*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

VaderDSL said:
good thing, is for planets and the moon, they are bright enough that you don’t need a lot of light gathering capability, so an 80mm or there abouts refractor would do well. They are fairly light and small enough compared to a larger aperture scope, they are sealed, as they use lenses, not mirrors (excluding the eyepiece end) so require less maintenance, you don’t need to collimating mirrors.

maybe something like a skywatcher evostar 9?0? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/evostar/skywatcher-evostar-90-az3.html

Bear in mind the planets do move, so you need to move the scope to follow them, you can get a motorised option but that then adds to the cost.

The below video is sort of the stuff you can expect to see, but again the atmosphere plays a big part in how it looks.

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So thinking I will pick this up now :)

This place has free delivery, anyone used them, they any good?

https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-evostar-90-az3-telescope.html
 
So had my first proper go tonight and saw Saturn and Jupiter :D

With Jupiter I saw 4 moons around it, none with Saturn though.

The image quality I saw was not far off to these:

jupiter-in-small-scope-n.jpg


saturn-in-small-scope-n.jpg


Hoping I will be able to at least achieve that or maybe better with this scope once I get a better night and learn to use it better. Or maybe if I got better eyepieces or something (barlow lens?).

Was not a very dark night and also clouds kept getting in the way.
 
Basically I think as it is, it's only 90x magnification, but can go to 180x if I spend more. Someone mentions buying a Sky-Watcher SP Plossl helps. Any ideas?
 
VaderDSL said:
Edit : Also ignore magnifications, it's just marketing imo. For example a telescope may be advertised at 400X magnification, it might be able to do 400X magnification, but you won't see anything. The viewing conditions based on the atmosphere is in most cases the limiting factor
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I was looking over the past few pages and only just saw this. Would you say it is a waste going for a Sky-Watcher SP Plossl? A person who left a review that has the scope seems to suggest it helped a lot.
 
TNA said:
I was looking over the past few pages and only just saw this. Would you say it is a waste going for a Sky-Watcher SP Plossl? A person who left a review that has the scope seems to suggest it helped a lot.
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It might work for you, depends of what focal length eye piece you go for. But you might find going to a smaller fl eyepiece might not give better views, it’s very dependent on the atmosphere. I think you scope comes with a 10mm and 25mm for the 36x and 90x magnification. The 7.5mm plossl will give 120x and might be ok. As you go lower on fl, the eye relief gets shorter and shorter, I.e you have to get your eye closer to the eyepiece, and if wearing glasses can be an issue.

Might be worth grabbing one to try? I find with my scope my 18mm gives the best views, 2032mm focal length = 112x mag.
 
VaderDSL said:
It might work for you, depends of what focal length eye piece you go for. But you might find going to a smaller fl eyepiece might not give better views, it’s very dependent on the atmosphere. I think you scope comes with a 10mm and 25mm for the 36x and 90x magnification. The 7.5mm plossl will give 120x and might be ok. As you go lower on fl, the eye relief gets shorter and shorter, I.e you have to get your eye closer to the eyepiece, and if wearing glasses can be an issue.

Might be worth grabbing one to try? I find with my scope my 18mm gives the best views, 2032mm focal length = 112x mag.
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Hmm, interesting. Was thinking or going for another 10mm and a 2x barlow to get 180x. But I get the feeling that much magnification may lead to a blurrier image? Also maybe using a barlow may lower the image quality/sharpness?

You are of course right I have the 10mm and 25mm. Not tried the latter yet. I will be giving that a go tonight hopefully, that will mean 36x mag from my understanding so mainly for the moon is my guess, but I am intriguing to see what Jupiter would look like with it, probably not much at all :)

One thing I did want to ask is, there is like a zoom feature on the scope (or is this just a focus?), if I zoom in too much, Jupiter becomes bigger but then I lose all details and it becomes a spec of light and the same if I zoom out. I need to play with it to find the sweet spot. Can anyone explain what that feature in relation to magnification number discussed above? Like for example when I zoom in too much and Jupiter gets bigger (loses all the detail), am I zooming in more than 90 mag at that point and hence why I lose the image quality?

Finally, is it worth buying the barlow at all? Something worth having for planetary viewing or is it something that helps amplify the image but can as a result get the the way of image quality vs going for a smaller focal length eye piece?

Currently what you are saying about just getting a 7.5mm plossl makes a lot of sense instead of getting a barlow and a better 10mm eye piece which is what I was thinking.
 
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I think the zoom you mentioned is the focusser, it won’t be a zoom feature, but as you say just focus, it appears to get bigger/smaller but it’s simply the image coming in and out of focus. The magnification, to all intents stays the same.

honestly I find my Barlow barely gets any use, I use it only when trying to split double stars, but I rarely do that. And I’ve only ever used my Barlow I think twice, for the moon. It gives too high a magnification for me and is rarely usable.

You can get zoom eyepieces, but they tend to have drawbacks in quality, unless spending hundreds of £, so much better to get separate eyepieces to start imo.

I think grabbing the 7.5mm might be a good cost effective option.
 
VaderDSL said:
I think the zoom you mentioned is the focusser, it won’t be a zoom feature, but as you say just focus, it appears to get bigger/smaller but it’s simply the image coming in and out of focus. The magnification, to all intents stays the same.

honestly I find my Barlow barely gets any use, I use it only when trying to split double stars, but I rarely do that. And I’ve only ever used my Barlow I think twice, for the moon. It gives too high a magnification for me and is rarely usable.

You can get zoom eyepieces, but they tend to have drawbacks in quality, unless spending hundreds of £, so much better to get separate eyepieces to start imo.

I think grabbing the 7.5mm might be a good cost effective option.
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Thanks man. Really appreciate your input as usual. Will definitely pick up a 7.5mm eyepiece. Any recommendations? Something that offers good price for performance.

Also do you use any filters? Any you can recommend?
 
TNA said:
Thanks man. Really appreciate your input as usual. Will definitely pick up a 7.5mm eyepiece. Any recommendations? Something that offers good price for performance.

Also do you use any filters? Any you can recommend?
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anytime, the plossls are all pretty common so they benefit from mass production bonuses, so cheap and decent enough for general usage. You might be best with the https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-sp-series-super-plossl-eyepieces-125.html 7.5mm plossl from skywatcher. They’ll all be pretty similar at this price point, <£30. And fits with your current eyepieces.

I did buy some filters, I bought a light pollution filter and a filter to reduce brightness of the moon. Again they don’t get used much. The light pollution filter helps a little, but I don’t think the filters are worth paying out for cost/benefit just yet.

eye pieces will be the first upgrades that will help the most imo. For the cost. Especially for the plossls.
 
VaderDSL said:
anytime, the plossls are all pretty common so they benefit from mass production bonuses, so cheap and decent enough for general usage. You might be best with the https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-sp-series-super-plossl-eyepieces-125.html 7.5mm plossl from skywatcher. They’ll all be pretty similar at this price point, <£30. And fits with your current eyepieces.

I did buy some filters, I bought a light pollution filter and a filter to reduce brightness of the moon. Again they don’t get used much. The light pollution filter helps a little, but I don’t think the filters are worth paying out for cost/benefit just yet.

eye pieces will be the first upgrades that will help the most imo. For the cost. Especially for the plossls.
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Excellent. Will likely grab that one then. The other one I saw and got me a little intriguing is:

https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/second-hand-meade-series-3000-plossl-67mm-eyepiece.html

I wonder apart from comfort, is the image quality going to be better. Would not mind paying the extra if so. No sure if it would fit though.
 
I don’t think the quality will be substantially better, what you gain in quality, assuming the Meade is better quality than the skywatcher one, you might lose in the extra magnification. The 6.3 will give 142x mag, it might be great, or it might be too much for your local conditions.

It should fit fine, most eye pieces are 1.25 inch, especially plossls and lower focal length ones. The bigger 2 inch eyepieces are typically different designs, more expensive, have bigger fov etc.
 
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