What lenses to buy for a Celestron C6-S

[merlinxlm]

Hi could anyone give me some advice on which lenses and filters to buy for my new C6-S, what would the maximum mag be for this scope? Just arrived to day, set it up and saw Venus and Jupiter. Well chuffed with it. Any body got any tips on using it? If gone through the book that came it, and it mentioned about focusing, and to loosen the locking knobs, located on the rear cell of the telescope. I don't know if I'm missing some thing. But I couldn't find any, any help would be very appreciated.

[John]

Hi,

What eyepiece (s) have you already got ?. The maximum theoretical magnifciation for a 150mm aperture scope is x300 which a 5mm eyepiece would give but in all honestly you won't be able to use that very often due to the the normal seeing conditions in the UK.

Something around 200-250x would be more useable for high power work (planets, double stars etc) - that would mean a 7.5mm - 6mm eyepiece. Something with a low power is also very useful - usually a 32mm eyepiece is the optimum for that if you are sticking to the 1.25" eyepiece size. Most eyepiece designs (ie: plossl, orthoscopic, Hyperion etc) will work well with your scope because it has a longish focal length.

I've owned 5" and 8" schmidt-cassegrain scopes and found they worked very well - focussing is done using the single knob at the back of the scope (which is also the rear mirror cell). It's only collimation (aligning the mirrors in the scope) that uses locking knobs (well 3 small screws really) and they are in the centre of the front mirror mounting - but there should be no need to worry about that at the moment if you are happy with the images you are seeing.

I'm sure others will come forward with suggestions in due course.

Welcome to SGL by the way

John

[TheThing]

Good advice from John (as always - that's SGL!)

In addition, may I suggest a moon filter as well? Essential if you want to look at our nearest neighbour when it's bright. You wont damage your eyes without one, but it does make it more comfortable!