Paul Rini 2 inch 4x barlow

I should state from the start 2 things. 1, I am not a professional reviewer so go easy on me. 2, to properly review astronomy items such as barlows I personally think that you need to be able to compare said item to others of its like that are considered on par, above and below in quality... and so I come to this review with out previous reviewing experience and without having used higher quality barlows. So enough preamble, on with the review.

For some time I have been considering the Rini 4x barlow to help improve my image train which currently consists of a GSO 1.25 inch 2x, a Meade telenegative 2x and a gutted 2x barlow which I use as an extension tube. After searching the web tirelessly for reviews on the barlow and coming up completely blank I just decided to risk it (and when I say risk it was only $60 AU). I did find plenty of reviews on Paul Rini's eyepieces and they got medium to good reviews. and so with a one week delivery from the US of A the barlow arrived at my house.

For those interested the eBay store I purchased it from is called "telescope warehouse". They seem to stock odds and ends and old Meade spares.

anyhow, the box arrived last Friday to my door and I ripped it open as soon as I got home from work. it was fairly well packaged and wrapped in plenty of bubble wrap. the barlow its self arrive in pretty good condition but the ring holding the lens elements in had worked loose a bit and I pulled it apart and tightened it by finger (quite easy). the item had 2 huge end caps to seal against dust and seemed to be rather over engineered or rather overly robust, I guess in this day of rough n' tumble astronomy gear needs to be tough? the lens is coated tho I don't know to what extent, but it had a nice bluish sheen to it so it shouldn't be that bad coating wise (I know little of this). The only major design flaw is the retainer screw which is both plastic and poor fitting. I emailed the supplier and they are sending me a better metal one for free (problem fixed).

I fitted it to my scope just to see what its like and upon taking out my two 1.25 inch barlows I realised the this is about the same weight so weight wont be an issue for me. it slid nicely into my focuser tho, not too loose or tight.

To the testing field... after letting my scope settle for an hour or so I got to setting up for imaging. I slid everything into place and fired up K3ccd to find my worst case scenario had come true, the Barlow didn't come to focus! There wasn't near enough out focus in my focuser (a standard GSO R&P) and I had to move the Barlow out about 1.5cm to get it Jupiter to show. Not too disappointed about this as you can see in the picture there is plenty of Barlow that sits in the focuser so I can afford to bring it out quite a bit. Once set up the only drawback was the previously mentioned plastic eyepiece holding screw. I could tell straight away that the image quality was better than my previous setup and with the extension tube in place and with a few setting changes in k3ccd that were suggested by Asimov (John) and Dave P. I produced my best image of Jupiter yet. There is room for improvement of course but I am only just a beginner .

by David Hall