First light and new eyepiece

[Steve_meg]

Hi all after my first viewing with my first telescope, skywatcher 250px, last night i decided a few things.

1. I really need to learn more about the night sky! I had fun looking at the stars but I didnt have a clue when I was or where anything was really. Also didnt help that my finderscope hadnt be set up.

2. the main thing really was I like the view through the supplied 25mm eyepiece and thought the 10mm was ok, but really wanted a better eyepiece and more zoom. So today after a 90 mile round trip I have a new eyepiece and barlow.

The nice guys at astronomia gave me so useful tips and suggested a celestron zoom eyepiece 8mm-24mm and a viexen 2x barlow. so hopefully that will give me a great different range of focal length.

[Ad Astra]

I'll be interested to see how the zoom works for you, I've never used one in a telescope before.

Although it seems counter-intuitive, you might try a Low power, wide angle eyepiece. A 32 or 40mm eyepiece with your big aperture would really help you to grasp nebulae and clusters - especially some of the larger things like Pleiades, Hyades, Orion's Nebula, etc.

Dan

[Steve_meg]

I was thinking about getting a 32mm or 40mm as well and also a laser collimating eyepiece. but buying a sw 250px, cheshire, moon filter for £450 then another 115 on the zoom and barlow i had to stop somewhere

just hope the zoom works well, which im sure it will.

[Astro Imp]

Hi Steve,

Glad you managed to get out with your new scope and enjoyed yourself.

To help you on your way I would suggest you align your finder during the day on a distant church spire, electric pylon or similar.

I can recommend Stellarium, a free planatarium program to help you around the night sky. With this you can customise the view to suit your location and set the time/date for your next viewing time.

If you want to know what to observe go to Tonight's Sky for a list of objects.

HTH

Enjoy.

[Steve_meg]

Thought id give my views on the zoom eyepiece for ad astra and others. well i first started with just the eyepiece, which gave a nice very at 24mm and continue to give a nice view all the way to 8mm, was very happy with the view quality.However on annoyance, and maybe not the eyepieces fault, but it was a bit loose in the focuser. This meant that when trying to rotate the zoom the whole eyepiece rotated instead. just worth thinking if you have a skywatcher with the same focus as my 250px. however seated in the barlow all was good. and so were the views. this is how i managed to see saturn clearly with rings. so overall i think a zoom is a good bit of equipment to have.

P.s please dont take it as a review as such, as i am so new my good view might not be to other experienced people.

Edit: Just thought I would add that the field of view isnt that good at 24mm, its down to 40 degrees. at 8mm its at 60 degrees which isnt bad.