Spent $80 on a planetary filter that turned Jupiter into a blurry smudge

I bought this Orion 1.25 inch planetary filter off Amazon thinking it would sharpen my views of Jupiter's bands, but it just made everything look like a watercolor painting. After 3 nights of tweaking focus and swapping eyepieces, I realized the filter was defective and I'd passed the return window by a day. Anyone else get burned by gear that looked good on paper but flopped in the field?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby_carr578d ago

The 90-degree prism I bought did the exact same thing to my views.

william8168d ago

Hear me out but I think you might be overthinking this. A good prism should give you a clean 90 degree view if you have it set up right. Most folks I know who complain about these things just haven't dialed in the alignment properly. I've seen enough of these setups to know that user error is way more common than a bad prism. Before you blame the tool, check that your mounting surface is level and that the prism is seated flush. You might be surprised how much a tiny shift changes the whole picture.

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