Celestron 99$ eypiece kit

I have a question. When I bought my first scope ( an new C114) Celestron was offering this kit for 99$ that included 5 filters, and the following eypieces 5mm, 9mm, 15mm, 25mm, and 32mm. I thought it was a great deal at the time. I have since traded in the c114 and purchased a used C8 with some bells and whistles. (Advanced Astromaster etc) but I am still using the 99$ eypieces. My question is what these eypieces are and whether they might be holding me back on visual quality. I don't know if anyone is familiar with this kit so...
I live 50 miles from Phoenix, pretty dark skies (you can see the Milky Way very well) and have columated the scope but I don't see the type of detail that others describe with similar scopes. Any info would be appreciated.

Hello Tony!

It all depends on what you want to do, but for most part those are good enough eyepieces. If I'm not wrong they were a set of Plossls from Celestron, which are not bad at all.

If you would like to get wide FOV eyepieces, or dedicated planetary eyepieces, then you could upgrade to other models/brands, but if you don't have anything "planned" in particular, then I'd say what you have is pretty decent.


Of course, you could always move into 2" eyepieces, which would be a totally different experience... 8)


Clear skies!

Part of seeing detail is experience and time at the telescope. I'm doing more sketching these days just to help focus on what is there to see.

Undoubtedly, some people have very good vision, better than mine, as well.

And another factor is that high magnification can help see details, so seeing (turbulence) conditions could be more favorable on some nights allowing for more detail.

If you wanted to rule out the eyepieces, you could try an Ultrascopic, say the 20mm to 25mm size. It is not a widefield but is high quality. The Celestron kit is at least more of a bargain than the $300 Meade Series 4000 plossl kits that have been on Astromart from time to time. That is a ripoff.

Mike

I have since replaced all of the EP's that came in my Celestron EP kit. The Omni Plossl line is similar with nicer finish and they seem to be better quality. However, anything below 12mm has too short eye relief to be comfortable. I use a 12mm and 20mm Omni on my finder scope, and a pair of 25mm Omni in my binoviewer. The 4mm and 6mm kit EP's were given away to a kid as I find them too short eye relief. They were replaced with pairs of 4.4mm and 6.4mm Siebert Star Splitters which I like much better. A pair of 9mm Burgess TMB's replaced the 9mm kit EP. I prefer the 30mm Ultima to the 32mm Plossl. The 18mm Ultima is better than the 15mm Plossl or 20mm Omni Plossl, with much better eye relief. The 10mm or 12.5mm Ultima fills the hole between the 9mm kit EP, and they are much nicer as well. All of the Ultima EP's can be picked up used for well under $80, except for the 30mm Ultima which is in huge demand as a binoviewer EP. The Elite Plossl EP's out of Canada are very similar to the Ultima, as are the Orion Ultrascopics. Any of those are a fine upgrade over the Celestron kit EP's and when bought used are very economical. I will not get longwinded but say that the Ultima EP's are as good as they are reported to be in many reviews of them. The Tele Vue Plossl series is another excellent option and gives almost exactly the same performance. Panoptic or Axiom EP's will give a broader field of view, but contrast, sharpness, angular distortion and ghosting will suffer in relation to the Ultima series and TV Plossl series. In short focal lengths, the Burgess TMB and Star Splitter EP's (7.9mm and shorter. The 8.9mm and 9.9mm SS are 3-element Kellners) are sharp, have good eye relief, and work down to f/4 focal ratios. The 8.9mm SS is the sharpest EP I own for my f/15 Mak, but it will not work well at all below f/10. If I was to keep any of the kit EP's it would be the 32mm, but if a 30mm Ultima is available then the Ultima will always get used first.