Eye piece suggestions for a 16” F4.5 Dobsonian

[tomato]

Sorry if this is going over old ground, but having completed construction of a more user friendly truss tube Dobsonian, I do intend to use it and try my hand at visual observing mostly from my Bortle 5/6 backyard. The only eyepiece I currently possess is a Baader Hyperion zoom, and so am looking for suggestions for 2 or 3 mid range quality eyepieces that would complement what I have. I’m sure the top end eyepieces are great but they can cost more than the entire scope conversion project.

I should indicate what type of object I wish to observe and the answer is DSOs, the moon and planets, which I know is not very helpful.

Perhaps my first purchase should be the Baader Barlow to work with the zoom eyepiece, but with these optics should a coma corrector be first on the list?

Thanks in advance.
 

 

[Don Pensack]

Suggestion:

Figure a low power eyepiece in the 30mm range.  Then divide by 1.4 for each higher mag up to 300x.  You can keep going if your seeing regularly supports higher powers.

30mm, 21mm,15mm,10-11mm,7-8mm,5-6mm

[globular]

I suspect your Bortle 5/6 skies will limit your low power viewing to 15 to 20mm range most of the time.  Now if you can lug it down the road to Church Stretton then a 30mm eyepiece will look amazing.

And I suspect your typical seeing conditions will limit your high power viewing too, keeping you to 300 to 350x max most of the time (except on the moon where it'll easily take a lot more at lot more of the time). 

So most of the time you'll be in the range of your existing zoom. I'd give that a go for a while and see if you find it too limiting - and at which end(s).

I think your own suggestions of a barlow (to give you more high power options with your zoom) and a coma corrector (to sharpen everything up) would be my first purchases. 

It's also worth remembering that at F/4.5 a lot of eyepieces struggle to perform - so it's worth taking note of EP reviews done specifically in fast scopes and don't take as much notice of gushing reviews of EPs when the reviewer is using a much slower telescope than yours.

Edited August 2 by globular
typo

[Xilman]

13 hours ago, tomato said:

Sorry if this is going over old ground, but having completed construction of a more user friendly truss tube Dobsonian, I do intend to use it and try my hand at visual observing mostly from my Bortle 5/6 backyard. The only eyepiece I currently possess is a Baader Hyperion zoom, and so am looking for suggestions for 2 or 3 mid range quality eyepieces that would complement what I have. I’m sure the top end eyepieces are great but they can cost more than the entire scope conversion project.

I should indicate what type of object I wish to observe and the answer is DSOs, the moon and planets, which I know is not very helpful.

Perhaps my first purchase should be the Baader Barlow to work with the zoom eyepiece, but with these optics should a coma corrector be first on the list?

Thanks in advance.
 

 

About 35 years ago I had an 18" Dob in Bortle 5/6 and I am now desperately trying to remember which eyepieces I used. 20mm and 8mm sounds vaguely familiar

[Mr Spock]

First suggestion would be the StellaLyra 30mm UFF. There's none better.

At a very reasonable cost the 13mm Nirvana is excellent, so are the others, 10, 7, 4 - except the 16mm - avoid that as it has field curvature. The 82° they have is very usable.

The best view I had with a 16" (not mine) was in Bortle 4 skies and 31mm Nagler with OIII filter. The Witches' Broom was etched in fine detail. Something I'll never forget.

I have found with my 12" the 30mm and 13mm are the most used. CO says I'm Bortle 6, but I feel it's worse than that. 30mm has a bright background, but 13mm darkens it quite a bit. I have in between options but they aren't needed. I have found at f5 it doesn't need a coma corrector, probably f4.5 does.

[tomato]

Thanks for the feedback, lots of well considered suggestions. 
Im currently trying to make the Starsense unit work with my iPhone 13. The trouble is I have no distant terrestrial objects to align the scope and the Starsense, and the moon and planets are currently out of view. I am having to rely on bright stars and there are just so many of them in the FOV it’s tricky knowing which one the scope is pointing at.

Now I know why I got into imaging first and visual second.😉

[niallk]

I've a 15" f4.5, and use a P2.

My "base" EP is a 10E, then added a 17E and a 6E.  There are a few alternatives at different price points out there.

I added a 31T5 and an 8E afterwards too, but the 17-10-6 is the foundation.

[Bivanus]

Money is always a consideration, so while I'm all for TeleVues (Nagler boy here 😄) may I suggest you have a look at APM line with a line-up of 13mm 100° / 20mm 100° / UFF 30mm 70° (the last one is really found in many guises like the StellaLyra mentioned by @Mr Spock)