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Old 31-12-2008, 01:55 PM
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bmitchell82 (Brendan)
Newtonian power! Love it!

bmitchell82 is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Mandurah
Posts: 2,597
I agree with dave... slow down.

Don't bother washing your mirror yet untill you are fully confident in collmination. unless the mirror is fully coated with dust and i mean pretty bad your views will not be hindered as much as your light pollution and location.

As for your ep's. there are only a few bands of "usefull magnification" one being around 80 - 100 next being around 150 - 180 and then somewhere around 220 - 250. Correct me if im wrong anybody, but thats where you will be viewing mainly and ide actually say you would be more in the 80 - 100 range unless you have really good dark skys and by this i mean you can see 47 tuc the LMC and SMC, Carinae by eye.

I think one thing that people do more than often is think that they can swim before they can, go to the deep end and sink. Astronomy is a life time effort, the more you do it the more you will enjoy it and you will think to youself why did i not start it earlier. Sit down relax do a bit of reading up on things to do with your scope, ask the questions what not and then youll be just fine.

Using the laser collmination technique is just fine for doing a bit of casual observing, but as you go on you will understand and identify your specific needs. I use a combination of laser/cheshire, and soon i will delve alot deeper into collmination as i will be using my newtonian for photography. CCD's are not forgiving on mis collminated optics as our brain is!
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