When I bought my LX200 a Revelation eyepiece set was thrown in as part of the deal. The kit comprises of a metal case, six 1.25" plossl eyepieces, a filter to help view the moon (it's otherwise too bright through a telescope to comfortably view) and five colour filters for visual use. The plossl eyepieces have a 50 degree field of view and the sizes are;-

6mm
9mm
12mm
15mm
22mm
32mm

In my opinion the Revelation set is good, especially for the money. The views are crisp although they only have a 50 degree field of view which is quite small by today's standards. The moon filter is also very useful as without it the moon is way too bright and hurts the eyes.



The LX200R itself came with a 1.25" Meade 5000 26mm Plossl eyepiece (above). This has a 60 degree field of view and provides pin sharp visuals. I first spotted Saturn through this eyepiece on my LX200R. Through the LX this eyepiece only gives a magnification of 77x, so Saturn being 770 million miles away appears tiny but it was crystal clear and so impressive. It's great for viewing the moon, stars are sharp and I'm sure would be good for deep sky objects if used in a dark site.



I've got my sister to thank for buying me a 60 degree field of view 2" Meade 5000 32mm Plossl eyepiece (above). I love using this eyepiece to view the moon and large deep sky objects, especially M31 the Andromeda Galaxy. Again this eyepiece gives pin sharp views of anything you care to look at.



My last eyepiece is a 1.25" 13mm TeleVue Ethos (above) with a 100 degree field of view. This eyepiece gives twice the magnification of my 60 degree 26mm Meade and almost the same field of view. It's a great eyepiece although heavy and quite a size, and way too expensive for what it is in my opinion.



In addition to these eyepieces I use two 1.25" TeleVue Powermates, a 2.5x (above) and a 5x (below). I use the 2.5x a fair bit, especially with the 13mm Ethos but I rarely use the 5x as I find it too hard to resolve any given image with my setup. Maybe I'd need a larger aperture than my 8"LX or maybe I've never used it when the seeing was good enough to warrant it. I've seen people producing great images when using the 5x so maybe I'm doing something wrong.





For viewing nebulae there are filters available that alter the contrast and bring out detail your eyes alone could not detect. My sister's in my good books again for buying me a Lumicon UHC 1.25" filter (pictured above). The filter screws on to the base of an eyepiece and away you go. I don't understand the technical reasons why this filter works, but it does. It helps reduce the effects of light pollution, the sky appears darker and nebulae are more pronounced. It's also worth giving it a go on galaxies as that seems to work too.



The LX200 came with a basic 1.25" diagonal of reasonable quality. I replaced this with a William Optics 2" dielectric diagonal that has a removeable insert to allow the use of 1.25" eyepieces. When I'm imaging I don't use a diagonal as you don't have to give a camera a convenient viewing position and one less piece of equipment in the image train is always good as it's one less item to affect the small amount of light collected from deep sky objects.