Eyepieces for my 60mm refractor?

[Space Oddities]

Hello Stargazers!

I have a 60mm f/6 refractor from TS Optics, which I use for imaging. I really like this scope, and given its small size, I'd love to use it for observing as well. 

But I don't really have any experience in this field, so I have a couple questions:

• What kind of target could I expect to see with this kind of scope (I live in a Bortle 6/7 area) ?
• What kind of eyepiece would you recommend for this kind of scope? 

FYI, I already own 2 cheap 1.25" Plössl (10mm and 25mm), that I got with my 4" Maksutov telescope. I have to admit that I haven't really tried them with the 60mm refractor yet.

Thanks for your input!  

[Ricochet]

I think the first thing to do is to try the eyepieces that you have and see if you enjoy using the refractor visually. 

Given your skies, star clusters and fields will probably be the main DSO targets and I would think that you will want to use eyepieces <18mm to keep the background sky relatively dark. However, a 24mm 68° eyepiece will still be useful as a finder with the maximum field a 1.25" eyepiece can show. 

[NGC 1502]

 

A 60mm refractor can show a great deal.    The moon bright planets and double stars will be good targets.

As mentioned already, perhaps try the eyepieces you already have and see how you get on. The eyepieces you have will not exhaust the capabilities of your scope, up to 100-120x should be ok.  3 eyepieces, low medium and high power should suffice.

Of the 60mm refractors I’ve used the main restriction has been the mount rather than the optics. What will you be using as a mount ?   A wobbly mount that makes it difficult to find and track objects will be a pain, a better mount would give a nice portable hassle free scope.

Good luck, Ed.

 

[Space Oddities]

Thanks for your answers! I'll definitely give my eyepieces another try, and see where it gets me. It's difficult, however, to know what other eyepieces could deliver without trying them first, since I've never looked into any other eyepieces... But perhaps a trip to the local telescope store could be helpful  

Ed, I'm sadly limited right now to lightweight mounts. I'm using primarily a Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi, which is really a pleasure to use, I find the GoTo and the tracking quite accurate. I've already observed several times the Moon, the Sun and a couple planets with a 4" Maksutov, and the mount behave very well given the quick alignment I used