tan has landed

[TANS IN SPACE]

Hi everyone, I'm new and this is my first time on here. My husband joined last week under davtan but I'm here now.I'm not shy anymore. I just wanted to say that I've only had my telescope for a week and I found saturn last night by a fluke. I was so excited:party: , it's why I got the scope in the first place. Well I was wondering how i get to see it bigger than i did. I was alittle bit disappointed with the size for the scope i bought I thought it would have been bigger.Well thats my question for the moment. Thankyou.

[[1ponders]]

:hi: and :welcome: TiS.
What type of scope do you have?

To increase you magnification use a smaller eyepiece. Magnification is the focal length of your telescope (your documentation should have that) divided by the focal length of your eyepiece. If you look at the side of your eyepiece is will have 20mm or 15mm or 4mm or similar.

eg
FL of scope/FL of EP =1200mm/20mm = 60 times mag
FL of scope/FL of EP = 1200mm/4mm = 300 times mag

[TANS IN SPACE]

hi thanks for that, i have a dobsonian bintel 202

[[1ponders]]

What size eyepieces do you have? Do you have a barlow lens?

[davtan]

This is Tan in space's Better Half...Dave.(davtan)

We have a Bintel BT202 Dobsonian 200mm FL 1200 f6.0.
With a Bintel SP26mm ,Plossl 15mm , Plossl 9mm.
I went to bed last night while she was looking at Saturn so don't know what she was doing.

Cheers Dave

[[1ponders]]

G'day Dave.

So with the eyepieces you have you have mags of 46x, 80x and 133x. With your aperture scope your theoretical visual mag maximum is 400x. ie a 3mm eyepiece. Unfortunately unless you have exceptional seeing you are unlikely use that small an eyepiece. However if you were to get a 2x barlow you will then have an additional 92x, 160x and 266x mag, which are all very useful magnifications.

[rmcpb]

The 9mm will be your workhorse eyepiece for detail in that scope as the seeing will limit the magnification most nights. Last night I was observing the moon and my 9.7mm gave good views but the seeing was not enough for my 7.5mm.

A good 2x barlow would be a good investment and would cover you for most nights. Just remember that a clear, small view is much better than a fuzzy, larger view :)

[ving]

yup, if you used teh 9mm than you were at you max, you have to either buy say a 7mm eyepiece or a barlow :)
welcome tan.

[Ric]

His TiS and welcome to the group. Great to see you found Saturn it's a real jewel in the sky, have you seen the "Great nebula" in Orion yet that is another great sight at this time of the year.

Cheers

[chunkylad]

HI Tan and welcome:welcome:

Even if you're a little dissapointed with the image scale (the actual 'size' of your target) you see through your eyepiece, the more time you actually spend looking through the eyepiece at your target, eg Saturn, the more detail you'll pick out.

As has been said, higher magnification does not necessarily mean a clearer view.

Enjoy your hobby.

Cheers

Dave W

[acropolite]

Hi Tan and Weclome to IIS. There are a few things that will make your viewing much clearer. Good collimation is essential (Your scope may have been checked and collimated by Bintel but that's no guarantee that it is still correctly collimated) as is a cooldown period before use and of course good atmospheric conditions. Don't expect to see as much detail as some of the images presented in the forum, your eyes simply aren't that sensitive and most of the Saturn images presented are composite images which have been processed to bring out detail.