Tele Vue5x Powermate, 1.25" Image Amplifier

I never saw the point in a 5x barlow until I started viewing with fast refractors. If you have an F/5 refractor this is a great tool for looking at planets. I have no tried it for imaging yet, but visually its an excellent piece of gear. I would not recommend this for SCs or longer focal length instruments... the focus will be soft as you would be most likely pushing past useful magnification, but in faster instruments this fella is a beast.I have an Orion ST120 I use for my grab and go rig. Most nights I will just go out with a 24mm Panoptic and a 5x powermate for planets. I rarely need other EPs and I have some other TeleVue goodies.

Everyone keeps telling me about my limits, my 4" stellarvue triplet apo can only handle so much magnification, my dslr can only hand so long an exposure. Everyone told me to not buy this, but to date its the best damn thing Ive added to my collection of accessories. I use this with a 40mm, 20mm, and 9mm meade 4000 series 7element fully multicoated super plossl's, and this baby screams. I even use it with my cannon t5i for planetary work, and for a few deep sky objects with relatively small apparent size such as ring nebulea. This makes all my eyepieces brighter, which is counter intuitive when you consider the physics, but I love it.

So far I have taken great shots of Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon with this Barlow. As described you lose zero detail taking shots with the powermate and visually it is also outstanding. If you had to make a complaint about this product I would say that it's the fact it makes apparent small defects and dust in your CCD and eye pieces.

The powermate1.25inch made a big difference in viewing the planets with all my eye pieces,from 10mm-40mm. I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to increase the performance of their Telescope.

GREAT Views, and the quality is just amazing.

Nice but not cheap. Great glass.

Outstanding build quality, and outstanding performance. This applies for both visual and for photo use with the optional T adapter ring.I simply can't imagine it being better.