So now to the Focal Reducer! I tried it on 3 different refractors and none had enough in-focus. It seems i may have to do some “tube chopping” to bring the focuser a little closer to the objective. I haven’t tried it on any of my 60mm scopes yet so in the next few days i’ll have another go. The main reason for using a focal reducer is because you cant get wide field views with Long focal length scopes, without spending lots of money or achieving little gain. I had imagined that a 0.5 reducer would act like a reverse barlow of sorts, which is generally the effect i need as 0.965 eyepieces tend to be no larger than 20mm. With most of my small scopes a 20mm eyepiece gives 25x-40x mag which can be a nuisance when trying to locate small or dim objects. More on the reducer next time i think.
Update:
Finally got the reducer to work. i screwed the reducer into the bottom of a barlow lens holder. i have long and short barlows and using the barrel from the longer barlow gave an ideal extension, allowing the correct focal length for the reducer to have an effect. Mixed results as the reducer would probably have more effect on perhaps a Mak or SCT with 1500mm or more focal length. i used the recucer on my 4″ refractor and found it worked best with eyepieces 15mm and lower, which kind of defeats the object as this only gave a wide view similar to a 30mm eyepiece which are readily available. Next experiment will be using the reducer in a small 40-50mm telescope to see if i can get wider views dispite the 1″ focuser.
smallscopefocus 