Which eyepiece for observing planets?

[Apollo_95]

I have recently bought my first telescope - Skywatcher 130P Heritage Dobsonian and I'm absolutely loving it. I have had it out a few times and got great views of the moon with the 10mm eyepiece that came with the scope. I've also managed to see Saturn with the 10mm eyepiece but it was very small. My main interest initially is planetary observation and I am looking for help on how to get the best images of the planets without having to pay a fortune for stronger eyepieces or Barlow. From what I have read the eyepiece sets are not very good quality & the concensus is that you should pay more for a good single eye piece rather than a set of poor eye pieces. I also wear glasses so eye relief is quite important. As you can imagine the range of eye pieces available is quite daunting for a newbie. To get good images of Saturn/Jupiter it seems an eye piece of around 5-8mm would be best. Or should I invest in a good Barlow to use with my 10mm? Any advice would be much appreciated especially from any users of the 130P. Thank you in advance. Andrew

[MarsG76]

If you want to observe planets than the best magnification for you scope size is about 200X, so I'd recommend the Televue 3.5mm Nagler for planetary viewing and a Televue 13mm Nagler for you wide field and neubla viewing.  The current eyepiece is not the best quality (as you have stated) but the Televue Naglers are one of if not the best eyepiece you can get, I had some amazing views of planets through the nagler.

The 10mm gives you only 65X magnification so, yes, Saturn will look small but with the 3.5mm Nagler you will not only have a magnification of 185X but also a nice and wide field of view, 82 degrees.

The 13mm eyepiece will give you magnification of 50X and the same 82 degree field of view for large objectske the Orion nebula.

These two eyepiece will deliver some nice planetary detail and nebula views on nights of good seeing.

I think that if you get the best from the start, than you wont have to pay twice for upgrading later.

 

[Ricochet]

The 130p is an f5 scope so I suggest a 5mm eyepiece for planetary. You might find you can get away with a 4mm but the 5 is the safer bet.

The 10mm that is bundled with the scope doesn't get great reviews so I would suggest a dedicated eyepiece will be better than barlowing the 10mm (but you could buy a new 10mm and 2x barlow). I don't know what budget you're thinking of but the 5mm BST Starguider at £50 is very good for the price.

[Stu]

Whilst I have not used them personally, the BSTs get very good reviews and as Ricochet says, the 5mm would be a good choice giving x130. You could potentially go higher I maybe see how you go with that one?

[Wpit]

I have the bst starguider 5mm and I can confirm they are a good quality comfortable eyepiece at a reasonable budget price. They don't appear often on the second hand markets (maybe beacause their owners hold on to them). If you do eventually want to spend more money to upgrade to TV then you would get reasonable second hand prices for the BST.

[Mattwaters]

These are in eBay £5-15 It's what I use with my samsungs

[Ben the Ignorant]

This would ge good, and you might find a clone that costs less:

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p7428_TS-Optics-1-25--ED-Okular-3-2-mm---60--ebenes-Bildfeld---hoher-Kontrast.html

 

[Apollo_95]

Many thanks for your suggestions. My budget is about £50-£80 so yes the televue eyepiece is definitely not an option just now. The Starguider 5mm does seem to get good reviews so I will likely give that one a bash 

[Dave In Vermont]

4 hours ago, Mattwaters said:

These are in eBay £5-15 It's what I use with my samsungs

The action on these is often stiff and 'clunky.' I always suggest taking them apart, cleaning them thoroughly of any old "grease" (more like glue), and applying a just enough PTFE-grease (SuperLube) to lightly coat all the threads. Then work it back & forth a few times.

Much better!

Dave

[Red Dwarfer]

1 hour ago, Apollo_95 said:

The Starguider 5mm does seem to get good reviews so I will likely give that one a bash 

Every review on the BST StarGuider range I`ve read has been very positive and they are top of my list of next lenses to get ... The other SkyWatcher kit lens , Super 25mm is a better lens than the 10mm and I think the 10mm gets bad reviews because it has such a narrow depth of field . 

[JoeP]

With your budget you could get 2 second hand eyepieces, probably the 5mm and 12mm bsts. Don't expect a big view of planets though - the bigger the fuzzier, and often the best views of planets can  be had at lower magnifications.

[Joeistotalycool]

If you have such a budget I would invest in a good quality zoom eyepiece. The higher focal lengths can be good for lunar observing and the lower for small targets like Mars  (don't expect to see much) and Venus, which if you have good collimation can be beautiful to look at. It is like a tiny crescent moon. The same goes for Jupiter, and it moons stretch out further than you might think.