|
Hello All,
My name is Ben, i've just signed up here after doing some reading online
i have been given what's described here as a 'supermarket telescope' as a gift, after reading through the forums here...i tried to get my hands on a reciept, to no avail.
so after spending about half an hour assembling a equitorial mount, i took the thing outside and it dawned on me that i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing.
i managed to get a 'decent' view of the moon with the 50x magnification, dark patches, craters, basic terrain - so i put in the extra 83x? lense and all i could see was bright white with some lines and dark patches, more like a petrie dish under a microscope than a moon.
i spent another hour or so playing with it, with some success with the 50x lense...being able to see the white dots of stars that i can't see with my naked eye, but absolutely no success with the 83x lense (however, i'm probably not doing something right in addition to a bargain basement telescope)
i downloaded stellarium, and managed to spot saturn i think with my naked eye..but alas the telescope couldn't be adjusted to view that high in the horizon (around 1am this morning)
aside from buy a new telescope/binoculars (mortgages are wonderful aren't they?)....any advice, suggestions, starting points that may be useful to see something apart from the moon?
Perhaps down the track, if interest persists... i'll look at spending $1-$1.5G on something a little better.
the telescope i was given, has the following specs (i'm sure this will make more sense to you, than to me):
127mm aperture, 1000mm focal length newtonian reflector, german equitorial mount
2 x eyepieces - 1.25", H20mm (50x) and H12mm (83x)
I'm in South-Eastern Melbourne by the way.
|