Advice on eyepieces

[Redworminator]

I am new to astronomy and have ordered my first telescope, a skywatcher 200p dob. It comes with 10mm and 25mm eyepieces, I've heard these are pretty basic, I want to buy better quality ones but have set a limit of £100 for the pair. Question is, would this be enough to purchase ones that would be a noticeable improvement? If so what do people recommend? Thank you

[banjaxed]

Hi and welcome to SGL. I have the same scope and I have added a few more eyepieces to my set. There are lots of decent eyepieces to choose from and many will advise BST starguider as a good choice which they are but so are most Plossl eyepieces. Skywatcher, Celestron, Revelation and Vixen all do reasonably priced Plössls and would be a good upgrade from the ones you have, especially the 10mm. You will find all the help you need from the very knowledgeable members of this forum.

[fifeskies]

I still have my 200p , my first Newtonian , and the stock eyepieces are basic.

My initial budget upgrade was to Celestron X-Cel eyepiece , this range are a big step up , they are much larger with a vastly improved field of view.

the stock eyepieces are only 50 degree field of view , the X-Cel are 60 degree.

These eyepieces are around £66 new (from FLO) but are very common on the 2nd hand market where they go for around £40 , tho choose a reputable seller , maybe on here or similar. I got my 25mm X-Cel for £30 at the time in a bundle lot.

I was very surprised by how big an improvement the wider clearer view was thru my new eyepiece.

I would upgrade the 25mm first. The 10mm is a bit high magnification for most nights.

I also picked up a 20mm ES maxvision for about the same price , an old range but still good with an even wider 68 degree field.

Both these eyepieces have a decent 15/16mm eye relief , so good if you wear glasses, as I do.

 

These 2 eyepieces really improved my view of clusters like the Pleiades and of nebula like Orion M43 , much sharper and contrast seemed better too.

 

 

        

 

 

Although I now have eyepieces costing in the hundreds the step up from the medium quality budget range is probably not as big a move as the step from stock eyepiece to budget.

Getting the final extra performance out of scopes is expensive

Edited July 18, 2020 by fifeskies

[Timdog]

After much reading and advice from the knowledgeable people here, I bought a selection of the BST starguiders. You will get two for  under £100.  If I was buying two I would go for the 8mm and 12 or 18 first, keep the 25 for now as it is the better of the pair that come with the telescope.

There is a very noticeable improvement with these, as a newbie I would simply describe them as much sharper with better field of view than the standard. The eye relief is good 

[Guest]

FLO has restocked it's supply of BST StarGuider eyepieces. I use them with my Sky-Watcher Skyliner 200P Dobsonian. 

There's a link to FLO at the very top of this page. 

[Redworminator]

Wow, thanks for all the help, I'll keep an eye out on eBay as my scope could take a month to arrive 👍🏽 if not I'll buy a couple new, they are £47 at the moment

 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Redworminator said:

Wow, thanks for all the help, I'll keep an eye out on eBay as my scope could take a month to arrive 👍🏽 if not I'll buy a couple new, they are £47 at the moment

 

Skies the Limit on eBay is a few quid cheaper.  He comes well recommended on here, just like FLO.  I've bought my last couple of BST eyepieces from him because FLO was out of stock of the ones I wanted.  Another cheaper option would be to get a decent set of similar sized Plossl eyepieces from FLO.  I'm not sure of which ones you'd prefer, but their Astro Essentials ones are £20 upwards...

Again, perhaps someone more experienced in such things could offer you more specific advice...

Edited July 18, 2020 by Guest