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Originally Posted by StuM
Hi All,
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Welcome to the forums Stu.
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Please forgive me if I'm overstepping the guidelines here, but I'm a complete No0b at both astronomy forums, and astronomy in general, having just bought my 12yo son his first decent telescope - a Celestron Goto Sky Prodigy 130 (Aperture: 130 mm. Focal Length: 650mm. Focal Ratio: f/5). Being a novice myself and not knowing much, I researched quite a lot re; focal lengths etc before the $1000 purchase, and decided this one would be more than enough to get really great views of (say) Saturn/rings and Jupiter bands etc, and a few distant nebulae. I also bought the Celestron lens kit that comes with 6, 8, 13, 17, 25 and 32mm lenses and colour filters.
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A goto telescope is only as good as its aligned at the start of a viewing session. For someone new to astronomy, a goto scope seems an easy solve to knowing what to look for and knowing what you're looking at. But the telescope has to be properly aligned so the goto mount can do its work properly.
In terms of capability of the telescope itself, it's plenty capable. My own telescope is the SkyWatcher Heritage 130p tabletop Dobsonian. Same optical specifications as yours. It's a small, eminently capable telescope.
https://skywatcheraustralia.com.au/p...e-dobsonian-2/
As for the eyepiece kit, that was a waste of money. It's a large selection of cheap low quality eyepieces which match what ships with the telescope. The 2x Barlow, if its a metal bodied one, might be decent enough to warrant keeping. The filters are a range of ones that might not see a lot of use unless you do a lot of planetary viewing.
As the first upgrade for my scope, I bought the SkyWatcher branded version of the Celestron AstroMaster Accessory Kit.
https://www.celestron.com/products/a...-accessory-kit
The 6mm Plossl eyepiece was useless. The 15mm Kellner eyepiece was better than the supplied Super 10mm and Super 25mm Modified Achromat eyepieces which came with my scope. I lucked it with the 2x Barlow, as my set has the good quality metal barrel one, and not the usual plastic barrel one. The filters see use when I'm doing planetary viewing. The lunar filter is the heaviest used of the filters. But basically, smaller set, less waste.
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Anyway, so far, all I can manage is a sensational close up view of the moon. Anything else seems to escape us. Am I doing something wrong, or is this rather costly goto telescope literally not quite substantial enough in the optics department to do what I'd hoped to with it? Do I need to upgrade to a 2" lens for it perhaps, as these little 1" lenses don't seem to do much? Or do I literally have expectations of (say) a 10-inch / 1200mm Dobsonian, and should buy one of those instead? So far, viewing of (say) the nearest nebulae/s just seem to be a barely visible spray of very tiny, faintly twinkly stars. Certainly when we look at Mars, it's just a tiny microdot star, faintly twinkling, certainly not viewable as a planet beyond that like the moon is.
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OK. All the FANCY photos you see of nebula and galaxies are VERY long video sequences, where the frames of the video have been put together and post processed to bring out as much detail as possible as a single still image. The human eye cannot see that much colour detail of a nebula, in any telescope on Earth. I've seen nebula in my scope, and what I've seen of the clouds of them, those clouds are shades of grey. Not all the brilliant colours of the astronomy photos.
2inch eyepieces are for telescope made with a 2inch eyepiece mount.
Your telescope, like mine, has a 1.25inch eyepiece mount. With the correct eyepieces, it is VERY capable.
Spending more money on a larger telescope, when you haven't got used to successfully driving the small scope you have, will only get you further into frustration with astronomy.
You need to make sure the red dot finder is properly lined up, so what its red dot highlights, you can also see in the center of the eyepiece. You need to properly centre stars in the eyepiece, so the auto-alignment of the scope will match what you can see for lining it up to work.
Mars, what you describe, is what I found as well. A small orangey dot in the eyepiece. The small size of Mars and its distance from Earth, means you need a suitable eyepiece, and use the Barlow, to better magnify it. But you won't get the big views of it with a small telescope.
Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, all EASILY viewable with the scope.
Stars, they're always going to be small points of light in the eyepiece. But they'll be a bit bigger in the eyepiece, you'll see more of them, and some, you'll even see the faint colours of them as well. They're not all white points of light.
Some stars look single, till you magnify them enough, then you see they are 2 stars close together. Magnify further, and you might see the 2 separate stars. The scope CAN do this.
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Am I doing something wrong/silly, or is this the max this little system can manage? Should I just buy maybe a 10 inch Dob? I live in North Brisbane on the bayside, and light pollution seems not so bad I guess, with a few nice, dark places around us.
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I'm on the north side of Brisbane, and between the trees around my place and all the other lights, and the airport to the east, nice dark skies with wide vistas to explore, I don't get them here.
You're doing nothing silly. As I said, buying a bigger scope won't reward you, if you can't drive the small scope you have. You have a capable scope, you just have to take the time to get the hang of using the computer it comes with.
Getting decent eyepieces, not going to be inexpensive, but you pay for the quality, and that pays dividends in what you'll be able to see.
Best move for eyepieces and info, pay a visit to Astro Anarchy in the Myer Centre in the CBD.
http://www.astroanarchy.com.au/index.html