How Many Eyepieces Do I Need

by Mathew Tomlinson

A recent visitor asked the question "how many eyepieces do I need"? Well, due to the fact you are most likely going to be observing a multitude of different objects, you'll want to cover various magnification ranges. With telescopes, you change magnification simply by changing the eyepiece.

You will want a high magnification eyepiece for the moon and planets, a medium magnification eyepiece for brighter deep-sky objects (star clusters, nebulae and galaxies) or when you need to check for more detail in these objects, and a low magnification eyepiece for faint deep-sky objects or very large objects.

A low power eyepiece is also the eyepiece you will use the majority of the time for locating objects (widest field of view).

This basically means, 3 telescope eyepieces as a minimum. Another possibility is two eyepieces and a barlow lens. A barlow lens attaches to an eyepiece and doubles or triples the magnification of the eyepiece, depending on the magnification of the barlow. Just be sure the barlow doesn't give you too much magnification.

An eyepiece such as the Baader Hyperion is an alternative as with the addition of a Baader fine tuning ring will actually turn one eyepiece into four.