not only has a 10° larger FOV but a larger field stop. I compared the Luminos with the Delos observing M42 recently. What the Delos lacks in field stop and FOV it more than compensates for in an immersive viewing experience.

[JamesM]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Clear skies

[Ruud]

Hi, I just read that Spoon01 is getting the Sky-Watcher Explorer 130/900 so I had a look and it turns out to be the scope that Joel has. Mak the Night recognized it correctly. One of the magnifications with the included 10mm eyepiece and the 2x barlow is 180x.

180x sounds very good for Mars. 

image from: http://www.hantsastro.org/newt_sw130_900.html where you also find a description of the telescope and what is included.

So Joel, try the kit 10mm eyepiece + barlow on the Moon to find out if the combo pleases you. If not, a single 5 mm eyepiece of a higher quality might be a good idea. We're talking high magnifications here. To get the best performance of the telescope it may need some collimating (aligning of the optics). There are quite a few youtube videos on how to do this. Just search youtube for the keywords collimating and Newtonian or Dobsonian.

BTW, a 6mm eyepiece on this telescope would give a magnification of 900 / 6 = 150 times (and a 4 mm would give 225 times, which Mak achieves in a different way).

Nice scope, Joel. And it has a convenient motor drive too.

[glowjet]

Hi Joe and welcome to SGL, enjoy the forum

[astrospy99]

thanks everyone, i do have that exact scope, identical, but that isnt it in the picture, everything is identical but for the label with the information on it. so from what ive got from everyone is i need to try between a 5 and a 8 mm. what i dont get is i would think the better magnification or the smaller mm eyepeice the better you would see what your looking at but it seems not to be that way, i didnt think i could look at a star and see burning hydrogen but i thought they may be a bit bigger looking maybe, though im aware of how far alpha centuri is let alone any others. where is the best place to shop for eyepeices? and also can i get anything that may help me take photos? and is it possible to fit my scope to a motorized mount or does it not work like that?

[Mak the Night]

I'm pretty sure Alpha Centauri doesn't rise high enough to be seen from Europe anymore. I think it may have been known in antiquity. I'd rather 'Barlow up' a longer focal length eyepiece than use a 5mm one, especially a Plossl. As they are not easy to actually use because they usually have such small field stops and small subjective (eyepiece) lenses.

One of these would be good though I reckon: http://www.televue.com/engine/TV3b_page.asp?id=183&Tab=EP_EDL-04.5

They aren't cheap though.

[Ruud]

Yes, a shorter focal length eyepiece gives a higher magnification but ...

- with increasing magnifications the image gets darker and eventually also blurrier. This limits your telescope to 260x on bright targets like double stars, the Moon or planets. Beyond that you're just magnifying a dark blur and no additional detail will be revealed. To reach its max the telescope needs to be of a good quality as well. Yours probably is, especially when it is well collimated.

- and there's also the atmosphere. The seeing (absence of turbulence, ranging from 1 to 5, with 5 is best) is rarely good enough to go beyond 200x in my location.  

Many targets don't need a high magnification, though. Most nebulae, galaxies and clusters are best viewed around 100x or so. For some clusters I prefer an lower magnification and the Andromeda Galaxy is best in binoculars!

Some targets are interesting at just about any magnification. The Orion nebula is an example.

[Mak the Night]

I can easily get 300x magnification out of my Explorer 130M. That's probably the limit though. For the Moon and certain planets I can sometimes get 244x on a 4" Mak (16mm T5 Nagler + 3x Barlow). I never seem to get a good view of Jupiter over about 150x. As a general rule high magnifications of around 70x and above tend to be used on the Moon and planets. 

[Dave Lloyd]

Hi Joel, welcome.