Eyepiece Upgrade from Stock units for Starsense Explorer 130AZ

[sheedo]

Hi All,

I have just joined this site, it looks like a good place for discussion and advise on telescopes and observations. We are totally new to this, we bought a Celestion Starsense Explorer 130AZ at Christmas after reading many reviews about beginner telescopes.

It comes with two eyepieces, a 25mm and a 10mm, but I have read that it is worth upgrading these eyepieces to ones of higher quality.

Can anyone give some recommendations please on what to consider, we live in Ireland, and also I wear glasses, which I believe may be relevant to the field of view ?

We are interested in viewing planets and the moon.

 

[great_bear]

I believe these eyepieces (in price order) will all work well in F5 scopes. Most other eyepieces not in this list will be somewhat out-of-focus or otherwise distorted at the edges at F5

• BST Explorer eyepieces (one of the best yet relatively inexpensive options - excellent performance although some moon glare at the shortest focal lengths)
• Celestron X-Cel LX eyepieces 
• Baader Morpheus
• Pentax XW
• Tele Vue Delos or Delites
• Nikon (the most expensive)

You might want to consider buying and selling second hand to discover what you like. For example I saved up for an 82-degree apparent-field-of-view eyepiece once and then discovered in-use that ultra-wide views are really not to my liking. I ideally prefer 60-70 degree views.

You may also discover that you get better views without glasses. Those that keep them on usually do so because they need them for sketching or basic mobility, or to eliminate strong astigmatism or other issues. For general, non-severe, short-or-long sightedness glasses are not needed at the eyepiece.

As much as I hate mingling with other human beings, going to an astronomy meet-up to get hands-on experience of what other people use can be valuable. 

[rwilkey]

I would advise that you get used to using the supplied eyepieces first, they are not bad and are included to get you started.  Give it a few months and then consider new eyepieces, once your eyes have been trained to observe, you will then appreciate the quality of better eyepieces.