Skywatcher130 900.

[Welsh-18]

I first would like to thank once again the people that helped me yesterday, thanks, and to my original post, had a quick look online for eyepieces to use on the skywatcher 130 and  seen the skywatcher uwa planetary eyepieces, are they any good and will they give me a better view of jupiter and such?  If anyone can suggest good alternatives in the £60 range i would really appreciate it, many thanks, and a quick little funny incident that happened earlier in the night, me and a mate got in over our heads because we could find jupiter in the scope and we used a online app to see if we could find a different planet, then my mate goes, di theres only 8 planets on this, i was almost certain there was 9, no word of a lie we stood there for around 10-15 minutes scratching our heads till it clicked to me earth counted to, very bad start to stargazing, sorry to blabber on, help with the eyepieces would be very appreciated, many thanks, welsh

[pipnina]

I own the 130 900... The eyepieces that come with it are OK. Northing special but OK.

I was fortunate enough to be able to look through two EPs that weren't my own tonight. The Baader Hyperion 24mm modular eyepiece and the Celestron xcel-LX 9mm. I feel like both gave better views than my stock EPs, definately gave wider apparent FOV and they stayed sharper towards the edge, too. I saw some blue CA in both... But I was wearing my glasses so it was probably those causing the issues. The Hyperion 24mm modular had pretty good eye relief and appeared to be free of kidney beaning, the xcel-LX 9mm had less eye relief, but is cheaper and did still appear sharp towards the edges... I didn't look through either for very long but I enjoyed what I saw of both. The person with the Hyperion said that you could put different lenses on the bottom of the EP and it changed the focal length, not sure which length was in use but the EP itself said either 24mm or 21... it was dark... Jupiter seemed a reasonable size but it was in an 8" SCT so the focal length was probably masked. The Xcel-LX was from an 8" Newt.

There are other options, hopefully someone else will be able to guide you better.

    ~pip

[Ricochet]

If you are thinking about buying eyepieces the first thing you should read is https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/43171-eyepieces-the-very-least-you-need/.

For eyepieces in the £60 range the two standard recommendations are the Celestron X-Cel LX for £60 and the BST Explorer/Starguider for £50. Both of these have very similar performance and will be a good upgrade over the eyepieces that came with your scope. I don't know how the Skywatcher UWA Planetary EP's compare but there is a 6mm in the range that you can't get from the X-Cell LX/Starguiders unless you barlow a 12mm, which isn't necessarily a bad option to take providing you use a good quality 2X Barlow.

You get the magnification provided by an eyepiece by dividing the focal length of the scope (900) by the focal length of the eyepiece. For the specific task of viewing Jupiter I would suggest something in the 150X-200X range but sticking below 200X because UK atmospheric conditions can easily get in the way at that level of magnification. Running through the numbers we get:

• 200X = 4.5mm or 9mm+2X Barlow (X-Cel LX)
• 180X = 5mm (Starguider or X-Cell LX)
• 150X = 6mm (Skywatcher UWA) or 12mm+2X Barlow (Starguider or X-Cel LX)

Of those options I suggest a 5mm as the best balance between maximum magnification and seeing condition usage.

[brantuk]

Since Pluto was reclassified there are only 8 planets now - by the time you realise Earth is one of them, there's only 7 left to look at in a scope lol

[bomberbaz]

hi there, the advice of the 5mm ep to give x180 is pretty sound. They also do the xcel in 18mm (x50) and 12mm (x75) which pretty much covers your low and mid range and when barlowed would give you 9mm (x100) and 6mm (x150).

Yup 3 ep's and a good barlow would keep you going for the foreseeable. Ignore my signature I have issues. 

[laudropb]

The Celestron X-cel are very nice eye pieces and very good value.