Stargazing My New Telescope - Review and EP Advice

[Codester09]

A while back, I posted here asking for telescope recommendations. After many members advised getting a dob, http://www.skywatcherusa.com/8-dobsonian-telescope-s11700.html" is what I went with.

I love this scope. Seems very well put together and can capture some pretty amazing sights. One thing that I wanted to confirm before doing anything about it are the ep's. It comes with two plossls (10mm & 25mm). They aren't the greatest and have seen others talking about how they replaced it with things like a 30mm tak and 19mm panoptic. Those ep's are both very pricey (around $200). I just wondered how big the difference would be based on what you guys know. Thanks in advance guys.

 

[turbo]

Nice, basic scope with respectable aperture! You can get pretty good performance out of lower priced EPs, like TeleVue Plossls. I own several of them, and they are wonderful bang-for-the-buck EPs.

If you are going to buy EPs, you should also buy a decent Barlow, and carefully plan your EP focal lengths to avoid duplication. For instance, if you bought a 40mm EP, you shouldn't buy a 20mm if you get a 2x Barlow, since you'd be duplicating the resultant magnification. You'd be better off getting a 40mm and a 30mm, so that in combination with the Barlow you'd have the equivalent of a 20mm, and a 15mm as well, with the advantage of having the nice eye-relief of the longer EPs. Short EPs usually have shorter eye-relief and can be more fatiguing to use for long sessions.

By the way, the only "exotic" EP I have is an early Nagler. The plossls perform well with my 6" refractor. My scope is a 6" Apochromatic refractor from Astro-Physics, so I'm pretty picky about optics, and the Plossls are fine.

Good luck.