Celestron Nexstar 127 Eyepieces

[Deepblue12]

Have purchased a Nexstar 127SLT and currently waiting for the skies to clear so i can start gazing.

In a lot of discussions i see recommendations to immediately upgrade the supplied 9mm and 25mm eye pieces and I've seen mentioned that BST Starguiders are a reasonable upgrade. I'm considering an 8 and 25 as replacements with a 15 as an addition.

Is this the right way to go or is their anything more suitable i should consider before parting with my hard earned.

[Nik271]

The Nexstar is a Maksutov Cassegrain and so very tolerant of eyepieces. Reason to change EP should be comfort and maybe wide field of view rather than bad image. 

 I recommend you test the supplied eyepieces under the stars  first and this can help you decide your next move. For example you may need more eye relief if you wear glasses.

If you prefer planetary views then you may choose a short focal length EP. Conversely for wide views of open clusters etc your 25mm is probably going to do a decent job at first. Do you know its field of view? They usually come with a 50 degrees field of view which is ok. A BST starguider will have 60, so a bit better. Svbony have a red line range of inexpensive EPs with 68 degrees field .

 

Almost any eyepiece will give decent image in you scope because its focal ratio is super slow F12. I have the Sky watcher Mak 127 which is a similar scope and use mostly budget eyepieces in it with good results.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Nik271

[Zermelo]

An 8mm Starguider would give you around 190x and an exit pupil of about 0.6mm.
If the seeing conditions allow, that would give you decent views of Saturn and Jupiter, and the moon. Sometimes the conditions will only permit half that.
You could instead consider a 15mm Starguider and a 2x barlow, which would give you around 100x and 200x.
Another option is a zoom lens. This one performs well, and would give you a good range.
At the wider end yes, a 25mm BST is an option, or perhaps a 32mm plossl.

As Nick says, an F/12 scope won't show up budget eyepieces. Even the Starguiders at £50 are designed to work in a fast F/5 scope. The Svbony red line or gold line should also work well.

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by Zermelo
Hit enter too soon

[Louis D]

43 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

The Svbony red line or gold line should also work well.

I can vouch for the 20mm Redline working well in a 127 Mak:

The Orion is a poorer performing, but wider AFOV, SWA design for comparison.  f/12 is pretty forgiving on eyepieces.

[Deepblue12]

Apologies for not replying sooner...work and my first stargazing session got in the way 😀

Have heard of Barlows but they seem to get mixed reactions when looking at other threads...so something to think about. With the option of the Starguider and Svbony red line ranges i have plenty of options so thanks. Think i may buy a single piece such as the 25mm and see what the difference is before shelling out any more cash.

So my first session tonight both good and bad. Started with the 25mm and the good old moon switching to the 9mm. Clarity seems good but with the 9mm a bit of image shake which i'm not sure where it came from.

Bad bit was i couldnt get it to align! No matter which stars i used it just kept failing so thats my first issue to troubleshoot!

[Louis D]

1 hour ago, Deepblue12 said:

Clarity seems good but with the 9mm a bit of image shake which i'm not sure where it came from.

Try putting some vibration suppression pads under each tripod foot to dampen the oscillations.

[Deepblue12]

16 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Try putting some vibration suppression pads under each tripod foot to dampen the oscillations.

Must admit mount was on loose stones…first time ever with a telescope so a lot to learn 😀

[Louis D]

3 hours ago, Deepblue12 said:

Must admit mount was on loose stones…first time ever with a telescope so a lot to learn 😀

Put it on dirt/lawn to get decent dampening if you don't have any pads.

[Andrew_B]

19 hours ago, Louis D said:

Put it on dirt/lawn to get decent dampening if you don't have any pads.

A lawn is also helpful if you drop anything. Things are much less likely to be damaged by a fall onto grass than onto concrete (and that includes the human body in case you trip over in the darkness!).

Secondly, a lawn doesn't heat up as much in warm weather as bare ground, concrete, or asphalt so the air above it should be a bit more stable.

[Louis D]

I would recommend some sort of tarp or drop cloth to catch small parts if you drop them in thick grass.  I accidentally unscrewed a thumbscrew from an eyepiece holder all the way, and it slipped out of my fingers into the grass.  Not being ferrous, I couldn't find it with a powerful magnet.  I've never found it and replaced it with a American made, steel cap head screw.  These Asian made screws seem to be formed by die casting pot metal based on one I sheared off just by over tightening it with my fingers.

[Deepblue12]

18 hours ago, Andrew_B said:

A lawn is also helpful if you drop anything. Things are much less likely to be damaged by a fall onto grass than onto concrete (and that includes the human body in case you trip over in the darkness!).

Secondly, a lawn doesn't heat up as much in warm weather as bare ground, concrete, or asphalt so the air above it should be a bit more stable.

I have  tiered garden and the concrete affords a higher aspect but think next session i'll give the lower lawn a bash

[Nicola Fletcher]

I had this scope for about ten years and loved it - I still miss it!

I bought a set of BST Starguiders and the Baader Hyperion Zoom - these were great and I use them in my refractors now so they were good for future telescopes too.

I did find that the tripod was quite wobbly, but setting the telescope up on a lawn really helped with the shakiness. 

Apart from the eyepieces, I didn’t make any further upgrades to the setup. It was great fun to use and I found the optics great. I hope you enjoy it!

[Deepblue12]

So purchased a 25mm Starguider switching between it and the supplied Celestron and can definitely tell a difference when viewing the moon so I’m going ahead and purchasing the 8mm and 15mm as well. May throw in a Barlow for good measure 😀

Extremely frustrating at the moment, total cloud cover for the last week or so. Finally got out again tonight with intermittent gaps in the clouds and had a crack viewing Jupiter. It wasn’t that dark but still just made out streaks of red which hopefully with the 8mm will improve. Onwards and upwards 😀

[Cook-net]

Glad you upgraded your eyepieces and are happy with the results.

I just signed up here and seen this post, so I wanted to just say hi, and that I had the exact same scope and also upgraded my eyepieces. I bought mine from ali-express, and they were all budget plossl eyepieces, but still noticeably better than the stock celestron ones.

Don't cheap out on the barlow lens though, I had a cheapie one and a better one that definitely made a difference especially with 6 and 9mm eyepieces. Don't waste your time on a 5X Barlow lens, or even a 3X one,  neither of those seemed to work well with the 127mak scope, even though they were expensive ones.

I'm by no means an expert yet at all, the 127mak Nexstar  was my 1st scope, but I know it very well inside and out, so it's about the only scope I'm actually qualified to give an opinion about lol.

One thing I should also mention a bit off topic about that scope that caused me tremendous issues was the fact that if you use rechargeable lithium ion batteries,  DON'T, they totally mess up the computer and cause a myriad of weird issues. Use either regular batteries, which suck, or, use the Celestron brand AC adapter plug. The unit is very finicky about voltage and even some power tanks cause the scope to lose it's mind. I wish someone would have told me about this in the beginning, so I'm mentioning it to you now.

It's the main reason my 127mak wouldn't track right or hold alignment according to Celestron tech support. There's nothing more depressing then seeing the words "ALIGNMENT FAILED" on your handpiece display when your excited to see a target.

I don't own my 127mak anymore, had to sell it s few years ago due to illness, but i just bought an Orion StarBlast 6i IntelliScope Reflector dobsonian telescope table top mount. It's a push to, not a go to.

Good luck and clear skies!

 

 

 

[Louis D]

1 hour ago, Cook-net said:

The unit is very finicky about voltage and even some power tanks cause the scope to lose it's mind.

It's too bad they saved a few bucks by not adding a proper voltage regulator which would have taken care of this problem.

[Cook-net]

On 04/01/2022 at 10:00, Louis D said:

It's too bad they saved a few bucks by not adding a proper voltage regulator which would have taken care of this problem.

I thought the exact same thing myself actually!