Hello! Celestron 60AZ

[josh_and_dad]

My son and I purchased this for $30. I ordered a red dot finder. It's equipped with a 3X Barlow, a 4mm eye piece, and 20mm eye piece. I need advice on which eye piece should I use or buy, and if we should I use the Barlow. If we could get a good look at the Moon, Saturn, and Jupiter we would be stoked!

[TerryMcK]

Hello and welcome to the forum. I am not familiar with the telescope but a quick Google revealed a few reviews.

According to this article https://telescopestobuy.com/celestron-powerseeker-60az-telescope-review-value-product/ the barlow and 4mm eyepiece are not good. In fact they say useless.

However the 20mm eyepiece “is sufficient for casual viewing“.

Views of the moon will be great and the larger planets will be ok but don’t expect to see features on Jupiter.

But I think for such a modest outlay it is a good start into astronomy.

[Nightspore]

The Powerseeker 60AZ has a focal ratio of f/12, which makes it a 'slow' scope. This means that it's more a high magnification scope than a wide angle low power 'fast' scope. As such it will be good for lunar and planetary viewing. It's almost certainly an achromatic doublet which means it may not be well corrected for chromatic aberration (false colour). However, this should be minimal at f/12 and 60mm achromats can give some very nice images. You should see a lot of detail on the Moon. Saturn's rings and Jupiter's Great Red Spot and Galilean moons should also be pretty easily viewed. I can see all these objects (and many more) with my f/6 60mm doublet. 

 

 

The bundled eyepieces with your scope probably aren't that good. I doubt you'll need a Barlow for an f/12 scope. I'd recommend reasonably priced Plossls to start with. GSO among others are good and shouldn't break the bank.

 

Above: set of GSO Plossls

 

A 6mm Plossl will give you about 117x which is approaching the limit for a 60mm aperture. A 12mm Plossl will give about 58x and be a good mid range magnification. A 32mm Plossl will give about 22x and a nice low power sweeping ability and nearly 2 arc degrees of field (the Full Moon is about half an arc degree).