Quote:
Originally Posted by Cork Dork
Greetings all
After having a little browse of the forums I'd thought I'd drop you all a line...
Over a glass or three of shiraz last night I brought out the telescope (which had been given to me last week) to see what I could see.
I didn't attempt alignment with the polar axis (I was already having difficulty aligning myself in the dark as it was) and pointed it towards the Southern Cross for a squizz.
I have a SkyWatcher Maksutov F:127mm D:1500mm on what appears to be an equatorial mount. The eyepiece is a plossl 25mm.
The view was impressive but not spectacular. Would this set up be able to bring Jupiter and or Saturn into technicolour glory or is the Moon as far as I should be pointing it?
At some stage I'd also like to hook up my Pentax istDS DSLR.
After an email to the appropriate vendor I received a quote for a mount, a T-ring and an oppcam. What are these mysterious items and can I build them myself out of barrel staves and empty wine bottles?
Cheers

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You should be able to see Saturn and Jupiter quite well in this scope and you'll definitely see some colour in both. The Moon....well, it's the Moon. You'll see various shades of grey and maybe some muted browns here and there. Don't expect to see much colour in faint fuzzies like nebulae and galaxies. Your eyes can't pick up enough light to really see bright colours, however on a moonless night you might see some very muted greenish grey in bright nebulae like Orion and eta Carina. Stars will show some colour because they're essentially bright point sources. However you'll be stumped sometimes by binaries that have a high contrast in luminosity between the components. Some will not reflect their true colours as the contrast between the two (or more) stars will make colours look different.
Well, the mount (camera??) and the T-ring will allow you to attach your camera and such to your scope and allow to add eyepieces/filters in between the camera and your scopes optics.
As for making the components out of empty bottles and barrel staves, you could try but I doubt they'd work
