Which filters and lenses

[**stormrider]

My new celestron 130eq is on its way!!

What filters or lenses would I need for better viewing??

Thanks in advance

[John]

It's really best not to rush into buying extra accessories until you have some experience of using the scope. The "used" section is full of things that seemed a good idea at the time !. Once you have used the scope and got some idea of your own interests, thats when you can make informed decisions about the next purchases.

[pvaz]

I'm with John on this, better use it a bit before buying other gear.

Maybe just a couple of exceptions:

- If you want to observe the moon, a neutral density filter is a must as the moon is just too bright through a scope. This are cheap.

- If you want to observe planets a barlow will allow you to use a higher magnification with the EPs provided with the scope. Maybe a TAL 2x, Orion Shorty or a celestron ultima. Try the sales section for a better price. I usually wouldn't recomend this but as your scope only provides 65x out of the box it may be a good idea to get a bit more power from the start.

- A red light torch to keep dark adaptation while looking at charts or taking notes.

- A good star atlas such as SkyTelescope's "pocket sky atlas" or, if your just starting now, a copy of Turn Left at Orion.

[**stormrider]

Thanks to you both :-) Sorry to be a dumbass but i'm completely new to this but what is a -TAL 2x, Orion Shorty or a celestron ultima??

Thanks again

[John]

Thanks to you both :-) Sorry to be a dumbass but i'm completely new to this but what is a -TAL 2x, Orion Shorty or a celestron ultima??

Thanks again

Hi,

They are brands / models of barlow lens - a barlow lens is used between your eyepiece and the scope and increases the magnification you get by 2x, 3x or more.

It's like a foreign language when you are new to it so don't worry

[**stormrider]

Oh I see. so you have 3 different forms of magnification right or wrong??

[John]

Oh I see. so you have 3 different forms of magnification right or wrong??

Well you can use just an eyepiece or an eyepiece plus a barlow lens so thats 2 forms I guess.

The nice thing about a barlow lens is that you can use it with all your eyepieces to double their magnfication. So a set of 3 eyepieces can become 6 in effect.

[pvaz]

In a nut shell:

- Your scope gathers the light of a wide area into a smaller area.

- Then an Eyepiece (EP) pics up that light and magnifies it. You change EPs to change the magnification.

- Optionally you can put a barlow lens in between the EP and the scope. Using a 2x Barlow doubles the power you can achieve with any EP.

In your case your scope brings a 20mm EP and a 10mm EP.

Unfortunately the 20mm + barlow combination will be redundant as it will give you the same 65x you get with the 10mm alone.

Using the 10mm + barlow will give you 130x which is great for the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter.

Usually telescope makers provide stock EPs that are not multiple of each other by a factor of 2 or 3, to avoid the redundancy when using barlows. For some reason the 130eq package doesn't take this under consideration.

[**stormrider]

Fantastic. Thanks for your reply Pvaz!! I have learnt so much in the cpouple of days :-)

Any recomendations for the barlow lens then??

[John]

Fantastic. Thanks for your reply Pvaz!! I have learnt so much in the cpouple of days :-)

Any recomendations for the barlow lens then??

For £35 the TAL 2x barlow is a good one. To get better quality (eg: Celestron Ultima 2x) the cost rises steeply to around £80. Unless you can find a used on for sale that is.