Back to Home

Meade Forum Message

Forums: Atm · Astrophotography · Blackholes · Blackholes2 · CCD · Celestron · Domes · Education
Eyepieces · Meade · Misc. · God and Science · SETI · Software · UFO · XEphem
RSS Button

Home | Discussion Forums | Meade Equipment Discussion | Post
Login

Be the first pioneers to continue the Astronomy Discussions at our new Astronomy meeting place...
The Space and Astronomy Agora
Good Advice.

Forum List | Follow Ups | Post Message | Back to Thread Topics | In Response To
Posted by Daniel Johnson on April 8, 2003 04:08:45 UTC

Mr. Filipowski has given good advice. A few more options:
You'll want a dew shield at some point--soon. Some people prefer the aluminum type. I instead prefer the collapsible, roll-up type because it takes up so little space in my car and doesn't get dented. Dew is the one thing most likely to end a night of observing when the sky seems otherwise perfect.
If you do most of your observing from home and have a garage where you can leave your scope permanently set up, the giant-sized JMI Wheely Bars are the number-one gotta-love-it convenience item for 12 or 14-inch scopes. The regular Wheely Bars fit my 10-inch just fine. You can roll your scope onto your driveway and be observing in five minutes.
For sheer joy in planetary observing the TeleVue Radian 10mm eyepiece is hard to beat with a 12-inch or larger f/10 scope, but your $99 Plossl set costs less than half the price of one Radian. You'll get the best bang-for-the-buck that anyone has ever offered with your eyepieces for that $99, and as the years go by you'll be able to upgrade when you can afford it. Eventually you'll upgrade, but if you had to live with the Plossls forever it would be no crime.
Do not, for any reason, get a cheap Barlow. Any Barlow that TeleVue makes is worth owning. The least-expensive Barlow that I know of that is worth owning is the Celestron Ultima. It's quite nice. I spent three decades thinking that Barlows were trash because I'd bought cheap ones. Now I own the Celestron Ultima and the cheapest TeleVue Barlow and like them both.

Follow Ups:

    Login to Post
    Additional Information
    Google
     
    Web www.astronomy.net
    DayNightLine
    About Astronomy Net | Advertise on Astronomy Net | Contact & Comments | Privacy Policy
    Unless otherwise specified, web site content Copyright 1994-2024 John Huggins All Rights Reserved
    Forum posts are Copyright their authors as specified in the heading above the post.
    "dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET"
    are trademarks of John Huggins