[masraum]

Originally Posted by fireant911

Whoa, that was quick. I ordered the 6" Dobsonian on Friday at noon and it arrived today. Tomorrow I will unbox and put this machine together.

Very nice. Good luck and enjoy. I can't remember the general guideline (I think it's 50x/inch), but I want to say that with my old 8" telescope I was pretty limited to about 300x as a max magnification. I assume that means with a 6" you'll be limited to about 225-240x. Of course, the "seeing" will often limit you down even more. But when/if you decide to get more eye pieces, I'd use 200-250x as a limit. I think you got a 10mm 1 1/4" eye piece which currently gives you a max of 120x - 1200mm focal length / 10mm eye piece. You could easily double your maginification by getting a 2x barlow which you can get for $30-40. I would suggest investing in one.

Planets are an interesting subject, especially Jupiter and it's moons and Saturn and it's rings and moons. I think right now Saturn is at it's maximum tilt so you can probably pretty easily see the Cassini Division (gap between the rings).