Hi George,

By all means, use the Barlow no matter what anyone says. The advantages are that you get higher power with better eye relief, better performance from your eyepieces with a reasonably short focus (f5.5) system as well as a greater selection of useable powers. Most affordable good eyepieces (Plossel, RKN etc.) do not like the wide cone of light with the faster systems and will usually be better when the Barlow is used.Of course, the Barlow should be of excellent quality. Some of the best now available are the three and four element APO designs. If you can get to any of the larger star parties such as Stellafane in the east or Table Mountain out west, you will see quite a few large DOBs and all will have Barlows in use at least part of the time.

Jarvis Krumbein

• Thank you - dude31 - June 29, 2002 - 05:25 UTC