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MEOPTEX 1.25" 6mm 9mm 15mm 20mm 66-Degree Ultra Wide Angle Eyepiece for Telescope (20mm)?
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> or do I need a better telescope?
Sadly, yes. The StarSense Explorer LT 114 is what is known as a Bird-Jones scope. It uses a cheaply made mirror, and then a corrector lens in the focuser to correct for the aberrations of the cheap mirror. In theory it should work fine, but these things are stamped out of a factory and are poorly manufactured, so their optical quality is about as bad as it gets in amateur astronomy.
Similar Bird-Jones scopes are the Astromaster 114 (same scope as the StarSense Explorer, but on a different mount), and the PowerSeeker 127EQ. Meade offers similar Bird-Jones scopes, and you can find other cheap variations of them on Amazon. They all have incredibly poor optics.
But that's only part of the problem. There are other factors that go into getting clear views of the planets:
- The atmosphere has to be very stable.
- The planet has to be reasonably high in the sky. Depending on your latitude on Earth, the planets might be quite low in the sky right now.
- The telescope has to be well collimated (which is another problem with Bird-Jones scopes - they're a pain to collimate, which is a big contributing factor to their poor performance)
- The telescope has to be thermally acclimate so that its mirror temperature is as close to ambient temperature as possible
- You can't be observing from indoors through a window or doorway (whether it's open or not)
- You can't observe over heat sources like a roof. If the planet is a few degrees above a roof, you're looking through a bunch of air currents from heat rising from the roof.
This article goes into more detail: https://medium.com/@phpdevster/help-i-cant-see-detail-on-the-planets-ac27ee82800
So what this means that while upgrading your telescope to a parabolic Newtonian reflector is most certainly necessary to get clearer views out of the planets, it doesn't automatically mean you will get them. The above conditions also have to be met.
It can be challenging to see details on the planets and takes some patience.
For a scope, avoid ANY entry-level scope from Meade, Celestron, Orion, and any of the scopes on Amazon.
Stick to the scopes recommended in the pinned buyer's guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/telescopes/comments/i0tzkw/an_absolute_beginners_quickguide_to_choosing_your/
Unfortunately, the pandemic has made them all hard to get AND more expensive. This is a really tough time to buy telescopes.
For the time being, I recommend not worrying about using your scope to view the planets and use your current scope to its greatest advantage:
- Get it out to as dark a sky as you can and prioritize viewing deep sky objects. Use https://lightpollutionmap.info to help locate a darker sky. Should be class 4 (yellow) or better.
- Get a basic 32mm Plossl eyepiece. This will give you brighter views, and the widest possible true field of view in that scope. Great for bigger DSOs.
- Get this 20mm 66 degree eyepiece to replace the 25mm eyepiece that came with the scope, and use that for general purpose deep sky viewing.
The scope works just fine as long as you keep the magnification low by sticking to longer focal length eyepieces, and you get out to a dark site.
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