Celestron 1.25" Eyepiece and Filter Kit Review

hey guys this is Simon in today's video we'll be taking a look at the celestron 1.25 inch eyepiece kit this is a pretty popular eyepiece kit a lot of people that are just starting out in astronomy will buy this kit I've had mine for over four years so I believe that gives me enough experience to review it so that's what we're going to do stay tuned we'll jump right in all five of the eyepieces that come in the celestron 1.25 inch kit are of the PLAs I'll design and the Plusle design consists of two a chromatic lens pairs so four lenses total and the design makes it so you get a wider field of view than normal but at the cost of having to get your eye closer to the eyepiece for that so they're all Plusle it has its ups and downs but that's basically what a Plusle eyepiece is as with most eyepieces these days the celestron eyepieces come with rubber eye cups so if you prefer to use these you just fold them up and you can use those to view if not obviously they'll just stay down for you so as I said earlier this IP set is pretty popular a lot of amateur astronomers or those buying their first telescope will buy this set and if anyone ever asked me you know should I get this for my first telescope my answer usually is no and I'm not a huge fan of this IP set like I said I've had it for about four years and I've had extensive experience with it and there's a lot of reasons why I don't like this set there's a few reasons why do you like it but there are quite a few reasons why I don't the first is that the eye relief on these eyepieces is pretty terrible of the six millimeter eyepiece it's just I mean you try and look through this thing at anything and you're going to struggle if you wear glasses it'll almost be impossible to see out of the six millimeter eyepiece plus I mean you're getting five eyepieces for about a hundred and thirty dollars as of you know September 2015 so they're not going to be the most quality things in the world either so really the only thing useful for the six millimeter eyepiece is to look at the moon to be honest and that goes for the eight millimeter eyepiece as well sure you can try and look at some planets with them things like that it's going to be pretty hard to keep those centered in your field of view depending on what kind of telescope you're using but the eye relief on these eyepieces is very very bad so that's one big reason that I just can't recommend them the seventeen millimeter eyepiece is actually okay my second most used eyepiece out of this set behind 32 the 13 millimeter is where the quality starts to get a little worse especially the quality of seeing the 32 millimeter eyepiece is actually fantastic I actually really like this eyepiece it's awesome for clusters star clusters got globular star clusters open star clusters anything that you really want to see white field nebulae look really good with a thirty two millimeter eyepiece and the Barlow lens actually gets harped on a lot but I actually like the the Barlow lens it it's really good with the 17 millimeter eyepiece because it doesn't change the eye relief so you can actually double your magnification without changing your eye relief with the barlow so it works great with a thirty two millimeter eyepiece as well it will double that magnification to sixteen millimeters about without changing the eye relief so in general the the 2x barlow is pretty good the 32 millimeters good and the 17 millimeters good the 13 millimeter with six millimeter and the eight millimeter are pretty junky I'm not going to lie so I'm not sure if I could recommend that just because of those but the thing that really gets me about the eyepiece kit is the filters the filters are really I don't I don't know if you want to call it a selling point or what but lots of people don't use filters I'm one of them the only filter I will use is a moon filter and that's the most important filter that there is because you don't want to damage your eyes when you're looking at the moon and it actually makes it a lot more contrasty but when you're say looking at Neptune which is barely even visible in your telescope and you have one of these filters that says you know the deep yellow makes it so that you can see more detail I just really don't get that kind of advertising because first of all Neptune in a telescope that's smaller than about 14 inches is just going to pick up here like a tiny little disc number 2 Neptune is a gas giant without a whole lot of visible cloud structures on its upper atmosphere or in its upper atmosphere that is so I don't really see how it could make you get that much more detail so I don't know it's kind of hit or miss with the filters I've used them before but it really doesn't change a whole lot they do give you a whole manual with this set that explains what each filter does so like for example a deep number 12 deep yellow Jupiter penetrate and darken atmospheric currents containing Loki blue tones you're going to be doing that kind of thing that's great but I mean like I said you can't see ton of difference sometimes so just the overall quality of the eyepieces is not the best the eye relief is very very poor though on those three the six millimeter the eight millimeter and the 13 millimeter eyepiece recommended those the 32 millimeter eyepiece the 17 millimeter eyepiece and the 2x Barlow lens and a moon filter does all that cost you 130 dollars normally I'd say not you can find some pretty good deals on some things but one good thing about the kit that I do really enjoy is the case - really really solid on the outside and it comes with locks so if you want to lock it you can and then on the inside you have really good foam for to protect all of your eyepieces so this is actually really one of the best parts of the whole kit I think is just the box that comes with what's great too is you have some retail here I went ahead and cut out my own IP slot so I could put my own eyepiece in there if I want to and then there's also a little rectangle over here so if you want to put things like laser pointers in here you can do that as well so that's a one really nice thing about the eyepiece kit is it just comes with a really really nice case and the foam is definitely going to protect your eyepieces you don't have to worry about them the filters out a little slot here as well and then you just have your six eyepieces and then like I said you can make some more on your own if you'd like to and that's what I've decided to do so that definitely scores some good marks there it definitely is very very solid and definitely protects the eyepieces the kit does come with six planetary filters and a moon filter I use the moon filter by far the most I never really used the the planetary filters from left to right those are the number 80 a blue the number 58 green the number 56 light green the number 25 red the number 21 orange and the number 12 deep yellow they're advertised is doing different things and showing different planetary features I never really found those to work that well and another reason I don't like the planetary filters is because they cut out some of the light and in astronomy telescopes are all about your light gathering power planets yeah of course they're going to be brighter and you won't need as much light but the filters do cut out a good amount of that light some you know cut out 50% some come out cut out about 25% just depends on which filter you're using but that light I would rather see the light then cut it out and try and squint to find some object that's hard to find anyway so I just think that the manual kind of hypes up the filters a little bit too much but the moon filter is actually really really good the number one reason though that I would not recommend this eyepiece kit is when you're showing people that are really new to astronomy or so and that's at a star party say Jupiter or another planet or something neat they look through the eyepiece and a lot of the times they can't even see the object because the eye relief is so poor and I can't stress that enough the eye relief is really really bad so it actually can kind of discourage someone saying you know they're really excited to look through the telescope and then you know sometimes they could probably go home and say I found it was boring or whatever they kind of move away from any interest they had in the hobby at all so that's why I am hesitant to take this to a star party now just because the views aren't that stunning I'll use a thirty two millimeter eyepiece no problem and I'll use the 17 the Barlow lens but anything below that I'm not going to use so in essence to me those three eyepieces aren't worth buying the kit for because there are three eyepieces that I never use I mean obviously you some of you guys that do have the kit might use them that's that's fine so the eye relief is just really really bad the quality of the eyepiece is pretty good they seem pretty hefty and pretty solidly built so that's good the filters do come in a nice little case with that as well so what would I recommend instead I would recommend getting a pretty good Barlow lens teleview makes a nice 1.25 inch 2x Barlow lens that are very pricey and then I just recommend getting some orion expanse eyepieces they're 1.25 inch but they are much better quality than these eyepieces they're a little bit pricier but if you just buy two of them in the focal lengths that you know you enjoy it's better than just buying a whole kit with eyepieces that you're not going to use so a lot of people will say you know buy a kit and then you can use each eyepiece and see what millimeter of eyepiece you like to observe at that's totally fine if you want to do that I go for it that's no better way to do it than buying a pretty cheap eyepiece kit to do that but if you already know what you like looking at so if you say you like looking at star clusters open star clusters anything wide field you already know you kind of a thirty two millimeter 25 millimeter 40 millimeter eyepiece you don't really need the lower ones so I'd say instead of buying the kit might as well just buy some nice 1.25 inch eyepieces just one or two of them and then you have some quality eyepieces that will last you a really long time and that you'll enjoy observing through and that will have number one much better eye relief but number two the glass will just be better as well so I do highly recommend Orion expanse eyepieces they're fantastic and they're not that expensive and you know if you know what millimeter you like to view up that's perfect so if you are on the fence about what you like sure go ahead and buy this this isn't you know that worse eyepieces I've ever used in my life I'm just saying that some of these the advertising is just a little bad saying that you know you can get up to like 400 power and it's just kind of frustrating because I think it leads people astray in that they're like oh I can look at 400 power I'm going to buy those right away just because I can get so close whereas the reality is it gets really blurry and it gets really hard to focus and any touching on the telescope will move it and these eyepieces are not that great for that kind of thing at all anyway so that's why I don't recommend the kit I just feel like your money is better served buying a couple of eyepieces that you know are really quality and that you'll use a lot and that I mean for what you're getting for $130 isn't the greatest thing you could be getting for your hundred and thirty dollars all right well that's my review of the celestron 1.25 inch eyepiece kit it's a pretty solid kit the case is especially solid it's lasted four years without too many dings or scratches I really like the 17 millimeter in the thirty two millimeter eyepieces as well as the 2x Barlow I just think that your money could be better spent elsewhere the orion expanse eyepieces are really good eyepieces i tell of you Barlow's really quality yeah you get a lot of magnifications though with these eyepieces so if that's your thing if you want to buy this go for it you will get a lot of variety and eyepieces with different magnifications and you can kind of get a feel for what you like if you don't know already and you know I think if you if you have your heart set on it it's totally fine to go with and really all that matters whether you're using a high-end IP so low-end eyepiece is to get behind that telescope and look at the beauty of the cosmos whether you're just out for fun whether you're learning something just to enjoy yourself doesn't really matter what kind of eyepiece are using as long as you're using your telescope so that's my review thanks so much for watching and I hope you guys have a good one

Channel: AstroBlender

Views: 75,875

Keywords: Celestron (Business Operation), Telescope (Invention), Eyepiece, Plossl, Meade, Orion, Expanse, E-Lux, Explore Scientific (Business Operation), Televue (Business Operation), Planetary Filter, 1.25 eyepiece, 2 eyepiece, Astronomy (Field Of Study)

Id: NkxgmRQJhNU

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2015