|
You now have a good range of magnifications to see just about anything in the night's sky. The one I use most from the kit is the 9mm lens. If I could do it over again, I'd probably only buy two or three really nice eye pieces. It's focal length is 1500mm. I'm sure some people know how to use them, but I don't see myself getting much milage out of them for the time being. The barlow suffers from the same problem. If you choose to spend a little more and get a wide field lens as well, you'll be loving life. If you wanted to splurge, you could get a wide view eyepiece for $120.
After some reading of the instructions, I discovered I should use the lunar filter (it's blue) to take a picture of the moon with my cell phone. The case everything comes in is actually really nice. You'll get tons more use out of just those two eyepieces (plus the lens included with your scope) than you will with the kit. My 6se came with a 25mm. I tried out a few more and I don't think I liked them. Optically, it's alright. It's well built, kind of tough, and has ample space in it. I could see paying $20 for one.
It seems like they're made in China - completely out of plastic. The kit is overpriced. I guarantee it. Of everything that came with the kit, I plan on holding on to the case for sure. As a matter of fact, nearly all of the eyepieces have horrible eye relief. But at least it's decent.
The 4mm eyepiece that comes with it is completely unusable. In conclusion, skip the kit. All of the eyepieces feel cheap. A few times, pulling the protective cover off of the 9mm, I felt as if I was going to break it. So then I'd get a 10mm X-Cel eyepiece (with more eye relief), a barlow lens, and maybe a wide field eyepiece from Celestron's Ultima LX series. After viewing a few messier objects, I'm going to want one. The eye relief (the space between your eye and the eyepiece) requires you to push your eyeball into the lens. Figure out which eyepiece you'll want by taking the focal length of your scope and dividing it by the eyepiece.
Before, the moon was way too bright to snap a picture of, so I guess that's one reason to use a filter. With a 10mm eyepiece, you'll get 150x. An X-Cel 10mm lens costs $50, a better quality barlow will set you back $35. With the barlow, you can get 120x and 300x (probably pushing it). The picture I took looks like it's in grey scale. So, we find that with the included eyepiece, it has a magnification of 60x. I'm not sure of why or what I should use the filters for.
For instance, my scope is a Celestron 6se. You have to be pretty close to the opening in order to see anything. Already, you'd have a nice set of magnifications with real quality eyepieces that's 40-50 dollars less than the kit. It cut down on the brightness but gave the moon a slight blue tinge. It's cheap. You could easily add a few more eyepieces.
I bought these because of the low price tag, and for the most part, I regret not just buying one or two better quality eyepieces from Televue. This kit may be alright for some, but I found them lacking in quality of fit and build and would not recommend them to anyone who has the desire to use the high-power eyepieces (9x, 6x, 4x, etc). The filters were really "cheap" too. I'm fairly new to astronomy, but I expected better quality when I purchased this eyepiece kit from Celestron. After reading some of the reviews here, I was convinced that these were going to be some decent eyepieces and filters.
The extreme small ones are too dark to use. Since I am a beginner I occasionally use this. lens seperately. It might be better to purchase 15mm and Barlow(sp). But, I keep thinking of purchasing eyepieces of higher grades in the future. Optical qualites are fairly limited.
Great case. Has extra room for your other eyepieces. You just can't beat the price. Eyepieces all work great and you get the filters also. I highly recommend this for all beginners like me, Wait they just did. I paid a little over 120 and they just dropped it 5.
The most powerful eye piece (not lens or filter) would probaly only be usefull for looking directly at the sun (it's soooooo dark).It's much like mounting a 24-power Leupold scope on an Uzi: It ain't gonna do anything for your accuracy. Bought this kit for a Celestron NextStar 8-inch SC scope. Most of these eyepieces are uselss because the Celestron telescopes don't have the quality optics necessary to take advantage of their power.
|
