after 18+ months of waiting i finally got the call about my portaball telescope. i have about 3-4 more weeks wait and i’ll be able to begin exploring the universe. you can only see so much through a pair of binoculars and i couldn’t get myself to leach onto my club members another time without a telescope. i know they don’t care, but i did. anyhow, i’m geeked and anxiously looking forward to picking it up. i’ve decided on two eyepieces as well, the 35mm televue panoptic and the 9mm televue nagler type-6. later, after i’ve become more experienced with the scope i want to pick up the 20mm type-5 and 13mm nagler type-6.


for you non astronomy folks, the mm focal length of the eyepiece effects the magnification of the image in a telescope. magnification = focal length of telescope / focal length of eye piece … the portaball i’m getting has a focal length of 1585mm. so with my two new eyepieces i’ll get effective magnifications of 45x and 176x.