Telescope Advice

[EricW]

Eric,

For the Meade, do the Barlows have to be made by Meade? If so, I can't find much, except this one.

be

Hi Brian,

Let me dig up some links today. There are way better sites to buy this gear than what you're looking at.

For now, dig around on: http://www.buytelescopes.com

And nope, you are not locked into any particular brand of barlow. The difference is going to be quality. For 2" optics, I would buy Televue. You'll pay a premium, but it's worth it. For 1 1/4", all barlows are pretty much the same. I have a cheap Celestron barlow (from the above link) and it works just fine.

Also, you may want to buy a copy of Sky and Telescope magazine and dig around their website. Lots of good stuff there.

[EricW]

Televue Barlows here:

http://www.astronomics.com/main/Televue_Ba...3MCFACE1/Page/1

It might seem expensive, but a 5X barlow is some pretty powerful mojo. The prices are pretty much fixed, so you can buy from whoever you're most comfortable with.

The 2X barlows are all pretty much made by the same cats, so a Celestron or Meade or whatever is all pretty much the same quality-wise (including Televue):

http://www.astronomics.com/main/Celestron_...9JAMFHD0/Page/1

If you're starting out with mainly planetary viewing, 1 1/4" eyepieces will work perfectly. You need the 2" eyepieces for wider-field viewing such as nebulae.

You will also want some filters for lunar/planetary viewing:

http://www.astronomics.com/main/Eyepiece_C...KXU4PU20/Page/1

The moon is blindingly bright, as are some of the planets.

And if you want to upgrade from Plossl eyepieces, look at these:

http://www.astronomics.com/main/Televue_Ra...LJF70M80/Page/1

The above is what you want when you go to higher mag. I have an 8mm Plossl, and it's practically useless, which is why people plunk down $250 a pop for the Radians.

Edited May 23, 2007 by EricW

[Jman]

Here is a new resource on Astronomy. Haven't really dug into it yet. It's a beta program using Google Earth. Pretty cool.

You need to download the newest version of Google Earth.

Here...

http://earth.google.com/sky/index.html

Jim