A quick lunar tour of my eyepieces

[wulfrunian]

Dilemma on Tuesday night.

I wanted to get the scope out looking at the Moon at the first opportunity, for a couple of reasons. First to go through all my eyepieces on the new scope, and see what it was like at higher magnifications, especially with my new Barlow. Second, to see how sharp the images were; I have a confession here - I find the idea of collimation rather scary. When I had the scope out before, the out-of-focus star test looked pretty good to me, and I was hoping to get away with it for the time being! And at 8.30ish, there was the Moon, shining brightly.

Trouble was... I'm only just getting over the flu, and Wednesday morning was my first shift back at work. Struggled with conscience, and the sky won - just for half an hour

The seeing must have been pretty steady, because I was able to go up to the highest magnification I've got. Lovely sharp images, especially with the TV zoom, and I tried everything with the Barlow too. I even managed to get it focussed on 8mm with the Barlow in, giving me x300, which was a nice surprise! I've ended up now with a 24mm, 25mm and 26mm, so I thought I'd compare those... the 26mm Meade is a bit sharper than the 25mm Skywatcher, but the Skywatcher gives more eye relief, which is good for me as I wear glasses. The zoom at 24mm is sharper than either, though not as wide a field as the Skywatcher. The 10mm Skywatcher is okay but not as good as the other, might replace this sometime.

So my conclusions were.... Impressed with the TAL Barlow. Will probably sell the 26mm now, as I'll use either of the other two. And I'll probably be cowardly and hold off attempting collimation till I've got someone with me who knows what they're doing

[johninderby]

I found with the 250PX a 3mm eyepiece works very well on the moon, so you could go to slightly more magnification than you've tried.

The William Optics 3mm SPL eyepiece is a great semi-budget planetary eyepiece. As sharp and contrasty as a UWAN/Nirvana eyepiece but only 55 degree field of view, but then it's only half the price as well. Eye relief is exceptionally good for a 3mm eyepiece at 20mm.

My favorite lunar eyepiece on this scope is a barlowed 6mm Ethos.

John

[wulfrunian]

Thanks for those tips - Christmas is coming