Guest chrishewett Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Question number one! I have a skywatcher 200mm f/5, one super 10 long eye relief ep and one super 25 wideangle long eye relief ep. I also have a 2"eyepiece adapter but no 2" eps. No barlow lens. Can I have some advice as to how these will perform and what I need to improve the range. As these came with the scope I assume they are skywatcher. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daz Type-R Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Chris. If these are anything like the 2 standard ep's I got with my Skywatcher 200P, then I hated the 10mm, found the eye relief next to useless, plus the views through it were not that good. On the flip side, the 25mm was ok, not great, but better than the 10mm one. I stuck with the 25mm one for nearly a year and bought a cheap barlow to get it down to 12.5mm, never used the 10. But to be honest, I would ditch both of them and get some decent quality ep's, you will not be dissapointed. Unfortunatly in this game, the more they cost, the better they tend to be. BUT (there is all ways a but) what suits one person may not suit the next, ep's are a personal thing, you either love em or hate em. If on a budget, I would look to upgrade to the BST Explorer ep's from Sky's the limit, £45-50 a ep and will be a massive improvemnt over the stock ep's. You can even "buy" say 5-6 at a time on a trial period and return the ones you dont want for a "refund", so basically, only paying for the ones you keep. Next you could look at a Badder Hyperion Zoom, this is a 8-24mm ep in one, currently costs about £175, I have one of these and love it! Next up is the Celestron X-cels, loads of good reviews, not used/seen them myself, also there are the Meade 2000, 3000 etc series ep's, again, decent reviews. After that you are into TeleVue teratory, very expensive but very, very good, the Naglers are circa £500 a ep!!!!!!!! Your best bet will be to get to a stargazing event, either ours at Belper or the ELAC meetings near Skegness at Gib point and look through someones else's ep's in your scope, we dont mind, that way you can "try before you buy". As for barlows, again, some love em, some hate em, me personally, I don't want to use one, if I ever went down that route, I would throw £100 at a Televue Powermate, does the same as a barlow, but miles, miles better quality. Any further queations fire away and happy hunting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daz Type-R Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Also, with regards to your question on range, range is not really that important, to increase the range, you need a more powerfull ep, a 4mm ep will make the object look bigger in the fov (Field Of View) than a 25mm ep will. This is called magnification. To work out the magnification of a given ep, you need to divide the focal length in mm of your scope (so if you have a F5 200P, your focal length must be 1000mm - 1000mm divided by 200mm =5) by the focal length of your ep, so a 4mm ep in your scope will be..... 1000mm / 4mm = 250. So the magnification of a 4mm ep in your scope will be 250 times mag. In this country, it is possible that that much magnification will just result in a blury image in the ep, as well as incresing the object you are looking at, you will also increas all the atmospheric distortions and turbulance that goes with it, so you see, magnification is not everything! Personally, but this is just my opion, I would not try and push your magnification above 200x mag, any more the quality will degrade. To me, a smaller sharper image is better than a large blury image! Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheila Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 would second the Baader Hyperion Zoom, very pleased with that one Sheila Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catman161 Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 I'll third the Hyperion Zoom, absolutley awesome, versatile eyepiece Also just for the record (in my opinion) Kim (BrantUK) is the reason why most of us have a Hyperion Zoom LOL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daz Type-R Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 I'll third the Hyperion Zoom, absolutley awesome, versatile eyepiece Also just for the record (in my opinion) Kim (BrantUK) is the reason why most of us have a Hyperion Zoom LOL! Yep, all Kim's fault, I still say he has shares in Badder! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheila Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 yep Kims fault with me too LOL Sheila Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brantuk Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Lol - wish I did have shares in Baader Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 A Baader Hyperion zoom is my next buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tweedledum Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 HI Chris, Good advice above, you may find the links below useful. Best Regards Damian http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.htm http://www.stargazing.net/naa/scopemath.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Fluke Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 HI Chris, Good advice above, you may find the links below useful. Best Regards Damian http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.htm http://www.stargazing.net/naa/scopemath.htm Love the first link Damian - not seen that before. Great intro from Daz too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brantuk Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Also google CCDCalc - it's got a good fov simulator that you can install and run independent of t'internet - totally free Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrishewett Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Thanks for the good advice. I thought it would cost money! I like the idea of the Baader hyperion. I will try out my present eps to get used to the scope then decide what to buy, probably a couple of better quality eps and then the baader. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rock Doctor Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 I'll also recommend the Baarder Hyperion 8-24mm click stop zoom, I love mine. Don't get too hung up on too high a magnification, as Daz has said you may get bigger images but in less than perfect seeing conditions (atmospheric turbulence) the bigger image will becpme blurred and less sharp. Also the field of view will get so small that it can become difficult to find things in the sky. An example of this was looking at Saturn through the BH zoom, ramping it up to the 8mm stop gave a blurry image the best image for sharpness, size and contrast was at the 12mm stop. I also have a BH 5mm EP which if the conditions are absolutely perfect then the views are great but in reality it seldom gets used because of the generally less than perfect seeing conditions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawson Posted February 26, 2013 Share Posted February 26, 2013 Does abyone have any experience with the Meade 4000 8-24 zoom? https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/6371112848159938955?hl=en&q=meade%204000%20zoom&oq=meade+4000+zoom&gs_l=products-cc.3...2230.7682.0.8112.17.7.1.9.10.0.90.529.7.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.9ryW6GvAjhI&sa=X&ei=Yl8sUdLpO8jV0QXo4YCoAg&ved=0CDYQ8wIwAA#hsec:overview How does it compare to the BH zoom? It's half the price but is it half as good and is half as good good enough? James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brantuk Posted February 26, 2013 Share Posted February 26, 2013 In a SaN review the Meade was just beaten by the BH mostly on internal reflections iirc - though it was pretty comparable. The worst one was the Skywatcher and the best was the Pentax. If we get to coincide at a session you can try mine out and see what you think James. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now