What eyepieces to purchase for my new telescope.?

Question

i just bought a new MEADE GO-TO (COMPUTER CONTROLLED TELESCOPE) 130 mm GO-TO Reflector..it came with 25 mm, 12.5 mm, 9 mm, 4 mm eyepieces. they are 1.25" barrel sizes and my telescope also came with an adapter to fit 2" barrels as well. with all eyepieces i can easily see most planets, amazing images of the moon, and different nebula. my 4mm can focus in on jupiter and i can actually make out the rings of gases on that planet. i would love to see more and more clearly.

would a 2" barrel eyepiece be better and what focal lens should i get? i am not looking to pay more than $500 if i don't have to. but i understand i would probably need to spend more to see more. any suggestions?

Answer 1

Make sure that your scope will accept a two inch eyepiece before you get one.  2 inch eyepieces are good if you are wanting an eyepiece with a low power with a huge field of view.  But with the eyepieces you have the best investment you can get would be a good barlow  lens, they double the magnification of whatever eyepiece you use with it.  If you do get any new eyepieces I'd say just get some higher end ones to replace the ones that came with it, I highly recommend the Orion Stratus line.

Seeing clearly has more to do with the atmospheric conditions than your eyepiece, a very steady atmosphere will allow to use very high power eyepieces but most of time the atmosphere is fairly unstable and that will limit how much we can push our scopes.  Also magnification is limited by the size of the aperture we have, in good seeing conditions a good way to figure out what your highest useful magnification is 50 * aperture in inches, with a 130mm scope that would equate to 255x

Answer 2

Better eyepieces will help. I like Orion for affordable quality eyepieces. www.oriontelescopes.com The Epic ED-2 series has extra low dispersion glass which allows more light to reach your eye. They are 67.95 each. The selection of focal lengths you have is a nice spread. I would add a 32mm and a 2X barlow, the barlow multiplies the power of each lens by 2X. Televue are considered some of the best eyepieces around but are several hundred $$ each. If you are planning on moving up to a 12-18" scope eventually then they would be a good investment. Your scope does not gather enough light to get the benefit of televue eyepieces. The size of your primary mirror 130mm is the most limiting factor for you. 2" eyepieces won't help much.

Answer 3

Stay with what you have right now-- head over to  www.cloudynights.com and ask questions on the Forums---

Also try to attend a local Astronomy Club star party and look through other brands of eyepieces.

Clear Skies

Answer 4

d -

I think I would recommend patience. It is certainly true that a 2 inch Televue Nagler eyepiece would improve your view, but I am not sure that it would improve it as much as you are hoping for. Of course, if you buy one that gives you  a magnification in the neighborhood of 100X (I think your scope focal length is 1000 mm, so this means an eyepiece focal length of 9 to 12 mm) - then you could always keep it for your next scope. And you would probably use it so much that you would not need another one for at least a while. But my sense is that you would be buying an eyepiece that is better than the scope instead of one that matches it. In addition, it might be so heavy that the mount has trouble when it is installed. A top of the line eyepiece should be used with a top of the line scope, or you are paying for something that the system as a whole probably cannot deliver.

I would frankly get used to using the scope first. Go to locations that are as clear and dark as possible (this will help a lot more than a new eyepiece) and learn how to see things using averted vision and patience. This is an acquired talent that takes a little practice. You may find that it makes more sense to upgrade aperture before diving in to new eyepieces. I have found the hard way that a clear night in the country delivers views of galaxy spiral arms, cluster resolution, and nebular detail that is just impossible to see in the suburbs.

If you have your heart set on adding eyepieces, the best are probably the Televue line. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for. Be sure to understand the meaning of terms like "Apparent Field of View" and "eye relief" when shopping for eyepieces.    

Answer 5

you just bought the blasted scope. use it and get to know it before you start buying other stuff. quality eyepieces are the standard upgrade. i like televue radians.

there is no point in using 2" eyepieces on this scope.

if you want better views, get a better (bigger) scope. a 130mm scope can only do so much.

Answer 6

Beginners in astronomy often have a tendency to overaccessorize: to buy too many accessories rather than learning how to use their standard accessories to the fullest. The four eyepieces which came with your scope provide a good range of magnifications, and are of reasonably good quality. Practise using them all with a variety of astronomical objects so that you learn what works best. This will also show you, after a while, where the gaps are.

If you find yourself using your 25mm a lot of the time, and longing for a bit wider field of view, then consider adding a 2" wide field eyepiece. However, there really are very few objects in the sky large enough to require much more than a 1 degree field of view.

Answer 7

Meade Research Grade eyepieces are good. I bought a 6" Newtonian reflector f/10 from Hal Povenmire once. It was quite good, though of course the mount was one of Hal's homemade lead pipe specials. Kept it for years, then gave it to my brother because I didn't have the room for it anymore. I used Meade RG eyepieces in it for timing graze occultations, planet bagging, and double star splitting.