Expert: Tom Whiting - 9/21/2008

Question
I bought a telescope at an auction, it's a Jason 480 and when I got it home the small lens was missing, I'm wondering where I can get another lens and if it's worth the bother or should I just junk the whole thing?

Answer
Hi Dee,
There are thousands of telescopes on the free market; I am not
familar with this series, but as a starter, we do not recommend
the products from Tasco (we affectionly call them 'trash-co's'),
Jason, or Bushnell to our new club members. (But binoculars by
the Bushnell series are generally nice).
We currently recommend a 6 - 10 inch Newtonian Reflector starter scopes from Discovery, Orion, or Antares as better starter scopes, in the range of $400-$500 as a minimum entry level to our great hobby.

But for your specific problem, I simply Googled 'Telescope Jason 480',  and came up with the following site, in which the last review answers your question; evidently there is an insert that can be
removed so you can start using the better, more efficient, standard
American 1.25 inch eyepieces, as those old Japanese 0.965 inch diameter eyepieces are even plastic, and give a horrible image, small field of view, and totally unacceptable for astronomy.
(So, no great loss that the eyepiece lens is 'missing'!)
So see
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/2228788/Main/22...

Dee, even more important are some beginning general rules for our great hobby of observational astronomy, the first of which is...equipment (scopes) come LAST, knowledge comes FIRST.
For, if you can't point your finger to the Andromeda Galaxy, Pleiades, Beehive star cluster, the pretty double star Albireo, the Lagoon Nebula....ALL naked eye objects in a relatively dark sky, how are you going to point a very small field of view scope toward them? Eh?  The moon and Jupiter, if that's all you know, will get "old"
mighty fast.
So to enter our hobby the correct way, at your leisure punch up our
club website and read first "Tom Whiting's Sound Advice to the Novice
Observer" and this will save you a lot of future mis-steps going into
our great hobby...and will also give you some fine tips on the proper entry level steps of the hobby. Our club website is at
http://www.velocity.net/~bwhiting
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA  USA

FOLLOW UP:
Very few places still even sell the 0.965 inch diameter eyepiece,
but you might try the supplier of eyepieces that most of our club
members use, at Orion Telescopes; their website is at
http://www.OrionTelescopes.com
At least I know they carry eyepiece adapters for 1.25 inch from 0.965 inch, so you can upgrade to the much better 1.25 inch
eyepieces, rather than the low quality 0.965 inch ones.
Plus, if you ever upgrade your scope (sell the old one and buy
a new, bigger one) you don't sell your good eyepieces with the scope. They ALL use 1.25" or 2.0 inch eyepiece diameters now.
Clear Skies,
Tom