Which Barlow for Sky-Watcher Heritage -150P VIRTUOSO GTi

[Hazy81]

Hi All

As the title says, I've just bought a 150P Heritage Virtuoso which comes with the standard 2 eye pieces a 10mm and 25mm.

I'm looking to get a Barlow lens, but not sure which magnification 2x or 3x to go for.

All advice welcome.

[Mr Spock]

A x2 Barlow would give you x60 and x150. x150 would be ideal whereas x225 (with a x3) would be a bit too much. Later you could think about adding a better quality eyepiece, such as an 8mm which would add x94 and x188 which would be better.

[bosun21]

An 8mm and a 25mm BST Starguider eyepieces would be cost effective way of upgrading your existing supplied eyepieces. The BST 2x barlow is reasonably priced and good quality also. These upgrades will improve your views and provide more choice of magnification.

[Hazy81]

I read that this was going to be an expensive hobby, but didn't really believe it till I started looking for a power tank, new lens, power cable possibly some sort of seat.....the list goes on and on! 

Not to mention two night camping on a dark sky site next week!

[Reeny]

I have the 150p Heritage (the manual scope, not go to) and I would struggle to use a barlow with the Heritage screw in plastic focuser.

The barlow will extend the focal point away from the scope body, and require several turns of the focuser to get the sharpness back.

The focus is the weak point on these telescopes. I can only use light weight eyepieces to avoid flex in the light path components. And I have nearly unscrewed the eyepiece holder completely out by accident.

A 5mm eyepiece will be much better than 2x 10mm. The 25mm as supplied is a good eyepiece, but the 10mm is awful. My 4mm eyepiece has too much magnification to give a sharp image on most nights (at 188x mag) so a 5mm at 150x should be perfect for the scope. Make sure you get a light wieght 5mm if you go down that route.

You can use O-rings or spacers to get all your EPs at the same focal point, to ease the set up time, with less twisting in & out of the focus adjuster.

[Nyctimene]

I'm owner of the smaller Heritage 130 P Flextube, and the compact Baader Q-Turret 2.25x Barlow works very well with this scope. Small and lightweight, giving sharp views with the 66° UWA 9 and 6 mmf (244x mag!), as well as with the 26 mmf/62° ES LER. Compared side to side, it is not much behind it's famous brother, the Zeiss Abbe VIP 2x Barlow. Reasonably priced; but you'd need some patience, when ordering from these:

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p5503_Baader-1-25--Q-Turret-Barlow-and-photo-converter---2-25x-und-1-3x.html

Hth

Stephan