Monday, January 20, 2014

More new stargazing kit has arrived



Thanks to Amazon, the gear I ordered late on Saturday night turned up today at lunchtime.   Coming in a nice aluminium box, I've got a set of filters and eye pieces.

Why do I need these?

My telescope is only really a starting point.  It came with a fairly generic 25mm eyepiece.  It's the eyepiece that provides the magnification.  The smaller the number the larger the magnification.

My telescope has a focal length of 1500mm.  To calculate the available magnification, you divide this value by the eyepiece size.   So, mine works our at 60x magnification.

In the box there's 5 eyepieces

  • 6mm (250x)
  • 8mm (187x)
  • 13mm (115x)
  • 17mm (88x)
  • 32mm (47x)
And, there's a 2x barlow.  You combine this with an eyepiece and it doubles the magnification of that eyepiece - so I've got 10 combinations, from 47x all the way up to 500x magnification.

And, I've got 7 different filters too:
  • Orange (46% light transmission)
  • Blue (30% light transmission)
  • Deep Yellow (74% light transmission)
  • Red (14% light transmission)
  • Light Green (53% light transmission)
  • Green (24% light transmission)
  • A moon filter (13% light transmission)
Personally, I'm looking forward to a clear sky and having a closer look at the moon.

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