Powermate v. Barlow

I have a Celestron Ultima Barlow and was wondering if a TeleVue Powermate would show significant improvement. I use it on 24mm and higher power eyepieces. Thanks.

I honestly cannot tell you firsthand but several of my friends have used my 2.5 Powermate and compared with Daiken and Meade barlows and they all said the Powermate always gave superior views. Most recent was at Chiefland on Saturn using a TEC 140 and a Meade 12" SCT. The seeing was excellent several nights in a row and some rather stupid magnifications were being touted. I saw it a about 350x in the 12" and the images were VERY nice.

Walt

David Knisely wrote an excellent review of the 2.5x Powermate published on Cloudy Nights Reviews. the Powermate won hands down up against a meade 140 and david explains all the reasons why.

edz

I have both -- an Ultima and a 2.5X Powermate. I've had the Ultima for almost nine years, and the Powermate for almost four.

I have not discerned a significant difference at the eyepiece. Each does a very good job.

The Powermate is a better choice for imaging &/or astrophotography.

The Ultima is more versatile with regard to magnification factor. Longer working distance between eyepiece and Ultima yields greater magnification. The 2.5X Powermate doesn't behave in that manner (it's not a Barlow).

Best wishes and luck.
-Dan

No. For 24mm and shorter eyepieces I don't think
the difference is worth it.

For visual use at least, the main benefit is with long focal length EP's (the inspiration for the Powermate was the 'Panoptic Interface' to use when barlowing the 2inch Panoptics; I believe the powermate is essentially a barlow + interface in a single package).

I've had a Meade short barlow (not so great), a Meade #140 Barlow (much better), and now use a 2.5x Powermate. The PM outperforms the Meade 140 barlow by a noticeable but not huge margin, even though I don't use long f.l. ep's with it. The Ultima, however, is reportedly an even better unit than the Meade, so I assume the difference between the Ultima and a Powermate with mid-to-short f.l. ep's is going to be awfully slight.

The powermate is not a barlow, it is telecentric, meaning that it does not move the eye relief position nor reduce the field stop of plossl eyepieces. It only amplifies the image size. An ordinary barlow will increase the eye relief of an eyepiece, which may be good (8mm TV plossl) or bad (32 TV plossl).