Looking for some help with eyepieces.

[yankeepants]

I have had my Nexstar 6SE for a good month now and have been having fun getting to know my collection of eyepieces.

I was wondering if you good people would give me your opinion on my current setup and comment if there are any big holes that I should be filling.

I am primarily interested in viewing but may consider some form of astrophotography in the future. I have a canon 350d but no attachments and wondered is this the best way to go if I just want to photograph the moon and planets, or should i be considering a neximage or something similar. My laptop is C£^p so I would need to replace that as well.

I currently have a generic set of plossls from revelation or somelike ranging from 6,9,12, 15, 20 & 32mm - They are ok, but i can see a huge difference looking through other peoples pieces and these are not ones I will be looking to keep.

I have a Clestron E-Lux 40mm that was given to me with the scope in addition to a Pentax xf 12mm that I have recently bought.

I have a Baader Hyperion 21mm coming in the post and was thinking about buying a high power piece at 3 - 5mm

Any thoughts or suggestions would be gratefully received.

[pvaz]

You have a wide collection, bigger then mine. Only place you can improve is quality and wide field for the focal lengths you use more.

Find out which of your current EPs give you the best rate between magnification and FoV and then upgrade those, in other words, upgrade the ones you use the most. I find 4 EPs (or 2 with a good barlow) provide everything I need 95% of the time. Then I have some cheaper ones for the gaps and for when I got kids peeking through my scope (better safe then sorrow).

[bobafett]

I too have recently bought a nexstar 6SE and have a similar range of budget plossl's so I'm in a similar position as I feel the quality of the eyepieces don't match the quality of the scope. Upgrading will be a slow process though as there's other accessories already on the "need to buy" list !

I have however just bought a 5mm Celestron X-Cel eyepiece for planetary views as my 6mm plossl feels like the worst out of the bunch so I'll let you know how that works coupled with the 6SE once the eyepiece arrives and I get a little viewing time to test it out

[david o]

Paulo's advice is good.

Spend more time using and getting comfortable with your equipment, you'll get to know if you are "missing" an EP. And only upgrade the two or three EPs that get most use.

A very good guide to choosing EPs is The Warthog's thread: Eyepieces - the very least you need.

It's very rare that the seeing conditions permit more than about 200 - 220x magnification, so with the 6SE's 1500mm fL at f/10 I'd be thinking of 7 or 8mm for your high mag EP (giving 214x or 188x), certainly no shorter than 6mm (250x). Then for nights of exceptional seeing use a Barlow (Celestron's Ultima 2x is good) to increase the mag of your shorter EPs.