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EYE PIECE BASICS

The eye piece for your telescope is a totally separate science all by its lonesome. You can read and study for days, months, years for that matter and if your really smart you will understand what goes into some of these oculars.

The best advice I can give a novice astronomer is to Do Your Research.

In this case that should be 90 percent hands on. Just like the telescope research. Join an Astronomy Club. Go to star parties ask about eyepieces look through them, compare them etc. Once you get your scope take it to star parties and use other people eyepieces in you scope ..experiment to see what works well with your scope. Combinations of telescope/eyepiece that work well will be obvious with some experimentation.

I have a 8" reflector on a equatorial mount that I really enjoy using, now that is. It wasn't always so. When I first got it I was disappointed in the performance under high magnification. When a friend of my put his 36mm Nagler eyepiece in my scope and showed me how that little F4 scope could open up the whole sky with a wide field of view eye piece ...I saw the complete Veil Nebula in my scope. That is quite the feat for the average scope....and my little f4 discovery did it...wow! I was using that great little scope all wrong.. what an eye opener that was!

The eye piece is a big part of the telescope as a whole. The are also interchangeable from scope to scope. The eye piece will also hold its value better than most other investments in life. The telescopes may come and go but always hang on to your eye pieces.

Most telescopes will come with at least one eyepiece, usually a few basic EP's will be included. Almost always is a 25mm EP. This is a very basic eye piece and is a fine start for the first time you look through your scope. From there you will want a 30mm and a 40mm. These ep's will magnify less but they will show a wider field of view. The lower numbers like a 9mm will narrow the field of view and increase the magnification factor of your telescope. To figure out the amount of magnification you are getting simply divide the focal length of your scope by the focal length of your eye piece. So if your scope has a focal length of 1000mm and you are using a 10mm eye piece your magnification factor is 100.

For more in depth explanation of the telescope eye piece visit Jay Freeman's article here

Here be sure to learn what things like eye relief, apparent field of view, and other techie type stuff are. He also gives some good suggestions on eye piece telescope combinations to start out with.

Meade Eye Piece set

Sky and Telescope Eyepiece Article

See Reflector Telescopes next

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