Posts Made By: Tony Leung

Forget mars. Its way too small for a 8" and a beginner now - 2 months earlier, it would of been better (2x bigger). I have a XT-8 also. Saturn should be nice with cassini divivison in rings quite clear, and 5 moons visible, and maybe a couple of bands... On nebulae and galaxies, you won't see any color except on planetary nebulae (very slight blue or green). The moon should be spectacular. In terms of magnitude visible, for me in lightly poluted skies (mag 5 skies): I can pick out stars to mag 13.0 ~ 13.5 or so. Nebulae and galaxies depend on size: Small galaxies and planatary nebulae to mag 11 - 12 or so. Medium sized galaxies to mag 9 - 10 or so. Larger ones to mag 8 or so?

All Messier objects should be readily visible. M35 should be nice. M36 - M38, M50 should also be good. Try to see how many stars you can see in the trapezium in M42: 4?, 5?, 6?

Good luck...

A good wide angle eyepiece in the 11-14mm range (your f4.7 will yield 2-3mm exit pupil): Nagler, Panoptic, LVW, whatever, your choice...

... then paypal me the remainder, and I'll give you its worth in other stuff

i thought it was www.antaresoptical.com

2264 Christmas tree cluster and 2261 Hubble's varible nebula are pretty cool and easy with my 8"