New To Astronomy & Need Eyepiece Selection Help

[optwebman]

Ian, one more thing to consider is how much will you use these eyepieces if you get into CCD imaging? I'm afraid that once you download a nebula with that wide field telescope you'll never look back or through your oculars again. You sound like someone that likes to plan ahead and get the most from your telescope and once you see the dynamics of a CCD image as compared to your eyes I can tell you who the winner will be and your 80mm maybe the lifetime scope you were looking for. There's a cross road in this hobby where visual and digital seperate and the result is visual people end up with larger aperture and digital go for a larger chip. Ask yourself these questions and then see if you want to invest in more glass or more pixels. Just food for thought.

OPTwebman

[Rick Keppler]

Originally Posted by optwebman

Ian, one more thing to consider is how much will you use these eyepieces if you get into CCD imaging? I'm afraid that once you download a nebula with that wide field telescope you'll never look back or through your oculars again. You sound like someone that likes to plan ahead and get the most from your telescope and once you see the dynamics of a CCD image as compared to your eyes I can tell you who the winner will be and your 80mm maybe the lifetime scope you were looking for. There's a cross road in this hobby where visual and digital seperate and the result is visual people end up with larger aperture and digital go for a larger chip. Ask yourself these questions and then see if you want to invest in more glass or more pixels. Just food for thought.

OPTwebman

While I agree that I do more imaging than eyeball observing lately, it isn't that I don't use an eyepiece from time to time as well. In fact, sometimes I run two complete telescope systems, one to image with and one to observe with. Nothing is more boring than looking at a computer screen doing virtually nothing but counting time while the splendours of the heavens wheel about overhead being ignored. Once the guiding is working and the imaging run is going, there is virtually nothing to touch for 3 to 8 hours. In addition, getting into imaging is far from cheap. Computers, cameras, guiders and a really decent mount are all required except for the most minimal systems, such as a Toucam or similar, useable only on bright solar system object such as planets and the moon.

The 80mm f6 scope should be a good widefield telescope, commonly referred to as a RFT (rich field telescope). It is not designed for high power magnification and it probably will not work well when forced to do so. Get a decent low power eyepiece like the 24 Panoptic, a high quality barlow and both the UHC and OIII filters. It should be a fun piece to use and will show plenty. There are a couple of lists of good items to look for if one is north of the equator. One of course is the Messier list. The other is the RASC finest NGC/IC list. While the Messier list contains most of the showpiece objects, there are a few that were not included and they make up the basis for the finest list.