Most amazing visual experience of my life

[Outcast]

I just had the most amazing visual experience, possibly of my life thus far.

I recently purchased a high quality 80mm refractor telescope. Out viewing tonight for only the second time. Another look at the last quarter moon, amazing view, craters, mountains all awesome but, not what blew me away.

I then found Saturn... all I can say is WOW!! From about 70x - 170x magnification the rings of Saturn (Cassini division) were clearly visible. The more magnification (must have been a good 'seeing' night) the clearer the rings got; also clearly visible was Titan, one of Saturn's moons.

This is one of, if not the most amazing thing I have ever seen with my own eyes... WOW.... just WOW...

[omegacrux]

Good isn't it
To finally see it with your own eyes , not in a book or tv .
I have a lot of foot traffic where I live as people walk past I ask wanna look ,
It blows people away what you can actually see .

David

[bigjoe]

Hi Carlton. Wait till you see the ice caps on Mars, find Uranus, and all the clusters close to the southern cross etc.

It will be wow again!

Cheers bigjoe.:thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

:D Hook, line and sinker. :)
You know you can butt a simple point and shoot camera up to the eyepiece and capture some pretty good photos of the Moon through that scope.

[Crow]

I just had that exact same moment but a little jealous now! Saturn only looked like a dot and I had to focus really carefully to see the rings! Im not sure how to work out the magnifications I was using?? I want to see Titan too! (whiney voice inserted) can anyone help?

I was using a reflector 130mm telescope. 9mm focus and from the specs a magnification of x72?? not really sure what it all means! How do I get my scope to see what you did??? Im soooo jealous now!!

[Varangian]

Hi, I once had a 130mm reflector and I found that if I used an eyepiece somewhere between 8-10mm with a 2x barlow this would be threshold for this scope in terms of clarity of the subject and magnification. An 8mm eyepiece and barlow combination provides x162.5 mag and will make saturn larger in the eyepiece. When you say 9mm focus do you mean you were using a 9mm eyepiece? If you used a x2 barlow and a 9mm eyepiece this would provide x144.4 magnification (I'm assuming your reflector has a focal length of 650 mm). The barlow effectively doubles the power of the eyepiece when you use it in conjunction with your eyepiece. Barlows start in price around $40-50 for a 2X and increase in price with quality.

Anything more powerful (e.g. 6mm) than a 8mm-10mm eyepiece with the barlow and the image started to blur. Collimation shouldn't be too much of a bother for you looking at Saturn, as long as your mirrors are pretty close it should be a pleasing view.

Cheers.

[Varangian]

Wait until you find Omega Centauri and Tarantula!

[Outcast]

I tried to do this with my iPhone but, I couldn't even get an image to come up..

Not sure what I was doing wrong, will figure it out eventually I'm sure

[Outcast]

I couldn't really see the rings with 9mm TMB planetary II but, once I put a 2.5x powermate with it they came up fine. Also visible with a 6.7mm Meade UWA & no power mate (approx 70x) & they just got better & better from there with the 2.5x power mate.

[Outcast]

I went searching for some Messier objects (bright ones) last night but, no joy. I'm awaiting the arrival of an RDF to make pointing my scope a little easier.

Also considering marking up my mount with cardinal marks & getting some sort of angular indicator to help with pointing the scope.

Still trying to learn my way around the sky too... figured out Scorpio last night... working on the other ones

[barx1963]

Carlton
If you can find Scorpio there is a mess of Messiers just east of it. The 2 obvious ones are M7 and M6. M7 is visible with naked eye in even moderate skies slightly north of east of the 2 stars that make up the Stinger. They actually almost point at it. M6 is smaller and fainter and lies NW of M7.
Then there are a whole lot around the Teapot in Sagittarius.

Malcolm

[FlashDrive]

@outcast ....your living the ' dream ' now mate.
Keep looking....more ' wows ' to come :lol:

Flash....:D

[SingleMalt]

Personally, I find 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) a much more impressive sight than Omega Centaurai... I nearly fell off my chair the first time I saw it!